Foreign Service Institute
Hungarian Basic Course
Introduction
Basic Course Series
This work was compiled and published with the support of the Office of Education, Department of Health, Education and Welfare, United States of America
Washington, D.C., 1962
For sale by the Superintendent of Documents, U.S. Government Printing Office
Washington, D.C. 20402
Stock No. 044-000-00266-3 / Catalog No. S 1.114/2:H89
These volumes comprise an introduction to the Hungarian language. While emphasis has been placed on giving the student spoken command of the language, both the vocabulary and the structure necessary for immediate use of written materials are included. The general plan of the course follows the tradition of the Spoken Language Series prepared under the auspices of the American Council of Learned Societies during World War II, but it also takes advantage of more recent pedagogic theory. The drills, in particular, are designed along the lines of present-day texts.
The course has been prepared under an agreement with the United States Office of Education, Department of Health, Education and Welfare, under the National Defense Education Act. It is designed to fill the need for the Hungarian Basic Course in the over-all plan of the Uralic and Altaic Program of the ACLS, as outlined by Dr. John Lotz, Director of Research of the Program.
This text, consisting of two volumes (twenty-four units) with accompanying tape recordings, is the result of the coordinated efforts of the Hungarian staff of the School of Language and Area Studies working under the direction and supervision of Augustus A. Koski. Particular credit for the preparation of the dialogs and much of the drill material goes to Mrs. Ilona Mihalyfy. She has been assisted by Nandor J. Cheploe and by Otto M. Szivak, who has served faithfully and conscientiously in the tape recording of the text. Deep appreciation is expressed to Miss Vera J. Harris for her most valuable contribution in the meticulous preparation of the major portion of the typescript. Dr. Ronald A.C. Goodison's editorial work on the text following the departure of the author from the staff of the School is also gratefully acknowledged.
H. E. Sollenberger
Dean, School of Language and Area Studies
Foreign Service Institute
The FSI Hungarian Basic Course has been written with the aim of providing the student with a firm control of the basic structure of the spoken language and a vocabulary adequate for him to make limited practical use of both the spoken and written language in his travels, work and social obligations. In addition, the course should provide the learner a sound background for further development of fluency and proficiency in Hungarian.
The materials in each of the two volumes of the text are contained in twelve lessons or units. Each unit includes a set of basic sentences that are intended for memorization. These are in the form of conversations or dialogs focused on specific situations in which a person might find himself in Hungary. Notes to the basic sentences are added occasionally to provide additional background information on some cultural feature unfamiliar to Americans, or to clarify some special difficulty in vocabulary or idiom. Notes on pronunciation are included in each of the first seven units. Sound, stress and intonation features which have been found to be particularly troublesome for American students are here presented with explanations and a series of practice drills. The notes on grammar in each unit concentrate on those structural features illustrated in the basic sentences which are considered appropriate for analysis at a given stage in the course. The section after the grammatical explanations in each lesson provides for systematic and detailed practice of the new features comprising a particular unit. Specifically, the substitution drills are designed for exercise in the manipulation of forms through substitution of specific items in fixed sentence patterns. This practice is intended to build habits of association, so that in a given syntactic environment the appropriate grammatical form automatically comes to mind. A common type of substitution drill used in the drill sections is the transformation drill, in which the pattern sentence is changed from one grammatical or lexical category to another. Variation drills provide for the manipulation of larger syntactic patterns. In each group a model sentence, underscored, serves as a guide. Associated with it are additional sentences incorporating the same syntactic frame but in which most of the individual word items have been replaced. Vocabulary drills provide practice in the use of new words and also allow for manipulation of sentence elements, the particular form and arrangement of which depends upon their association with that vocabulary item. The manipulation of all these drills as presented in the units is carried out generally with the use of English equivalents. Specific translation drills are also provided, however. In general these exercises supplement the material of the basic dialog in the form of a narrative. In this way they provide content review of the basic sentences and practice in the transformation from active dialog to descriptive narration. The response drills are question-and-answer-type exercises on the situations of the basic dialogs but are also designed to develop the student's ability to give realistic answers to appropriate real-life situations. Conversation practice and additional situations in outline bridge the gap to free conversation.
This is a course in Spoken Hungarian; the forms and patterns of the language are intended to be colloquial. The emphasis in instruction is everywhere on speech, and an indispensable component of the learning process is the voice of the instructor, whose native language is Hungarian. On no account should the student attempt to use these materials without either a native instructor or recordings of a native instructor's voice. The method of instruction incorporates guided imitation, repetition, memorization, pattern practice, and conversation.
