(1) Initial preparation.(2) Habit-forming.(3) Accuracy.(4) Gradation.(5) Proportion.(6) Concreteness.(7) Interest.(8) Order of progression.(9) Multiple line of approach.
(1) Initial preparation.(2) Habit-forming.(3) Accuracy.(4) Gradation.(5) Proportion.(6) Concreteness.(7) Interest.(8) Order of progression.(9) Multiple line of approach.
We append a brief definition or broad description of these principles, and reserve for the following chapters a detailed explanation of each of them.
(1)Initial Preparation.—During the initial stages of the course the teacher will, if necessary, endeavour by means of appropriate forms of exercise to awaken and to develop the student’s natural or spontaneouscapacities for language-study, in order that he may be adequately prepared for his subsequent work.
(2)Habit-forming.—Language-study is essentially a habit-forming process; the teacher will therefore not only assist the student in utilizing his previously formed habits, but will also cause him to acquire new ones appropriate to the work he is to perform.
(3)Accuracy.—No form of work is to be adopted which may lead to inaccurate habits of language-using, for habit-forming without accuracy means the forming of bad habits.
(4)Gradation.—The teacher will cause the student to pass from the known to the unknown by easy stages, each of which will serve as a preparation for the next, and thereby secure a constantly increasing rate of progress.
(5)Proportion.—The various aspects of language (i.e.understanding, speaking, reading, and writing) as well as the various branches of the study (i.e.phonetics, orthography, etymology, syntax, and semantics) to receive an appropriate measure of attention.
(6)Concreteness.—The student will proceed from the concrete to the abstract, and will therefore be furnished with an abundance of well-chosen examples.
(7)Interest.—The methods are to be devised in such a way that the interest of the student is always secured, for without interest there can be little progress.
(8)Order of Progression.—The student should first be taught to hear and to articulate correctly, then to use sentences, then to make sentences, then to make (i.e.to inflect or to derive) words. In this way he will secure rapid and yet permanent results.
(9)Multiple Line of Approach.—The language should be approached simultaneously from many different sidesin many different ways, by means of many different forms of work.
Text-books may differ in the sort of material supplied; teachers may differ in their mode of presentation; there will be room for individuality and personality. For years to come we shall not secure perfect uniformity and ideal results, but if these nine essential principles are understood and reasonably well observed by the method-writer, course-designer, and teacher, the resultant teaching is bound to be good and the results are bound to be satisfactory.
In the first chapter we have seen that each of us, child or adult, possesses in either an active or a latent state certain capacities for the spontaneous assimilation of the spoken and colloquial form of any given language, native or foreign. In the case of the young child, these capacities are in an active state and at his immediate service, he does not require to be trained in their use; in the case of the average adult, these capacities are in a latent state, they have fallen into disuse, they are not at his immediate service, he must train himself to use them, he must learn how to learn.
In the first place, he must realize that language-learning (within the scope of our definition) is anartand not ascience; to become proficient in anartis to acquire the capacity fordoingsomething; to become proficient in ascienceis to acquireknowledgeconcerning something. So long as the student treats language-study as a science he will make little or no progress in the art of using language.
Now, there are two possible ways of acquiring proficiency in an art; the one consists in applying theory, the other consists in persistent efforts to imitate the successful performances of others. Let us say that the student wishes to use the French equivalent of ‘shewent.’ By the method of theory he will remember that past actions are generally expressed by the Frenchpassé indéfini(orperfect); he will then remember that this tense is formed by means of one of the two auxiliaries plus the past participle. His knowledge of theory will tell him to derive from the infinitiveallerthe past participleallé; theory will also tell him that this particular verb requires the auxiliaryêtreand notavoir, and that the present tense third person singular ofêtreisest. If he is writing the sentence, he must remember that the participle must in this case agree with the subject and be speltallée.
By the method of practice he will merely reproduce by imitation the sentenceelle est allée, which sentence he will have had occasions of learning or of reading. In both cases there is the possibility of error; the theory may be imperfectly known and one or more links in the chain of reasoning may be weak, or the sentence may have been badly memorized.
First attempts at imitation are sometimes inaccurate; our initial attempts at reproducing are occasionally unsuccessful; we wish to produce a foreign sound we have just heard, but utter a native sound instead; we wish to produce a foreign sentence, but construct it wrongly; we wish to express a certain thought, and fail to hit upon the right word. For this reason the method of practice is often termedthe method of trial and error. We are told that some of our efforts will be successful and others unsuccessful, and that in the course of practice we shall gradually eliminate the unsuccessful ones. We are even told that it is only by making mistakes that we learn not to make them. Although we may admit a modicum of truth in this somewhat hyperbolical dictum, we would suggest that it is liable to misinterpretation. Nor isthe termtrial and erroran ideal one from the language-teacher’s point of view.
In both cases there is an implication that all successful attempts must necessarily be preceded by unsuccessful ones, which is not only untrue but unsound pedagogy. The literal interpretation of the term and doctrine may induce a sort of fatalistic attitude, and the principle ofaccuracy(which we shall deal with later) will suffer in consequence. It may provide teacher and student with an easy pretext to condone careless work. The student may say, “Since it appears that error must precede perfection, I will not unduly strive towards accuracy.” The teacher may say, “Since psychologists tell us that error is inevitable, I will allow my pupil to do inaccurate work.”
It may be true that some forms of inaccuracy in certain conditions tend to eliminate themselves in the course of time and practice, but it is certainly true that errors also tend to become habitual, and no psychologist has ever maintained that the forming ofbadhabits is a necessary step towards the acquisition of good ones. We would lay stress on this point, for there seems to be a real danger in the misapplication of such terms as ‘trial and error,’ ‘the selection of the successful and the rejection of the unsuccessful efforts,’ ‘practice makes perfect,’ etc. Misunderstanding on this point has caused many teachers to encourage, and many students to acquire, pidgin-speech, and to consider it as the inevitable or even indispensable prelude to normal speech.
In the present chapter we are inquiring what are the processes of nature and how we may train the student to observe them. We have just seen that there is a method of theory and a method of practice; it is fairlyevident that the latter is a natural process and that the former is not. We will now proceed to set forth another pair of rival processes and determine which is the one followed by the natural language-teaching forces.
When we are young we form new habits with facility; a new sort of work has to be performed, and we proceed to acquire the new habit which will enable us to perform it. When we are older we form new habits with greater difficulty and certainly with greater reluctance. We make all sorts of efforts (generally unconsciously) to avoid forming a new habit, for in some respects the adult seems to dread novelty.
