Title: The Principles of Language-Study
Author: Palmer, Harold E.
Language: English
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  THE PRINCIPLES OF
  LANGUAGE-STUDY

  BY

  HAROLD E. PALMER

  ASSISTANT IN THE PHONETICS DEPARTMENT UNIVERSITY COLLEGE LONDON
  LECTURER ON LINGUISTICS AT THE SCHOOL OF ORIENTAL STUDIES LONDON
  AUTHOR OF “THE SCIENTIFIC STUDY AND TEACHING OF LANGUAGES” “A
  FIRST COURSE OF ENGLISH PHONETICS” “100 SUBSTITUTION TABLES” ETC.

  YONKERS-ON-HUDSON, NEW YORK

  WORLD BOOK COMPANY

  1921



PRINTED BY NEILL AND CO LTD., EDINBURGH, GREAT BRITAIN



PRÉFACE DÉDICATOIRE

A MON VIEIL AMI LE COMMANDANT CHARLES LEMAIRE, ACTUELLEMENT DIRECTEUR
DE L’INSTITUT SUPÉRIEUR COLONIAL À ANVERS


  MON CHER COMMANDANT,

Vous souvenez-vous encore de la visite que je vous fis l’été dernier
aux Sources Fraîches, après les cinq années tragiques que nous avons
vécues?

Je m’en souviens encore comme si c’était hier. Vous étiez souffrant;
je vous ai trouvé étendu, accablé, affaibli, et je ressens encore la
peine profonde que j’éprouvai à cette minute précise où le contraste
s’imposait à mon esprit entre l’état dans lequel je vous avais quitté
en 1914 et celui dans lequel je vous retrouvais.

Mais cette impression première, dont je garderai toujours un souvenir
ému, fut brève. Vous me parliez de votre nouvel ouvrage, traitant de
l’enseignement rationnel, et développiez la conception qui en forme
la base. A mesure que vous avanciez, vous vous laissiez emporter par
votre sujet et, redressé, vous parliez avec l’ardeur et le feu que je
vous ai toujours connus, scandant vos phrases de gestes énergiques et
puissants. Je retrouvais en vous le soldat d’avant-garde enthousiaste
et fort, tout vibrant de foi et de conviction, que vous n’avez jamais
cessé d’être.

La nature, disiez-vous, est une source féconde d’enseignement et de
méthode; elle est la seule institutrice des noirs. Ceux-ci, dans
les matières se rapportant à la vie primitive--et dont une partie
correspond à celles que l’on enseigne aux blancs--sont, mieux que nous,
naturellement dans le vrai, dans le vrai expérimental. Longuement vous
développiez votre thèse, l’appuyant de nombreuses constatations de
faits récoltées pendant vos longues années d’observation en plein cœur
de l’Afrique.

Je vous ai écouté longuement et, en vous quittant, je me suis retrouvé
dans ce décor que vous avez choisi pour y concentrer votre attention
sur les problèmes auxquels vous avez voulu trouver une solution; je me
suis retrouvé dans cette Fagne immense et admirable, au milieu de ces
bruyères aux colorations chaudes, sur cette terre aux vastes horizons
frangés de sapinières, et, seul en face de la nature, de cette source
éternelle dont vous m’aviez parlé avec tant d’enthousiasme, j’entendais
vos dernières paroles résonner encore à mes oreilles....

       *       *       *       *       *

Le jour même j’écrivis le premier chapitre de ce livre. Vous y
retrouverez vos propres paroles et l’écho qu’elles ont éveillé en moi.

La nature doit-elle être notre guide? Oui, sans aucun doute. Doit-elle
être notre seul guide? Sans aucun doute encore, non. La nature
doit, disiez-vous, être notre inspiratrice; nous devons, grâce à
nos capacités acquises, appliquer les leçons qu’elle nous donne en
utilisant les forces qui sont inhérentes à l’être humain.

Comment passer du principe à son application? Dans quelle mesure
faut-il puiser à la source naturelle, faire agir l’intelligence humaine
et se servir de ses forces ‘subconscientes’?

