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Less known than his linguistic and anthropological research is the work developed by Rudolph Lenz (1863-1938) in relation to the teaching of Spanish as a first language in Chilean educational system. He focused on two fundamental problems of great importance for curriculum and program design. First, the question of what "literary language" would be taught, that is, in today's terms, which properties should belong to the standard language. Second, the problem of how instruction should be conducted in high schools, and, particularly, the role of grammar in this process. In both cases, Lenz departed from the tradition of Bello's ideas. In addition to theoretically and empirically substantiate his proposals, Lenz spread his ideas in public opinion to influence curriculum design and training of future teachers of Spanish. He also sought to reform the teaching of grammar in Chile. All this was done in an environment that was not conducive to ideas that criticized the doctrines of Bello. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper aims to sketch a critical reading of several texts by the German linguist who settled in Chile in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, Rodolfo Lenz, focusing on the way in which he worked on the settlement in Chile of the means and ends of philological research as modern linguistics had come to conceive them at the time. Thus, it shall be attempted to account for how the work of Lenz in order to give form to a proper space and audience for this discipline, the construction of an object based on the Spanish spoken in Chile, the Mapuche language in contact with it, foreign European languages and traditional narratives point to the political task of contributing to the affirmation of Chilean Spanish as a modern national language provided with all the elements that the device of modern language sciences envisaged for this purpose. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The following work shows the content of non published letters written by Anibal Echeverrla y Reyes to Rodolfo Lenz during the making of Voces usadas en Chile, a normative linguistic work published in 1900. These letters suggest that, although the influence of Lenz as scientific model for Echeverria is out of question, his direct involvement in Voces usadas en Chile was not so important. Lenz took part on the making of this work mainly by giving general observations and revising (in collaboration with other persons) the phonetic and grammatical chapters, during the last years of revision of the manuscript. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]