A new sort of work has to be performed, and instead of acquiring the new habit or habits which will perform it we select habits already formed and strive to make them do the new work. Let us take a few examples in order to realize what this means. Suppose we wish to make Chinese characters with a native writing-brush. This is a new sort of work; in order to do it successfully we must hold the brush vertically in a way we have never held a brush before; we must form a new brush-holding and brush-using habit. But the average European adult will strive to use the brush and to trace the characters by holding the brush as he holds a pen; he will be using the known pen-holding habit instead of acquiring the unknown habit of holding a writing-brush.
Or we wish to learn to pronounce the vowel generally represented in French byé. This will require a muscular habit unknown to the average Englishman. What does he do? He seeks immediately to replace the required new effort by a known effort—and replaces the Frenchéby the Englishay. If this is too unsatisfactory he will strive to modify hisayuntil it seems to resemble sufficiently the required sound. Similarly, he will substitutefor Frenchau,u, oron, Englisho(as in ‘boat’),ew(as in ‘new’), andong.
Or the English adult student may wish to learn to use French word-groups or sentences, in which case we shall almost invariably find that he only learns to use those which correspond most nearly to English constructions; he prefers to adapt his known syntax-habits rather than form new ones.
Now children have not this same reluctance to form new habits, either because their minds are more plastic,i.e.they are so used to forming new habits that a few more do not incommode them, or because they are not clever or intelligent enough to make the necessary selection from their stock of acquired habits.
Language-learning is essentially a habit-forming process, a process during which we must acquirenewhabits. It is, then, one of the cases where we cannot always proceed from the known to the unknown in the more obvious sense of the term; we must often consent to plunge (or be plunged) straight into the unknown.
The most important thing we have to do, then, is to train the student to form new habits and to cause him to refrain from adapting his old ones in cases where we know that such adaptation will be fruitless. We make this last qualification advisedly, because there are certain cases where successful adaptation is possible. A foreign language is not wholly different from our own tongue, and where identity exists obviously no new habit is required. (We must, however, see that the student selects therightpreviously acquired habit, that is to say, thenearestnative equivalent.)
The capacity of forming new habits of observation, articulation, inflexion, compounding, or expression for every new language is one of our spontaneous capacities,and the student must when necessary be taught to form such new habits.
Another very characteristic feature of the natural process isunconscious assimilation; we learn without knowing that we are learning. What we therefore have to do is to train ourselves (or our students)consciouslyto learnunconsciously; we must set out deliberately to inhibit our capacities for focusing or concentrating our attention on the language-material itself. Attention must be given to what we want to say and not to the way we say it.
How shall we do it?
In the first place we must set out to sharpen our powers of receiving and retaining knowledge communicated to us orally. This may be difficult; we have become so accustomed to acquiring information from the written wordviathe eyes that we feel very bewildered and incapable when deprived of this medium. We hear a foreign word or sentence, and this auditory impression is such a rapid and transitory one that we feel that we cannot possibly retain it in our memory; we feel that we require at least one good look at the word so that we may hereafter reproduce in our imagination the written form. But we must resist this tendency; we must discipline ourselves to forgo this artificial aid to memory, for ear-memory cannot be cultivated while we are visualizing. If we truly desire to tap the natural language-learning energies we must obey nature; we must train and drill our ears to do the work for which they were intended. If we make up our minds to train our ears to be efficient instruments we can do so: a little patience, a little practice, and we shall surely regain the power that we had allowed to lapse.
The exercises we use in order to sharpen our ear-perceptionsand to make them serve us may be termed ‘ear-training exercises.’ This term may not satisfy those who delight in hair-splitting definitions; they may say, “We cannot train our ears, but we can train our capacities for using them”; but the term is sufficiently accurate to designate what we mean it to designate.
How are ear-training exercises performed? There are several varieties. The simplest of all is this: the teacher articulates various sounds, either singly or in combination with others; we listen to these sounds and make unconscious efforts to reproduce them by saying them to ourselves. This is the most passive and most natural form of ear-training; we did it years ago when lying in our cradles listening to the sounds made by the people around us. If the teacher systematizes his work, so much the easier will it be for us who are training our ears.
We must then seek to recognize or identify certain sounds and to distinguish them from others. The teacher may write (in conventional phonetic symbols) a series of sounds on the blackboard and append to each a conventional number. He will articulate a sound and ask us to give him the number pertaining to it, or we may go up to the blackboard and point to the sound we think we have heard, or he may give us ‘phonetic dictation,’ in which case he will articulate sounds which we must write down by means of these conventional phonetic symbols. This latter process has the advantage that it can subsequently be extended to the dictation of syllables or words.[1]
Other forms of ear-training exercises may be devised by those who are engaged in carrying out such work, care being taken that such exercises do really train theearsand not our capacities for successful guessing.
If you wish to know to what extent such exercises do have the desired effect, go through a short course of ear-training on these lines and you will yourself be a witness to their efficacy.
Ear-training is not confined to isolated sounds and simple combinations of sounds; it also includes the exercise of our capacities for perceiving or retaining long strings of syllables such as sentences. We are able to do this in the case of our mother-tongue, and there is no reason why we should not soon become fairly proficient in doing it in the case of a foreign language.
The next thing in importance is to learn how to articulate foreign sounds, singly, in simple combinations, or in long strings of syllables. We must train our mouth and our vocal organs generally; in some cases we must develop certain muscles in order that they may do easily and rapidly what is required of them. We have learnt to do this in the case of our mother-tongue, and we can learn to do the same for sounds which are so far unknown to us. It is never too late in life to develop a muscle in order that it may perform the small amount of work which will be required of it. We must go through a course of mouth-gymnastics; if we are disinclined to do so it means that we are disinclined to take the trouble to tap our natural language-learning resources.
What are articulation exercises? Like ear-training exercises, they exist in many varieties. We begin by practising on known sounds. We take simple sounds and learn to prolong them for a few seconds or to utter them rapidly, and we practise them in new and unfamiliarcombinations. We are shown how to convert voiced into voiceless sounds andvice versa; we are taught how to produce sounds which are intermediate between two known sounds; we are shown how to convert known sounds into their nasal, lip-rounded, or palatalized forms, etc. We are trained to imitate strange noises of all sorts, and the phonetician is ready to show us how to make them. Our ear-training exercises will be of assistance to us, for it is easier to articulate sounds that we recognize than sounds which have so far been unfamiliar to our ears.
At a more advanced stage, articulation exercises gradually become merged into ‘fluency exercises.’ When we are asked to articulate a given string of syllables so many times in so many seconds we are learning to become fluent, to connect sound with sound and syllable with syllable without ugly gaps and awkward hesitations.
