From Wikipedia:
“An idée reçue is a received, or accepted, idea. This term was used by Gustave Flaubert in his work Le Dictionnaire des Idées Reçues to refer to a catch phrases and platitudes, most of which are as paradoxical as they are insipid. A platitude is a trite, meaningless, biased or prosaic statement that is presented as if it were significant and original.”
We labor under these received ideas, and they affect our teaching life. Let’s look at a few idées reçues in the foreign language teaching game:
1. Using a book to teach a foreign language works. That one is not enough worth the effort to analyze it. It is false. I just had a tranfer into my class last week from a class in which the book was used. The girl, though bright, is incapable of even the simplest auditory identification when we do stories. The rest of the class is embarrased for her. Books don’t work.
2. By looking at the teacher and doing what the teacher says during class, students learn. That’s a good one. Learning a language is a complex social phenomenon, one so complex that the brain learns languages completely unconsciously by connnecting sound to meaning, without analysis. Analysis is something that can happen after we learn a language, but not before, which is another reason using a book is so useless.
3. The traditional notion of homework works in learning a language. No, it doesn’t.
4. Here is a modern idée reçue: Expensive programs like Rosetta Stone get great results. No, actually they are very confusing, full of bells and whistles but little substance that actually result in true acquisition. They are money makers, and this kind of program is more about advertising and big business than it is about actual acquisition.