Mariano Velázquez de la Cadena (1778-1860) y la adaptación del Manual Ollendorff para la enseñanza de lenguas extranjeras

Throughout the nineteenth century, there was a series of circumstances that enhances the movement of a large number of people from different countries; many of them had the need to acquire a basic competence of a foreign language in a short time. As a result of this, a series of manuals were published, mainly in Europe and America, whose main objective aimed the student to be able to communicate with some ease in a foreign speaking community within a few weeks or months. One of these manuals is the one proposed in 1835 by the German grammarian Heinrich Gottfried Ollendorff, aimed at the teaching-learning of German and that Mariano Velázquez de la Cadena adapted to Spanish. We consider that this manual stands in the evolutionary line of the communicative method that was established in the second half of the 20th century.