While ear-training and articulation exercises are being carried on the student should be encouraged to develop his powers of mimicry; after having heard on many different occasions words or strings of words uttered by the teacher he should strive to become at least as proficient as parrots and phonograph records in reproducing them spontaneously. The termimitationis not adequate to express the process by which he should work; what we require is absolutemimicry. Sounds, with all that appertains to them—pitch, timbre, length, abruptness, drawl, distinctness, and any other qualities and attributes possessed by them—should be mimicked faithfully and accurately; little or no distinction should be made by the learner between the characteristic pronunciation of the language he is learning and the personal pronunciation of his teacher. The teacher, indeed, should say to the student, “Don’t be content with a mere reproductionof what you imagine to be my standard of pronunciation; go further and mimicme.”
Ear-training, articulation, and mimicry exercises will carry us a long way towards our aim; when fairly proficient in these, we shall find little difficulty inreproducing at first hearing a sentence which has been articulated to us. This is one of our most important aims; once able to do this, we are able to avail ourselves immediately of one of the most valuable channels for acquiring the foreign language; we are able to assimilate foreign sentences by ear; every sentence repeated in our hearing will have its due effect in furthering our knowledge of the language and our capacity for using it.
Anyone who is unable to repeat with tolerable accuracy any sentence he has just heard is certainly unable to assimilate the foreign language by spontaneous methods. He may seek to compensate this inability by methods involving the imagery of the written word, but these methods will be unnatural ones and will inhibit the development of the spontaneous powers. Anyone who experiences a difficulty in repeating a foreign sentence which he has just heard will be severely handicapped in his subsequent work, for he will be paying attention to his hearing and articulation when he should be devoting his attention to other things. Indeed, we would go so far as to say that the power of correctly reproducing a string of syllables just heard is one of the essential things we must possess in order to make any real progress in the acquisition of the spoken language.
It is this power which enables us to memorize on a wide scale sentences and similar strings of words. Whether we like it or not, whether the prospect is encouraging or not, it is quite certain that an easy command of the spoken (and even of the written) language can only begained by acquiring the absolute mastery of thousands of combinations, regular and irregular. We shall see later that certain forms of synthetic work exist which will enable us to form correctly an almost unlimited number of foreign sentences; we shall see that the utilizing of these studial forms of work will carry us very far on our way to acquire the language; but, ingenious and sound though they may be, they will not replace the cruder and more primitive process of memorizing integrally a vast number of word-groups.
Now this task cannot be accomplished by means of intensive and laborious repetition work; it cannot be accomplished by the traditional methods of memorizing; book-work and perseverance will never lead us to the goal of our memorizing ambitions. As we shall see later, in the early stages a certain amount of deliberate and conscious memorizing must be done; we shall insist on the daily repetition of a certain number of useful compounds, but sooner or later we shall come to a stage in which memory-work must be carried out on a far larger scale and in a far more spontaneous manner. We must train ourselves to become spontaneous memorizers, and this can only be done in one way: we must acquire the capacity for retaining a chance phrase or compound which has fallen upon our ears in the course of a conversation or speech. It is in this way that we have acquired those thousands of phrases and combinations which make up the bulk of our daily speech in our own language. We have acquired the capacity of noting and retaining any new combinations of English words which we may chance to hear; we do this unconsciously, and are not aware of doing so; we rarely or never invent new types of compounds, but simply reproduce at appropriate moments those types of compounds whichwe have happened to hear used by those speaking in our presence. This is one of the habits we acquired in our infancy; this is one of the habits we must revive now and use for the foreign language we are studying. So long as we have not acquired this habit our progress will be slow—too slow for the purpose we have in view.
At a later stage of our study, it is true, we may make such acquisitions byreadinginstead oflistening, but this will only be after we have become proficient in reproducing what wehear. We may be inclined to think that we assimilate new linguistic material by the eye alone, but this is not the case; the eye alone cannot assimilate. It may be taken as proved to-day that all normal people ‘inner-articulate’ all that they read, that we are indeed incapable of understanding what we read unless a process of ‘inner-articulating’ is going on at the same time. We need not stop at present to inquire exactly what is the psychological definition and explanation of this inner-articulating; we may content ourselves for the moment by defining this process as a sort of ‘mental repetition.’[2]It is well known that deaf-mute children who have been taught to read and to write never acquire the power of writing their ‘native language’ as normally used; they produce an artificial variety which reads as if it were written by a foreigner. Nor is this to be wondered at; it is perfectly in accordance with what might be expected; deaf-mutes cannot articulate, either aloud or mentally; they are therefore compelled to learn by studial methods, and they acquire language as slowly and as painfully as anyone acquires a foreign language by mere studial methods.
To learn to repeat mentally exactly what we hear, neither more nor less, without the intervention of any other elements than those of hearing and articulating, is, then, one of the things we must do if we wish to avail ourselves of the help which nature is ready to afford us.
Another of the spontaneous capacities with which we are endowed is that of understanding the gist of what we hear without any intervention of analysis or synthesis. Some people seem never to have lost this power. It suffices that they should have a certain number of opportunities of listening to the language being used for them to be able to gather the general sense of what they hear. Others do not appear to possess this ‘gift’; they cannot understand anything they have not analysed and reduced to its component units. In reality, if they would refrain from so analysing what they hear (or even read) they would soon find themselves able to do as well in this respect as the ‘gifted.’ We therefore suggest that a programme of this sort should include a certain number of exercises designed expressly to develop this power of direct understanding.
What sort of exercises should these be? They are many and varied. The essential feature should be the rigid exclusion of all opportunities for reasoning, calculation, analysis, or synthesis. The pupil must not be allowed to focus his consciousness on the structure of the language; he must keep his attention on the subject-matter. The natural law in this respect would seem to be that we shall come to understand what we hear provided that we fix our minds not on the actual words used but on the circumstances which result in the words in question. Interest must be present. If you are not interested directly or indirectly in what you hear, you may listen and listen for months or even years without understanding what you hear. If, on the other hand, things are said in your presence concerning matters which affect even distantly your welfare or which are connected with your interests or surroundings, you will have a tendency to grasp the meaning of what is said. We must endeavour to devise a series of exercises which fulfil these conditions; we must design forms of work in which the student’s attention shall be directed towards the subject-matter and away from the form in which it is expressed. Gradation, however, must be observed if we wish to obtain fairly rapid results, we must first work with a comparatively limited vocabulary, we must use an abundance of gesture, we must avail ourselves of everything likely to further our aim. In so doing, however, we must avoid the other extreme; if we are too careful in our choice of words, if we speak too slowly and over-emphasize our speech, the process of understanding will be too conscious; we shall be fostering habits of conscious study and of focused attention, things which are very good in their way, but which are not calculated to further the particular end we have at present in view.