C’était le point de départ du livre que voici....

       *       *       *       *       *

J’ai écrit, il y a quelques années, un livre, _The Scientific Study
and Teaching of Languages_, auquel j’avais donné la forme d’une étude
soulevant des questions nouvelles, sujettes à controverse et montrant
qu’en réalité la science de l’étude des langues n’existait pas et
qu’il était grand temps de rassembler les matériaux et les études
permettant de lui donner un point de départ sérieux. Ce livre traitait
de la nature du langage et du processus de l’acquisition des langues
ainsi que des divers types d’étudiants et de leurs buts respectifs;
il posait des principes et présentait un ‘programme-type idéal’ avec
des modèles de leçons et un catalogue complet des méthodes de travail;
il examinait longuement les programmes spéciaux, les fonctions du
professeur; il envisageait les problèmes au point de vue de l’élève et,
après cet ensemble d’études, il concluait par un appel à l’unité et à
la coopération de tous.

Cet appel n’est pas resté sans réponse, et je suis heureux d’exprimer
ici ma satisfaction pour les avis et les encouragements que m’a valus
mon travail. Il m’a gagné de nombreux amis et collaborateurs; il m’a
mis en contact avec des ‘samideani’ (s’il m’est permis de me servir
d’un des mots les plus connus des langues artificielles) et m’a ainsi
montré d’où pourra venir l’aide prochaine.

Je suis heureux du secours que ce livre a apporté à ceux qui en
sentaient le besoin, et c’est pour moi un précieux encouragement de
savoir qu’il en est beaucoup qui travaillent dans la voie qui vient
d’être ouverte.

Le livre que je présente aujourd’hui ne couvre pas le même champ que
le précédent. Ce n’est ni une étude, ni une série de problèmes avec
leurs solutions. C’est un exposé de faits, présumant que le lecteur
admet, comme je les ai admis moi-même, les principes fondamentaux du
langage et de l’étude des langues. Ce nouvel ouvrage se borne à exposer
les principes essentiels que sont tenus d’observer ceux qui veulent
enseigner--ou étudier--avec succès.

Il est vrai que dans _The Scientific Study and Teaching of Languages_
j’ai consacré soixante pages à l’examen de certains principes, mais
quelques années ont passé depuis que j’ai écrit ces lignes, et pas
mal de choses qui semblaient vagues à cette époque se sont précisées
et développées. Si je n’ai rien, ou peu de chose, à retrancher de ce
travail, j’ai par contre beaucoup à ajouter et à revoir.

J’ai voulu présenter la matière de mon nouvel ouvrage dans un ordre
plus rigoureux que celui de l’étude précédente, bien qu’en lui-même
le nouveau livre soit moins technique et que la terminologie en soit
moins spéciale. En réalité, le sujet traité, comme tous les sujets
d’ailleurs, se présente plus simplement après une période de réflexion
et d’incubation, et la forme actuelle a pour but précisément de
réaliser une présentation populaire.

Certains, j’en suis sûr, estimeront que mon ouvrage n’est pas assez
technique. Plusieurs amis m’ont suggéré avec insistance de présenter
le sujet au seul point de vue de la psychologie, d’autres de me servir
exclusivement de termes scientifiques. Mais je n’ai pas pu me rallier à
aucune de ces propositions parce que j’ai dû tenir compte de ce que mes
lecteurs ne sont pas tous versés dans “la terminologie psychologique.”

Au surplus, je sens que le sujet n’est pas mûr pour subir une analyse
détaillée envisagée sous l’angle de la psychologie pure. De plus
compétents que moi la tenteront peut-être quand le moment sera venu.
Pour l’instant, cette étude n’apporterait pas l’aide pratique et
immédiate que j’espère avoir réalisée dans les pages qui suivent,
et dont le besoin se fait sentir chez tous ceux qui s’occupent de
l’enseignement des langues.

