User:Tutton/François Gouin

François Gouin was a French educator and author known for his work in the field of language education.

François Gouin's "Series Method" was inspiration for the famous advocate of the Direct Method, Charles Berlitz. Francois Gouin wrote "L'art d'enseigner et d'étudier les langues", first published in the UK as "The Art of Teaching and Studying Languages" in 1894. In this book, he describes his failure to learn to speak the German language. Gouin was a Latin teacher, who moved to Hamburg in order to learn German, and he used the Grammar-Translation Method of language learning commonly used to teach Latin. Without actually entering into conversation in the target language, he memorized almost two hundred and fifty irregular verbs and more than thirty thousand words from the German dictionary. He also memorized a complete book of German grammar and translated Goethe and Schiller. However, he ultimately was unable hold a conversation with native speakers. Gouin returned to France and was struck by the fact that his young nephew had learned to speak French during the time he was away.