The most natural form of work, indeed the first form of work which suggests itself to us, consists in talking to our pupils, talking to them naturally and fluently, talking to them about anything which may conceivably be of interest to them. We may show them the different parts of the room in which the lessons are given, the furniture, objects on the table or in our pockets, and while showing them we name them and speak about them. We may perform all sorts of actions and say what we are doing; we may describe the position of the various objects, their qualities and attributes; we may show pictures and describe them. These elementary talks will gradually develop; we may pass by easier stages from the concreteto the abstract; in the end we shall be relating (and even reading) simple stories, and our listeners will come to follow our thoughts and understand what we are saying, even as we understood the simple stories for which we clamoured in our nursery days.
Another form of work, called ‘imperative drill,’ consists in giving orders in the foreign language to the pupils to perform certain actions (stand up, sit down, take your book, open it, shut it, etc.). In the initial stage such orders will be accompanied by the necessary gestures; the students will not be slow to grasp what is required of them, and in a very short time they will respond automatically to the stimulus provided by the foreign imperative sentence.
Another form of exercise designed to cultivate the capacity of immediate comprehension is that in which we require our pupils to answer yes or no (ouiornon,jaornein, etc.) to hundreds of questions which we ask them, (Is this your book? Is the sky blue? Am I speaking to you? Are we in France? etc., etc.)
Certain other simple forms of systematicquestionnaireexercises will further develop the natural powers of comprehension, of associating the word with the thought. A type of exercise called ‘action-drill’ will have the same effect if carried out as a means to the particular end we have in view.
These then are the chief things to be done once we have decided to enlist on our behalf the universal and natural powers of language-using, and these are some of the various ways in which we may achieve our aim. All of them are possible and all of them can be carried out in actual practice by any teacher who has a sufficient command of the foreign language (and if he has not, we can hardly call him a competent teacher). Nothing hasbeen suggested here which has not already been successfully carried out by those whose business it is to ascertain experimentally how languages are actually learned.
The initial stages of the language-course will be very largely characterized by these forms of work, in order that the student may be thoroughly prepared and mentally equipped for the later stages.
Language-learning, like all other arts as contrasted with sciences, is a habit-forming process. Proficiency in the understanding of the structure of a language is attained by treating the subject as ascience, by studying thetheory; but proficiency in theuseof a language can only come as a result of perfectly formed habits. No foreign word, form, or combination of these is ‘known’ or ‘mastered’ until we can use it automatically, until we can attach it to its meaning without conscious analysis, until we can produce it without hesitation and conscious synthesis. We hear a foreign sentence as pronounced at a normal speed by a native speaker. If we understand this sentence as soon as it falls from his lips, if we understand it without being conscious of its form or without even realizing that we are listening to a foreign language, we ‘possess’ that sentence, it forms part of the material which we have gained as the result of a habit; our understanding of it is ‘automatic.’ If, on the other hand, we ask the speaker to repeat it or to say it more slowly, if we claim a moment of reflection in order to realize the parts of which it is composed, if we subject it to a rapid analysis or to a rapid translation, we do not possess the sentence; it has not become automatic.
We wish to speak; if the foreign sentence springs to ourlips as soon as we have formulated the thought, if we are unconscious of the words or the form of the words contained in it, if we are unaware of the manner in which we have pieced it together, it is certain that we have produced it automatically, we have produced it as the result of a perfectly formed habit. If, on the other hand, we prepare the sentence in advance; if, as we utter it, we consciously choose the words or the form of the words contained in it; if we build it up by conscious synthesis or by a rapid translation from an equivalent sentence of our native tongue, we do not produce it automatically; we have not formed the habit of using the sentence or the type of sentence to which it belongs; we are producing it by means of conscious calculation.
Adult students in general dislike forming new habits and avoid such work as far as possible; they seek to replace it by forms of study requiring discrimination and other processes of the intellect. One reason for this is that habit-forming often entails monotonous work, whereas the other types of work are more or less interesting; another reason is that the forming of a habit seems a slow process; so many repetitions are required and progress is not at once apparent, whereas the other form of work has all the appearance of rapidity. We know, however, that in reality what we have learnt as the result of a habit is not only immediately available at all times, but is also a permanent acquisition, and that what we have learnt by the aid of theory alone is neither immediately available nor permanent. Let us take an example to illustrate our point.
We wish to learn when and how to use each of the German cases. The theory of the declension provides us with all the necessary rules and exceptions. Oneset of prepositions requires the accusative, another the dative, another the genitive, another accusative or dative according to certain semantic considerations. This rule can be mastered without any great difficulty; within the space of a few hours the necessary formulæ may be committed to memory, and the student imagines that the problem is solved for all time. “Whenever I want to know what case to use,” he thinks, “I shall only have to remember to which category the preposition belongs and I shall know what case is required.” In reality his knowledge of the theory,i.e.his memory of the categories, will soon become blurred and will tend to fade away; and even if he does succeed in retaining this fresh in his memory, he will always require a second or two of conscious reflection before he is able to hit on the right case. He will be using consciousness where unconsciousness would serve him better; if (as is probable) he has learnt to determine gender by a similar process, his conscious attention will have to be devoted to this as well, he will be focusing his attention on the language-material, which will prevent him from focusing it on the things he wishes to say. Deciding to use these ‘short cuts’ he will therefore assume for his whole lifetime the burden of continual conscious effort.
Now, instead of learning and applying theory he might memorize a hundred or so real living sentences, each exemplifying one of the results of the theory. By doing so he would acquire a hundred or so new habits or automatic actions. He recoils before the task; the perfect memorizing of a simple sentence is so distasteful to him; it seems to take so long; he fails to realize the permanent advantages which he might obtain by doing it; he chooses what seems the easier path, the short cut.
It is here that we see the value of spontaneous assimilation. If the student has trained his capacities of retaining unconsciously what he may happen to hear (or read), he will memorize without effort, and without the expenditure of any appreciable amount of nervous energy.
The same considerations apply to the learning of the French conjugation, English pronunciation, Hungarian vocalic harmony, Welsh mutation, or to the overcoming of the other obstacles in the path of progress towards perfect attainment.