       *       *       *       *       *

Je tiens à exprimer aussi ma reconnaissance à ceux qui m’ont aidé
dans la préparation de ce travail. La collaboration de M. Morris
Ginsberg (de University College, Londres) concernant “la formation
et l’adaptation des habitudes” a été si précieuse que je ne puis
m’empêcher de la souligner tout spécialement; j’espère qu’il approuvera
la présentation de ce sujet particulier. Les vues de M. H. Perera (de
University College, Londres) sur la “parole intérieure” m’ont également
été fort utiles. Je dois des remerciements à Mrs Powers (Kingsmead
Training Institution for Missionary Candidates), qui s’est chargée
d’examiner le manuscrit phrase par phrase au point de vue de la clarté
et de la précision.

A présent, mon cher Commandant, permettez-moi de conclure: une idée que
vous avez exprimée à un moment propice a déclanché chez moi un ordre de
pensées qui m’a conduit à écrire l’ouvrage que je présente aujourd’hui,
et que je suis heureux de vous dédier.

  HAROLD E. PALMER



CONTENTS


  CHAPTER                                               PAGE
        PRÉFACE DÉDICATOIRE                                5
        SYNOPSIS                                          13
     I. OUR SPONTANEOUS CAPACITIES FOR ACQUIRING SPEECH   33
    II. OUR STUDIAL CAPACITIES AND HOW TO USE THEM        47
   III. WHY WE MUST USE OUR STUDIAL CAPACITIES            52
    IV. THE STUDENT AND HIS AIM                           60
     V. THE SUPREME IMPORTANCE OF THE ELEMENTARY STAGE    68
    VI. THE PRINCIPLES OF LANGUAGE-TEACHING               75
   VII. INITIAL PREPARATION                               82
  VIII. HABIT-FORMING AND HABIT-ADAPTING                  98
    IX. ACCURACY                                         106
     X. GRADATION                                        113
    XI. PROPORTION                                       123
   XII. CONCRETENESS                                     129
  XIII. INTEREST                                         136
   XIV. A RATIONAL ORDER OF PROGRESSION                  148
    XV. THE MULTIPLE LINE OF APPROACH                    161
   XVI. ‘MEMORIZED MATTER’ AND ‘CONSTRUCTED MATTER’      170
        INDEX                                            183



SYNOPSIS


1. WE POSSESS NATURAL OR SPONTANEOUS CAPACITIES FOR ACQUIRING SPEECH

In order to become proficient in most arts, we are assumed to study,
_i.e._ to make conscious efforts persistently and perseveringly; we
are assumed to use our intelligence. There is, however, one complex
art in which all of us have become proficient without any such process
and without using our intelligence consciously, viz. _the art of
speech_, _i.e._ of using the spoken form of a language as actually
used in everyday life. We are endowed by nature with capacities for
assimilating speech. Each of us is a living testimony to this fact, for
each of us has successfully acquired that form of our mother-tongue
with which we have been in contact. These capacities are not limited to
the acquiring of our mother-tongue, but are also available for one or
more languages in addition. The young child possesses these capacities
in an active state; consequently he picks up a second or a third
language in the same manner as he does the first. The adult possesses
these same capacities, but generally in a latent state; by disuse he
has allowed them to lapse. If he wishes, he may re-educate these powers
and raise them to the active state; he will then by this means become
as capable as the child of assimilating foreign languages. Those adults
who have maintained these powers in an active state are said to have a
gift for languages.


2. OUR STUDIAL CAPACITIES AND HOW TO USE THEM

In addition to certain _spontaneous_ capacities, we possess what
we may term ‘_studial_’ capacities for language-acquisition. These
must be utilized when we learn how to _read_ and _write_ a language,
and also when we wish to learn forms of language not actually used
in everyday speech (_i.e._ the literary, oratorical, or ceremonious
forms). The methods by which we utilize these capacities are generally
characterized by _conscious_ work (such as analysis and synthesis)
and by conversion, _i.e._ converting written into spoken (reading
aloud), converting spoken into written (dictation), converting from one
language into another (translation), or converting one grammatical form
into another (conjugation, declension, etc.). All exercises requiring
the use of the eyes and the hand are of the studial order, as are also
those connected with accidence and derivation.

