WILGA M RIVERS

THE PSYCHOLOGIST & THE FOREIGN LANGUAGE TEACHER

210 page hardback book, fourth edition, 1996 by University of Chicago Press.  Internally all pages clean and white, dust jacke only minor signs of wear, in excellent condition.

Americans, long indifferent to foreign languages, have awakened recently in a burst of enthusaism to the cultural and educational values of language learning.  Attracted to modern methods that promise fast language mastery, few have had the time to evaluate the underlying psychological theories or to question the effects of technical devices on human teachers and learners.  Whether as many seem to believe the popular audio-lingual method is the best way to teach a language is a matter of controversy among the linguist, psychologist and language teacher.  Dr Rivers clearly identifies the major assumptions of the audio lingual method, critically examines each assumption in the light of modern learning theories and suggests ways of improving foreign language teaching practices.