The fear of monotonous and tedious memorizing work, and the realization of the length of time necessary for each act of memorizing, induce the student to invent pretexts for avoiding such work. He declares that ‘parrot-work’ is not education, that modern educationalists condemn ‘learning by rote,’ that the age of blind repetition is over and that the age of intelligent understanding has taken its place. He will talk of the method of discovery, the factor of interest, and will even quote to us ‘the laws of nature’ in defence of his thesis. But we know that in reality these are but so many excuses for his disinclination to form those habits which can secure him the automatism which alone will result in sound and permanent progress.
This fear of tediousness is not really justified at all, for mechanical work is not necessarily monotonous. Automatism, it is true, is acquired by repetition, but this repetition need not be of the parrot-like type. Repetition, in the sense ascribed to it by the psychologist, simply means having many separate occasions to hear, to see, to utter, or to write a given word or sentence. The object of most of the language-teaching exercises, drills, and devices invented or developed in recent yearsis precisely to ensure proper repetition in attractive and interesting ways.
Nearly all the time spent by the teacher in explaining why such and such a form is used and why a certain sentence is constructed in a certain way is time lost, for such explanations merely appease curiosity; they do not help us to form new habits, they do not develop automatism. Those who have learnt to use the foreign language and who do use it successfully have long since forgotten the why and the wherefore; they can no longer quote to you the theory which was supposed to have procured them their command of the language.
When teaching the French wordchauve-sourisit is not necessary to point out that this is literally equivalent to ‘bald-mouse’; and if we tell our student thatça se comprendreally means ‘that understands itself,’ we are telling him something which is not true, and something that will cause him needless perplexity.Hauptstadtis the German equivalent of ‘capital’ (in the geographical sense), and we need not pander to morbid etymological habits by making an allusion to ‘head-town.’ Nothing is gained, but much is lost, if we tell the student that the French say ‘I am become’ instead of ‘I have become.’
It may be objected that habit-forming is aided by these explanations, that the knowledge of the why and the wherefore is a useful aid to the process of memorizing. There is something to be said for this statement; we are ready to admit that in some instances it is good to point out the nature of the laws that stand behind the sentences which exemplify them; we shall even show later in what cases and for what reasons we counsel the giving of explanations. But we are entirely at issue with those who maintain that explanations are an indispensable concomitant of memorizing, and we give aflat contradiction to those who maintain that “they cannot memorize what they don’t understand.” The most successful linguists have attained their proficiency by memorizing sentences they could not analyse. The temptation to replace habit-forming by analysis and synthesis is so strong that the teacher must continually react against it.
As we have already seen, instead of acquiring the habit of using the French soundéthe English student persists in replacing it by some form of the Englishay; conversely, the French student of English tends to replace the Englishayby the Frenché. Most of these acts of substitution are illegitimate; Frencheuis a very poor substitute for Englishuinbut, the English wordairis a mere caricature of the French wordair; of the six sounds contained in the wordthoroughly[θʌrəli], only two, [ə] and [l], are in any way equivalent to French sounds. About half of the forty-six sounds (or rather ‘phones’) contained in the English phonetic system have no equivalent in French, and about the same proportion of the thirty-seven French sounds are absent from English. Yet most French users of English and most English users of French endeavour respectively to speak the foreign language with no other sounds than their native sounds. The French system of stress and intonation is entirely different from the English system, but most English students will use their native system when speaking French. The average English student replaces French habits of sentence-building by his previously acquired English habits, and also attributes to French words or word-compounds the meanings (or connotations) possessed by what he imagines to be their English equivalents.
In many cases he is undoubtedly justified; his effortsare not all misplaced; some foreign soundsareactually identical with some native sounds, some foreign constructionsareactually parallel with some native constructions, and some foreign words and expressionsdopossess an exact counterpart in the native language. But the trouble is that the student fails to realize in what cases these identities exist; untrained in observation and discrimination, he considers as equivalents things which are not, and fails to identify as equivalents things which are. Frenchainpatteis frequently not far removed from a perfectly English variety ofuincut, but the average Frenchman pronouncescutwith the French voweleuinveuve, and the average Englishman pronouncespatteeither with the vowel ofpator ofpart. The last syllable ofpleasureis practically identical with the French wordje, but the average Frenchman does not know this, and substitutes some sort of Frenchureoreure. The French wordssouhaite,semelle,laine,dialecteare very similar to the (real or imaginary) English wordssweat,smell,len,d’yullect, but the average English student does not know this, and uses pronunciations such assoohate,semell,lane,dee-ah-lectinstead.
In these and all parallel cases the student is utilizing certain of his previously acquired habits, but unfortunately he has selected the wrong ones instead of the right ones; it is for the skilful language-teacher to ascertain which of the student’s known habits can be most nearly adapted to what is required.
The same thing holds good in the case of construction, choice of words, etc. The English student constructs the sentenceJe marcherai à la gareon the wrong model; if he must use an English habit at all, he should in this case proceed fromI shall go on foot to the stationand not fromI shall walk to the station. Some may inquire at this point, “Why drag in English at all? Why not think in the foreign language without reference to the mother-tongue?” We would reply that this is hardly relevant to the matter under immediate consideration; we are simply showing that the average student, if left to himself, will tend not only to utilize his native linguistic habits, but to select very unsuitable ones. We would, however, add that cases do undoubtedly exist in which the student would be well advised to enlist some of his previously acquired habits; a judiciously selected native form will produce better results than a badly constructed foreign form.[3]
Let us be quite sure we understand what we mean by the term ‘accuracy.’ There is, of course, no such thing as intrinsic or unconditioned accuracy; the term is a relative and not an absolute one; this word, and its synonyms ‘correctness,’ ‘rightness,’ and the adjectives ‘accurate,’ ‘correct,’ ‘right,’ ‘good,’ ‘proper,’ etc., all implyconformity with a given standard or model. If the dialect we are learning is an unclassical one, differing appreciably from the literary form, then accuracy will consist, among other things, in not using the literary or traditionally correct forms. Therefore, if we are learning colloquial French we shall be guilty of inaccuracies every time we usecelainstead ofçaand every time we use thepassé défini(or whatever the present name of this tense may be) or theimparfait du subjonctif. Whether the French Academician approves of the colloquial forms does not concern us from the moment that we have set out to learn the colloquial forms.Du bon pain,c’est pas ça,i’ m’a dit que’qu’chosemay or may not be typical of educated speech, but if, for reasons of our own, we have decided to acquire the type of speech exemplified, thende bon pain,ce n’est pas cela,il m’a dit quelque chosewill be inaccurate as not being in conformity with the standard we have chosen.