Most of those forms of work by which we utilize or adapt habits which
we acquired previously while learning some other language (generally
the mother-tongue) are more or less studial forms of work.

Most language-learners at the present day are found to make an almost
exclusive use of their studial capacities, and in doing so use methods
which are more or less unnatural.


3. WHY WE MUST USE OUR STUDIAL CAPACITIES

We must not conclude from the foregoing that methods involving the use
of our capacities for study are necessarily bad, nor that those based
on our spontaneous capacities are necessarily always to be used.
In certain cases and for certain purposes we shall be forced to use
the former. Nature alone will not teach us how to read or write; for
these purposes we must use our studial capacities. We shall, however,
refrain from reading or writing any given material until we have
learnt to use the spoken form. Nature will not teach us how to use
forms of language which are not currently used in everyday speech; in
order to acquire these we must have recourse to our powers of study;
thus we shall use these powers when learning literary composition,
the language of ceremony, etc. Moreover, the studial powers must be
utilized for the purposes for which a _corrective course_ is designed.
What has been badly assimilated must be eliminated consciously; bad
habits can only be replaced by good habits through processes unknown
to the language-teaching forces of nature. Even those who have not
been previously spoiled by defective study require a certain amount of
corrective work in order that they may react against the tendency to
import into the new language some of the characteristic features of the
previously acquired language or languages.

Some students have no desire to _use_ the foreign language, but merely
wish to learn about it, to know something of its structure. In such
cases no attempt whatever need be made to develop or to utilize their
spontaneous language-learning capacities; they may work exclusively by
the methods of study.


4. THE STUDENT AND HIS AIM

We cannot design a language course until we know something about the
students for whom the course is intended, for a programme of study
depends on the aim or aims of the students. All we can say in advance
is that we must endeavour to utilize the most appropriate means
to attain the desired end. A course which is suitable in one case
may prove unsuitable in another. Some students may require only a
knowledge of the written language, others are concerned with the spoken
language, others desire to become conversant with both aspects. Some
students only require a superficial knowledge, while others aim at
a perfect knowledge. Special categories of learners (_e.g._ clerks,
hotel-keepers, tourists, grammarians) wish to specialize. The sole aim
of some students is to pass a given examination; others wish to become
proficient as translators or interpreters.

The length of the course or programme is a most important determining
factor; a two months’ course will differ fundamentally from one which
is designed to last two years; the former will be a preparatory course,
the latter will be highly developed.

It will not be possible for us to design a special course for each
individual, still less to write a special text-book for him; we can,
however, broadly group our students into types, and recommend for each
type the most appropriate forms of work. In any case, the teacher is
bound to draw up some sort of programme in advance and to divide this
into stages appropriately graded. This programme must not be of the
rigid type, the same for all requirements; it should be designed on
an elastic basis and should be in accordance with known pedagogical
principles.


5. THE SUPREME IMPORTANCE OF THE ELEMENTARY STAGE

The reader of this book may notice, perhaps with some surprise, how
much we have to say concerning the work of the beginner, and how
little we say about the more advanced work; he may be puzzled at the
amount of attention we pay to (what he may consider) crude elementary
work compared with the amount we give to (what he may consider) the
more complex and interesting work connected with the higher stages. It
will therefore be useful, at this point, to anticipate what will be
more fully dealt with under the heading of gradation (Chapter X), and
insist here already on the supreme importance of the elementary stage.

