Harold Edward Palmer, usually just Harold E. Palmer (1877-1949) was an English

England

England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...

 linguist, phonetician and pioneer in the field of English language learning and teaching

English language learning and teaching

English as a second language , English for speakers of other languages and English as a foreign language all refer to the use or study of English by speakers with different native languages. The precise usage, including the different use of the terms ESL and ESOL in different countries, is...

. Especially he dedicated himself to Oral Method. He stayed in Japan for 14 years and reformed its English education. He contributed to the development of the applied linguistics of the 20th century.

Palmer was born in London. In 1892-1893, he studied in France. In 1902, he went to Belgium and started teaching English at Berlitz

Berlitz

Berlitz can refer to:* The Berlitz Corporation, formerly Berlitz International* Maximilian Berlitz, founder of the Berlitz Language Schools* Charles Berlitz, grandson of Maximilian Berlitz and author of several Bermuda Triangle related books...

 school. In 1903, he established his own school. In 1915, he started teaching at University College London. In 1922, he was invited by Masataro Sawayanagi, Kojiro Matsukata and went to Japan

Japan

Japan is an island nation in East Asia. Located in the Pacific Ocean, it lies to the east of the Sea of Japan, China, North Korea, South Korea and Russia, stretching from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north to the East China Sea and Taiwan in the south...

. In Japan, he became 'Linguistic Adviser' to the Japanese Department of Education. In 1923, he established the Institute for Research in English Teaching (IRET), now the Institute for Research in Language Teaching (IRLT), and became the first director. He founded the Institute's Bulletin. In 1935, he was awarded D.Litt. by Tokyo Imperial University. In 1936, he returned to England and became consultant for Longmans, Green. In 1937, he published Thousand-Word English with A. S. Hornby

A. S. Hornby

Albert Sidney ' Hornby, usually just A. S. Hornby, 1898–1978, was an English grammarian, lexicographer, and pioneer in the field of English language learning and teaching ....

, the main creator of the first Advanced Learner's Dictionary

Advanced Learner's Dictionary

The advanced learner's dictionary is the most common type of monolingual learner's dictionary, that is, a dictionary written for someone who is learning a foreign language and who has a proficiency level of B2 or above according to the Common European Framework...

.

Publications

• 1917-The Scientific Study and Teaching of Languages
• 1921-The Principles of Language-Study, The Oral Method of Teaching Languages
• 1922-English Intonation, With Systematic Exercises
• 1924-Memorandum on Problems of English Teaching in the Light of a New Theory, A Grammar of Spoken English
• 1925-English through Actions
  English through Actions
  English through Actions is a book about the direct method of language education written by Harold E. Palmer and his daughter, Dorothee Palmer. It was first published in 1925 by the Japanese publisher Kaitakusha. The book includes various materials for standard students and they are shown...
  
  
• 1929-Eigo no rokushukan (The First Six Weeks of English)
• 1930-Interim Report on Vocabulary Selection, The Principles of Romanization
• 1931-Second Interim Report on Vocabulary Selection
• 1932-This Language-Learning Business(With H. Vere Redman)
• 1933-Second Interim Report on English Collocations, A New Classification of English Tones
• 1934-Specimens of English Construction Patterns, An Essay in Lexicology
• 1937-Thousand-Word English(With A. S. Hornby
  A. S. Hornby
  Albert Sidney ' Hornby, usually just A. S. Hornby, 1898–1978, was an English grammarian, lexicographer, and pioneer in the field of English language learning and teaching ....
  
  )
• 1938-A Grammar of English Words
• 1940-The Teaching of Oral English
• 1943-International English Coursestarted.

The Five Speech-Learning Habits

• Auditory Observation
• Oral Imitation
• Catenizing
• Semanticizing
• Composition by Analogy

Composition by analogy is often referred to as the generative principle

Generative principle

In foreign language teaching, the generative principle reflects the human capacity to generate an infinite number of phrases and sentences from a finite grammatical or linguistic competence...

. Palmer coined the term "ergon", defined as a phrase that serves as a syntactic prototype from which pupils can construct further sentences. "The learners' task is to acquire these ergons or 'primary matter' as a database which will then serve them to generate many more analogous sentences - 'secondary matter' according to Palmer."