Who do you give it to?What have you got?It’s me,Under the circumstances, etc., etc., may or may not represent an atrocious English dialect; but we may decide to teach this dialect to our foreign students, if only because this is the dialect most often used by the average educated speaker. Once we have made this decision we shall consider as inaccuracies such forms asTo whom did you give it?What have you?It is I,In the circumstances.
When, therefore, we use the termsinaccuracy,mistake,fault,wrong form,error, etc., we shall always meansomething not in conformity with the type of speech chosen as a convenient standard.
One of the duties of the language-teacher and method-writer is to react against the tendency of the student towards inaccuracy. We shall generally find two types of inaccuracy: (a) that which consists in using the wrong dialect (literary instead of colloquial, orvice versa), and (b) that which consists in using pidgin. Pidgin or pidgin-speech may be defined as that variety of a language which is used exclusively by foreigners.[4]Some kinds of pidgin (e.g.pidgin-English of the China ports, the Chinook jargon of British Columbia) have become so standardized that they may almost be considered as normal languages; many people deliberately set out to learn such pidgin-languages, and we may conceive of the possibility of these possessing sub-pidgin forms.
In connexion with the first type of inaccuracy (wrong dialect), we should here note that the uneducated native tends to make too extensive a use of the popular dialect, whereas the tendency of the student to whom the language is foreign is the contrary one: he makes too extensive a use of the classical or traditionally correctform. The uneducated native will tend to use the colloquial form when writing; the foreigner will tend to use the literary when speaking. In both cases it is part of the functions of the teacher to react against these tendencies: to the schoolchild he will say, “Don’t use a preposition to finish a sentence with!”; to the foreign speaker he will give the contrary advice.
Having defined the termsaccuracyandinaccuracy, let us now see to how many branches of language-study these terms (and their synonyms) may be applied.
(a) There may be accuracy or inaccuracy insounds. The student must be taught, by means of appropriate drills and exercises, to make and to use the sounds of the language he is studying; if he uses an English sound in place of a French one, or if he uses a right French sound in the wrong place, he will be doing inaccurate work. Ear-training and articulation exercises (as described in ChapterVII) will tend to make him accurate in this respect.
(b) There may be accuracy or inaccuracy in the use ofstressandintonation. To use one language with the stress and intonation system of another results in a form of pidgin. The student must be taught, by means of appropriate drills and exercises, to observe and to imitate the system used by the natives.
(c) There may be accuracy or inaccuracy in fluency. Most languages are spoken at the rate of five syllables per second. Nothing is to be gained by speaking at a slower rate; indeed, it will often be found that rapid speech is easier of acquisition than slow speech. Correct fluency includes correct assimilation or absence of assimilation, and the requisite degree of smoothness or grace of utterance; we may often note the harsh and halting effect of the speech of foreigners who whenspeaking their native tongue are masters of the art of elocution. By means of appropriate exercises, the student can be made to observe accuracy in fluency.
(d) When the student uses the traditional spelling of the language he should be encouraged to avoid orthographic inaccuracy. Generally, however, few mistakes of this sort are made, and these tend to be eliminated more or less spontaneously. If this is not the case, appropriate exercises may be devised in order to ensure accuracy in this respect. Let us note here, with all the emphasis which is due to such an important point, that the exclusive use of a phonetic script in the early stages generally leads to a greater accuracy in the traditional spelling which is learnt subsequently. We make no attempt here to furnish an explanation of why and how this is so, but leave it to psychologists to investigate the subject and to ascertain the causes of what may seem paradoxical and even incredible to those who have not had sufficient teaching experience.
(e) There may be accuracy or inaccuracy incombining words; the laws of sentence-building are not the same for all languages, and the student must be trained to observe the right laws; he must be taught to be accurate in concord, in compounding, and in word-order. Some of the most interesting methods and devices are designed specifically to react against inaccurate tendencies in this respect. It is as easy and as natural to sayla table(and notle table) as it is to saylatitude(and notletitude); it is as easy to learnje ne le lui ai pas donnéas any of the inaccurate examples of word-order by which the average English student tends to replace it.
(f) There may be accuracy or inaccuracy in the use ofinflexions. It is as important to learn the right inflected forms of a word as to learn the uninflected word. If ourmethods are right, it is as easy to learn the wordenverraias it is to learn the wordenvoyer, and far easier to learnenverraithanenvoyerai. The habit of using the right inflexions is one that must be acquired at as early a stage as possible and as unconsciously as possible. Many methods and devices exist which have been designed to combat inaccuracy in this respect.
(g) There may be accuracy or inaccuracy inmeanings. The meaning of a word may vary considerably according to its context.Openin the sense ofopen the doorhas not the same meaning asopenin the sense ofopen the box. Most English words have two or more meanings; the foreign words which are assumed to be their equivalents may also have two or more meanings, but the foreign word does not necessarily have all the meanings of the English word, andvice versa. The branch of linguistics which deals with meanings, synonyms, translations, definitions, etc., is called ‘semantics’; special forms of work have been devised to ensure semantic accuracy on the part of the student.
The principle of accuracy may be expressed as follows:Do not allow the student to have opportunities for inaccurate work until he has arrived at the stage at which accurate work is to be reasonably expected.
If we force him to speak French before he has been sufficiently drilled in French sounds, we are forcing him to pronounce inaccurately. If we tell him to do French composition before he has acquired the necessary habits of inflexion, compounding, and sentence-building, we are inviting him to do inaccurate work. If we compel him to talk to us in French before he has become proficient in conversion and similar drills, we are virtually compelling him to speak pidgin-French and, incidentally, to form the habit of doing so. In opposition to the principle ofaccuracy, we are frequently told that “It is only by making mistakes that we learn not to make them,” and that “Only by going into the water can we learn to swim.” These are cheap proverbs, and we may as easily coin others such as: “It is by making mistakes that we form the habit of making them”; or, “He who has not learnt to swim will drown when thrown into deep water.”
The method oftrial and error, to which we have already alluded, is in direct opposition to the principles of accuracy; it is the method of sink-or-swim, of die-or-survive, of flounder-and-grope-until-you-hit-on-the-right-way. To replace this method by something less cruel is the function of such things as guides, teachers, and pedagogic devices. For let us remark that the environment of the young child who acquires language spontaneously, as explained in ChapterI, is such that error has little or no chance of surviving; the persons with whom he is in contact are providing him continually with accurate models of whatever the dialect may happen to be; he is given no chance of imitating wrong models, and he is not intelligent enough to create them himself in any appreciable degree. Furthermore, the young child as a matter of fact does not begin to use language until he is fairly proficient in the important speech-habits; he rarely or never uses a form of speech until he has memorized it by hearing it used by others.