Working under the supervision of a linguist the instructor's role is to serve as a model for speech as Hungarians really use the language in actual conversation. In this connection the instructor will maintain the normal tempo of pronunciation as the classroom standard at all times; he will never distort his speech by slowing down. The student's job is to watch and listen carefully to the instructor and to imitate as exactly as he can the sounds that he hears, together with their pitch and stress patterns. He must keep in mind that to learn an entirely new set of language habits, he will require constant correction and repetition. Each time the student is given a new model to practice, the instructor says it for him first. The student should never attempt to read from his text, but rather should watch the instructor and pay attention to him as he says a word or utterance for the class. As far as possible, he should leave his book closed during the presentation and concentrate on the speech and actions of the teacher. The normal procedure in class will consist of a great deal of choral and individual repetition of the basic sentences and drills, for only by frequent repetition after an authentic model for speech can habitual fluent and accurate reproduction of the sounds and forms of the foreign language be achieved.
The basic sentences are preceded by "build-ups" giving the component parts of the utterance separately. Each new item which is introduced appears first as a build-up. The instructor will ask the students to repeat the build-ups separately first, then combined into larger units, and finally the complete new sentence or utterance. The basic sentences are subdivided into numbered sections, each to be treated as a un1t, repeated in chorus and individually, with and without build-ups, until the students' imitation is satisfactory. Only then may a new section be taken up. The time required to cover each part of the dialog in this way will differ widely, 'depending on the size and ability of the class. After acceptable imitation and accurate pronunciation have been achieved, the sections are then assigned for memorization outside of class or repeated in class until memorized. The student should be able to give either the Hungarian sentence or {ts English equivalent on request, or switch from one language to the other and back again. The instructor will drill the class by repeating each sentence for each student; then by giving each student a different sentence, repeating it for him first; and finally by asking the class to recite the sentences in order, the first student the first sentence, the second student the second sentence, etc., without receiving a cue from the instructor. Repetition out loud outside of class, preferably with the help of recorded materials, should be continued to the point of overlearninq. The student should not only be able to give the correct Hungarian sentence upon hearing the English equivalent at random selection, but he should also be able to give the correct Hungarian statement with equal ease and speed of response upon hearing its Hungarian cue. As a final step, the students are expected to act out the basic dialog in its entirety from memory, with the instructor or with other students. Only when the basic sentences have been mastered to this extent can they be considered to provide an adequate basis for control of the spoken language. It should be noted at this point that the English text accompanying the basic sentences is not primarily a translation but a set of conversational equivalents. Many apparent discrepancies will be found if the student, or the instructor, looks for word-for-word correspondence between the English and Hungarian text. Such a thing will not be found in the text. Rather, in any particular situation, one should regard the English text as a symbolization of how a particular situation is rendered in English, and the Hungarian text as a symbolization of how that situation is rendered in Hungarian.
The pronunciation practice drills are taken up in class only after the presentation of the basic sentences has been completed and memorization of the dialogs has been started. The pronunciation exercises are arranged in groups according to the particular feature concerned, whether it be sound or stress. Words are to be repeated first in chorus and then individually by each student after the instructor, at first following the vertical columns and later, for variation and comparison. going horizontally across the page. Particular attention should be paid to items in contrast. These are minimum, meaningfully distinctive sound patterns, accurate control of which is important for communication and comprehension. Contrasting word pairs are linked by a dash, and after separate practice for accuracy, the items should be repeated by pairs to bring out the exact distinctions between them.
The notes on grammar are designed for home study after the basic sentences have been introduced and drilled in class. Although the grammar analysis is intended to explain and clarify all points of structure that are emphasized in a particular .unit and illustrated in the basic sentences, the student may still encounter some difficulty in understanding some details of the analysis. In such cases he is urged to ask the linguist for assistance in his difficulty. The instructor is specifically requested not to enter into discussion with his students about the structure of the language. Time in class is spent most profitably with practice in actual use and manipulation of the language and not in talking about it.
After the basic sentences of a unit have all been repeated several times and memorization of these is well under way, work can be started on the drills. The material in these is designed to provide a maximum of additional experience in using the forms and patterns of the language learned in the basic sentences. It is not assumed, however, that the learner is automatically able to transfer the experience gained in the basic sentences to error-free manipulation of these forms and patterns. The drills are by no means a test of what the student can do with the elements given to him. It is a matter of no great importance whether he can or cannot "figure them out" by himself. The goal is to learn to speak the language accurately and fluently; and this aim can be achieved only by correct repetition of the forms and patterns involved. Therefore all the sentences in each drill group are first to be repeated in their correct form after the instructor. After this the instructor cues each student in turn for repetition of one of the drill sentences until all students have given all sentences correctly.
