An experiment is reported involving the teaching of the agreement of the past participle without an auxiliary verb, with "avoir" and with "etre," patterned after the studies of S. Roller in 1952-53 in this area. The initial experimentation is updated and involves the use of a Skinnerian model of programed instruction. The objectives, operational…

This is a preliminary report on a series of small-scale language teaching experiments, aimed primarily at demonstrating that valid research into language teaching methods is possible. Small-scale refers not to the number of subjects involved, but to the scope of the experiment. Instead of looking at a method as a whole (as happens in large-scale…