One of the most important advances in the art of language-teaching will have been made when the principle of accuracy is understood, accepted, and adopted by all who are engaged in this work either as teachers or as trainers of teachers.
We have seen, then, that there are seven branches of language-study in which accuracy (or inaccuracy) may be developed. In connexion with each of these there existmethods, exercises, and devices designed to inculcate right habits and to prevent the formation of wrong ones. There exist also sciences upon which most of these are based. The methods dealing with sounds, stress, intonation, and fluency are based on the data furnished by phonetics, and without a knowledge of this science the teacher is unlikely to secure accuracy in these branches. The (so far empirical) science of grammar is the basis of those methods and exercises calculated to ensure accuracy in inflexions and sentence-building. Orthography (possibly a science, though this is doubtful) is the basis of spelling work, and the new (and so far empirical) science of semantics will furnish the necessary data for all methods, exercises, and devices concerned with meanings.
In addition to these specific sciences, methods, exercises, and devices, there are general forms of method of the strategical order, the effect of which is to ensure general accuracy. As these are practically identical with gradation, we reserve their consideration for the next chapter.
Gradation means passing from the known to the unknown by easy stages, each of which serves as a preparation for the next.If a student who is willing to learn and is capable of learning finds his lessons too difficult, if he fails to understand or to apply correctly the explanations we give him, if his rate of progress is too slow, if he forgets frequently what he has already learnt, and if his oral or written work is characterized by an excessive degree of inaccuracy, it is perfectly certain that his course and his lessons are badly graded.
The student’s progress may in the initial stage be slow; after ten or twenty lessons he may not seem to have advanced very far; but if he has been laying a good foundation he has been doing good work, for it will mean that the next stage of his work will be accomplished more easily and more rapidly. During the first lessons he is not so much learning the language as learning how to learn it. During the second period his progress will be more rapid and he will assimilate more of the actual language-material, and he will then be learning in such a way that the third stage will be still more rapid, and so on through the subsequent stages; his rate of progress will increase in proportion as he advances.
In the ideal course, this principle will be observed in the fullest possible measure; the course itself will bedivided into appropriate stages, each of which will be marked by an increased capacity on the part of the student for assimilating and using language-material.
The vocabulary in a well-graded language-course will be arranged in such a manner that the more useful words will be learnt before the less useful. (Let us remember that there are two sorts of ‘useful words’: those which areuseful in themselveson account of their intrinsic meaning, and words which areuseful as sentence-formers.) The rate of progress on the part of the student will depend very largely on the manner in which the vocabulary is graded. Twenty-five well-chosen words will form more useful sentences than many people believe; with five hundred well-chosen words an incredibly large number of valuable sentences can be formed. For detailed information on this point we would refer the reader to the statistics which have been compiled by those who have made a special study of this particular subject. In the ideally graded course the student first assimilates a relatively small but exceedingly important vocabulary; he learns to use it, he learns the more important peculiarities of each word, he learns how to combine these words in sentences, he learns the exact range of meanings covered by each word either singly or in combination with its fellows. This small vocabulary then constitutes a sound nucleus, and this nucleus is of twofold utility; it not only provides the student with useful words, with language-material which he can actually use, but it serves at the same time as a sort of centre of attraction for new language-material. The most apt illustration of this form of gradation is the snowball, the huge mass of snow which accumulates rapidly and easily once we have provided the nucleus represented by the first compact and well-rounded handful.
The grammatical material must also be graded. Certain moods and tenses are more useful than others; let us therefore concentrate on the useful ones first. In a language possessing a number of cases, we will not learn off the whole set of prepositions, their uses and requirements, but we will select them in accordance with their degree of importance. As for lists of rules and exceptions, if we learn them at all we will learn them in strict order of necessity. In most languages we shall probably find certain fundamental laws of grammar and syntax upon which the whole structure of the language depends; if our course is to comprise the conscious study of the mechanism of a given language, then, in accordance with the principle of gradation, let us first learn these essentials and leave the details to a later stage.
Gradation can and must also be observed in the study of the semantic aspect of a language. If a given word has several meanings, let us first associate the word with its more usual or useful meanings. If a foreigner is to learn the English verbto afford, let him begin by using it in such sentences asI can’t afford it, and not in such examples asIt affords me the necessary opportunity. If we are teaching French, let us first usecielin the sense ofskyand leave the idea ofheavento a later stage.I may gohas more than one meaning, but let us first teach it in the sense ofPerhaps I shall go; the other varieties are not of pressing importance. When we introducebut, let us associate it with its usual meaning and forget for the moment that semantic variety which is equivalent toexcept.
It is not sufficient for us to adopt the general principle of gradation; we must adopt the right sort of gradation; for we can easily imagine all sorts of false grading. We can imagine a teacher refusing, on the score of gradation,to teach irregular forms before regular ones, and justifying his procedure by the assertion that the regular is easy and the irregular difficult. This kind of gradation, however, is obviously unsound, seeing that some of the most useful words in most languages are very irregular. As a matter of fact, in a sound course of study based on the principle of automatism the irregular forms are learnt as easily as (and sometimes more easily than) regular forms.
We can also imagine some teachers maintaining (on grounds of gradation) that thewordshould be treated before thesentence. They would say that it is easier to assimilate a word than a sentence, that what is easier should come first. Others might say, “Teach easy words first and difficult ones later.” But this cannot be right, for if we observed this rule we should teach a Spaniard or a Frenchman the English verbto comprehendbefore the verbto understand. Gradation does not necessarily imply passing from the easy to the difficult, but it always does imply passing from the more important, useful, or fundamental to the less important, useful, or fundamental. Now, whatever the true unit of speech may be, our leading semanticians and speech-psychologists are all agreed that this unit is rarely the word, but generally the word-group or sentence. Consequently, to start from the word is not only bad gradation but bad semantics.
We have heard it asserted on grounds of gradation that thewrittenform of a language should be studied before itsspokenform. Here again we find the same misinterpretation of the term gradation and the same fallacy of ‘facility.’ If relative facility is to be the basis of gradation, then we should teach the geography of Portugal before teaching the geography of the British Empire, and we should postpone our study of chess until we havebecome expert in the easier game of noughts and crosses. To learn how to read and to write a language may possibly be easier than to learn how to speak it and to understand it when spoken, but this has no bearing on the subject of gradation.
