Pregonero

The earliest extant manual specifically designed to teach English as a foreign language, The English Schoolmaster (1580), was written by a Frenchman! The book, like others of its time, was written to help French Huguenot exiles in England, who had arrived in great numbers during the previous decade. There were no substantial descriptions of English available at the time, and that explains why the book, like most early textbooks, have very little or no grammar. The main part of the book discusses difficult words. Its author, Jacques Bellot, seems to be thinking mainly of French learmers who had picked up the language ‘by ear’ and were easily confused when seeing words in print. Bellot discusses homophones like horse and hoarse, ambiguous words like straight, right and hold, problem words like well, light, stay and fast and words which are easily confused such as cost and coast and cast or ship and sheep. In another manual, Familiar Dialogues, Bellot teaches the language through everyday dialogues within a domestic setting, with a strong emphasis on shopping. He sends his learners to the butcher, the draper, the fishmonger, the poulterer and others. The whole follows more or less the sequence of a single day, from getting up to a conversation round the dinner table. The dialogues make a curiously modern impression, as if Bellot wanted to present a situational syllabus. They are arranged in three columns, with English on the left, French in the middle and a French ‘transcription’ of the English text to help learners with the pronunciation, like this: Que ne vous-chaussez-vous? – Why doe you not put on your showes? – Houey dou you not pout on yor choùs? (Howatt, A.P.R.: A History of English Language Teaching. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1984: 14-9)