In the substitution drills the model sentence and all its variants are first repeated in chorus after the instructor. He then gives the model sentence again and the class repeats it in chorus. After this each student is cued individually with an item to be substituted, whereupon he repeats the sentence with the substitution called for. In some cases the cue is the exact form which fits into the sentence: in other cases a cue is given which requires the student to choose the proper form to fit the syntactic environment of the model. Regardless of which type of cue is given or how simple or complex the exercise may appear to be, the student's task is to make the substitution without hesitation and to repeat the sentence accurately at normal conversational speed.
In the transformation exercises, as well as in the variation and vocabulary drills, the basic procedure is about the same as for the substitution drills. All sentences in a given group are first repeated after the instructor. The teacher then gives the pattern sentence again, and the students repeat it in chorus. Then they are required individually to recall and repeat the correct Hungarian sentences for which an English equivalent is given. Students may work on the drills with their books open, covering up the column where the Hungarian sentences are printed and taking their cues from the English sentences.
Transformation drills require the conversion of one or more elements in a sentence from one grammatical form to another--singular to plural, present to past, etc. No English is provided for these sentences as a rule. However, the instructor may check the student's understanding by asking for a random spot translation into English, or he may go through the drill a second or third time, giving English sentence cues for which the student gives the Hungarian equivalent.
Translation and response drills, as noted above, are in most cases directly related to the basic sentences. In translation drills the procedure is similar to that followed in the other types of exercise already described. Students work with their books open, covering the Hungarian text and reading the English sentences to themselves. In the response drills it is often appropriate for the tutor to address two or three questions to the same student and then two or three more to the next, so that the exercise takes on a more natural character of conversational interchange. In addition to questions printed in the text, the experienced instructor may find it expedient to add other questions in order to make a situation appear more realistic or to provide further practice on a particular point of grammar. Both translation and response drills should be repeated in their entirety several times until all students have had an opportunity to get practice on each item.
It will be noted that all drill material is provided with both a cue and a correct response, so that all may be prepared by the student outside of class and repeated and practiced by him as often as necessary to achieve complete accuracy and fluency. In many cases there is more than one possible response to a given cue, and instructors are encouraged to accept all answers that are truly equivalent. If a correct response has been given, however, instructors are not to suggest variant forms which may occur to them, as this only introduces unnecessary complexity of choice to an exercise that is difficult enough as it is.
In the conversation practice brief dialogs, usually on the same theme as the basic sentences, are read through by the instructor three or four times while the class listens. Then the teacher takes one role while one student takes the other, and they repeat the conversation together. The student's aim here is not primarily to memorize and repeat exactly, but to give as near an equivalent as possible in his own words. After acting out the conversation with the instructor, the student goes through it again with another student, he in turn with the next student, and so on until all have taken both parts in the dialog.
The situations are brief descriptions, in English in the earlier unics, later in Hungarian, of occurrences similar to those on which the basic dialogs are based. Two or more students act out these situations in their own words. They are encouraged to use their imagination and expand on the brief descriptions as long as they limit themselves to the vocabulary and structure covered up to that point in the course. However, the whole conversation should not take more than four or five minutes in order to assure that all students in the class may try their hand at the same situation.
The narratives are designed for reading purposes, with actual reading done by the student outside of class. In class they may be used for oral narration: the class may listen to the narration as recited by the instructor two or three times; then follows a period of questions by the instructor concerning the subject matter of the narrative; and finally the instructor calls upon student's to retéll in their own words as much of the story as they remember• In the early units, the narratives cover much of the material of the basic sentences in third person form. In the later units some features of expository prose-matters of both form and style--which differ from normal spoken usage are introduced through the narratives in order to bridge the gap between conversational Hungarian and those reading skills of a specialized nature which require particular study and attention.
The ultimate goal of the course, as has been stated above, is to speak accurately, fluently and easily. The text provides for the assimilation of all basic forms and patterns of the language by the guided imitation, memorization, and manipulation of a large number of sentences and by practice in confronting various widely occurring everyday situations. Actual living use of the language in free conversation is a necessary and essential adjunct. The instructor should therefore encourage his students from the start to use the language in every way possible, above and beyond what is provided for in the text. As early as possible in the course both students and instructors should avoid the use of English in the classroom insofar as it is expedient to do so, and instructors should encourage students to speak Hungarian outside the classroom as well. Only by constant use of the skill he is learning can the student hope to master the language and retain it as a useful tool of his profession.