Another false interpretation of the principle is to assume that the student will begin by using incorrect or pidgin-French (or whatever the language may be) and will gradually become more perfect ‘with practice’ as he goes on. Now if this is gradation, it is a particularly vicious form, and in flat contradiction to the principles of habit-forming and accuracy.
To teach to adults ‘child-like words’ before the words used by adults is another misinterpretation of gradation. We do indeed see classes in which boys or girls of twelve or thirteen learn to recite foreign nursery rhymes, but we doubt whether any teacher would seriously maintain that words such asdogorsheepshould be preceded bybow-woworbaa-baa.
Having examined some faulty and vicious manners of interpreting the term gradation, let us now proceed to epitomize a few rational applications of the principle we have set forth, and let us assure the reader that each one of these has been proved to be psychologically sound.
(a)Ears before Eyes.—All fresh language-material should be presented in its oral form and not in its written form. Sounds should first be practised without any reference to any graphic forms of representation; the ear, not the eye, is the organ provided by nature for recognizing and assimilating sounds. Words should first be heard and imitated orally, for ideal assimilation is not helped but hindered when the written form is present.
Fresh word-groups and sentences should also as far aspossible be first introduced and learnt orally. The adult student who complains that the process is too difficult is under the illusion that we hear with our eyes.
(b)Reception before Production.—It is quite certain that the student will be unable to reproduce a sound, a word, or a word-group that has been pronounced to him until he has reallyheardthe model that he is called upon to imitate. There is a great difference between really hearing and merely imagining that one has heard a sound or a succession of sounds. As a rule we do not hear what is actually said to us; we merely hear what we expect to hear. Ask the average foreigner to repeat after you a word such asund’stand; instead of reproducing the exaggeratedly shortened form as represented above in two syllables, he will sayunderstandin three syllables. As a matter of fact, he is under the impression that he heard you articulate the three syllables, and consequently he reproduces what he thought you said. Ask the average foreigner to repeat after you the wordturnpronounced in Southern English (i.e.without anr) and he will insert anrbecause he imagines that he heard one. The sentenceil doit veniris pronounced by the average Frenchman as [idwavniːr]; pronounce it like that to the average English student of French and ask him to imitate you; in most cases you will obtain what the student imagined he heard, viz. [il dwa vɛniə] (the last word having a remarkable resemblance to the English wordveneer).
The student must therefore not only be trained to hear, but in all fairness to him he should be given ample opportunity of hearing the sound, word, or word-group that he will be called upon to reproduce. Let him hear it several times, let him concentrate his attention on the succession of sounds without any regard to its writtenform or its meaning. Let us endeavour as far as possible to give the student two or even more separate opportunities (with appropriate intervals) of truly hearing any given sound, word, or word-group before calling upon him to imitate the model.
(c)Oral Repetition before Reading.—Just as oral repetition should be preceded by a period of audition, so should reading be preceded by oral repetition. Before calling upon a pupil to read off from the blackboard or his book a word, list of words, sentence, or succession of sentences, let us first ask him to repeat after us the required material. If he cannot reproduce to our satisfaction a sentence that he has just heard from our lips, he will certainly be unable to reproduce the sentence by the process of reading.
(d)Immediate Memory before Prolonged Memory.—The teacher pronounces a sound or a succession of sounds (a word, a word-group, or a sentence). A few seconds later the pupil reproduces what he has heard; he does not find it very difficult to do so, for the sound of the teacher’s voice is still ringing in his ears; in his imagination he can still hear the teacher’s voice, and he has but to speak in unison with it. The sort of memory which enables him to reproduce what he has just heard is calledimmediate memory.
Another time the teacher pronounces a sound or a succession of sounds. The next day the pupil is called upon (without being prompted) to reproduce what he heard the day before. He may fail altogether to do so, or he may succeed. That sort of memory which enables him to reproduce what he has heard one, several, or many days before is calledprolonged memory. Let us be quite certain that we understand the difference between these two extreme varieties of memory. Let us choose a word in a language unknown to us. Let this be the Hungarianwordszenvedni, meaningto suffer. The word is pronounced [´sɛnvɛdni]; in the absence of a teacher let us pronounce the word ourselves three or four times.... Let us take our eyes from the book, and let a few seconds pass.... How do you sayto sufferin Hungarian? [´sɛnvɛdni.] Quite correct; we have reproduced the word from immediate memory. To-morrow or the day after let us ask ourselves how they expressto sufferin Hungarian. If we are able to answer correctly without referring to the book, it will be by dint of ourprolonged memory. If this experiment is inconclusive, let us take a word-group, a sentence, or a list of words; we shall then realize how much more difficult it is to reproduce new matter after the sound of it has faded from our ears.
Let us remember this experiment when we are teaching; when our pupils reproduce correctly (either by repetition or by translation) what they have heard a few seconds (or even a few minutes) before, let us remember that we have so far only appealed to their immediate memory, and let us not expect an equally satisfactory result when we call upon them to reproduce the same matter the next day without prompting. To expect the same results from the prolonged as from the immediate memory implies a faulty grasp of the principle of gradation. Let us give our pupils ample opportunities, on an appropriate number of occasions, of reproducing matter heard a few moments previously; this will strengthen their associations and when later on we appeal to their prolonged memory, the results will be satisfactory.
(e)Chorus-work before Individual Work.—Before we call on an individual pupil to articulate a sound or a succession of sounds, let the work be done in chorus on two or more different occasions. For an individual to have to submit his tentative efforts to the criticism and perhapslaughter of his fellow-pupils is not conducive to good results. Let the individual pupils test their articulation in company with others, and when by so doing they have gained a certain mastery of what they have to repeat and have thereby gained a certain degree of confidence, let them proceed to reproduce singly what they have previously phonated together.
(f)Drill-work before Free Work.—This is perhaps the most important of the precepts to be observed in connexion with gradation. The forms of exercise to which the general termdrill-workmay be applied are many and varied. Some of them are calculated to train the student in perceiving and discriminating the sounds of which the language is composed; others are articulation exercises; there are also special forms of drill-work which aim at securing fluency and accuracy in producing successions of syllables. The question-and-answer method may be embodied in many interesting forms of drill-work; there exist also many varieties of action drill, conversion drill, translation drill, and grammar drill. All these forms are characterized by common attributes: they are all systematic, highly organized, and susceptible of infinite gradation; the work is methodical and proceeds steadily and continuously without breaks or interruptions. Most forms of drill-work have been composed and are carried out in such a way as to preclude the possibility of the student’s forming bad habits. Indeed, if the work is carried out as designed the element of error should be almost entirely excluded.