Language-study is essentially a habit-forming process, and the
important stage in habit-forming is the elementary stage. If we do not
secure habits of accurate observation, reproduction, and imitation
during the first stage, it is doubtful whether we shall ever secure
them subsequently. It is more difficult to unlearn a thing than to
learn it. If the elementary stage is gone through without due regard
to the principles of study, the student will be caused to do things
which he must subsequently undo; he will acquire habits which will
have to be eradicated. If his ear-training is neglected during the
elementary stage, he will replace foreign sounds by native ones and
insert intrusive sounds into the words of the language he is learning;
he will become unable to receive any but eye-impressions, and so
will become the dupe of unphonetic orthographies. If he has not
been trained during the elementary stage to cultivate his powers of
unconscious assimilation and reproduction, he will attempt the hopeless
task of passing all the language-matter through the channel of full
consciousness. If during the elementary stage he forms the ‘isolating
habit,’ he will not be able to use or to build accurate sentences.
An abuse of translation during the elementary stage will cause the
student to translate mentally everything he hears, reads, says, or
writes. Bad habits of articulation will cause him to use language of an
artificialized type.

The function of the elementary stage is to inculcate good habits, and
once this work is done there is little or no fear of the student going
astray in his later work. If we take care of the elementary stage, the
advanced stage will take care of itself.


6. THE PRINCIPLES OF LANGUAGE-TEACHING

The art of designing a language course appears to be in its infancy.
Those arts which have achieved maturity have gradually evolved from a
number of distinct primitive efforts which, by a process of gradual
convergence towards each other, have resulted in the ideal type. So
will it be in the art of composing language courses: the present
diverse types will gradually be replaced by more general types, and
in the end the ideal type will be evolved. This will come about as a
result of a system of collaboration in which each worker will profit
by that which has been done in the past and that which is being done
by other workers in the present. Unsound methods will gradually be
eliminated and will make room for methods which are being evolved
slowly and experimentally and which will pass the tests of experience.
By this time a series of essential principles will have been
discovered, and these will be recognized as standard principles by all
whose work is to design language courses.

The following list would seem to embody some of these, and probably
represents principles on which there is general agreement among those
who have made a study of the subject:

(1) The initial preparation of the student by the training of his
spontaneous capacities for assimilating spoken language.

(2) The forming of new and appropriate habits and the utilization of
previously formed habits.

(3) Accuracy in work in order to prevent the acquiring of bad habits.

(4) Gradation of the work in such a way as to ensure an ever-increasing
rate of progress.

(5) Due proportion in the treatment of the various aspects and branches
of the subject.

(6) The presentation of language-material in a concrete rather than in
an abstract way.

(7) The securing and maintaining of the student’s interest in order to
accelerate his progress.

(8) A logical order of progression in accordance with principles of
speech-psychology.

(9) The approaching of the subject simultaneously from different sides
by means of different and appropriate devices.


7. INITIAL PREPARATION

We must realize that language-learning is an art, not a science. We
may acquire proficiency in an art in two ways: by learning the theory,
or by a process of imitation. This latter process is often termed the
method of _trial and error_, but as the term may be misinterpreted it
is better to consider it as the method of _practice_. The method of
practice is a natural one, the method of theory is not. We may acquire
proficiency in two ways: by forming appropriate new habits, or by
utilizing and adapting appropriate old habits (_i.e._ habits already
acquired). The natural process is the former, the latter being more
or less artificial. Language-study is essentially a habit-forming
process, so we must learn to form habits. By the natural or spontaneous
method we learn unconsciously; we must therefore train ourselves or our
students to form habits unconsciously.

The adult whose natural capacities for unconscious habit-forming have
been dormant may reawaken them by means of appropriate exercises. These
are notably:

(_a_) _Ear-training exercises_, by means of which he may learn to
perceive correctly what he hears.

(_b_) _Articulation exercises_, by means of which he may cause his
vocal organs to make the right sort of muscular efforts.

(_c_) _Exercises in mimicry_, by means of which he will become able to
imitate and reproduce successfully any word or string of words uttered
by the native whose speech serves as model.

(The combination of the three foregoing types of exercise will result
in the capacity for reproducing at first hearing a string of syllables,
such as a sentence. The student will thereby become enabled to memorize
unconsciously the _form_ of speech.)

(_d_) _Exercises in immediate comprehension_, by means of which he will
come to grasp without mental translation or analysis the general sense
of what he hears.

(_e_) _Exercises in forming the right associations between words and
their meanings_, by means of which he will become able to express his
thoughts.

The combination of these five types of exercise will develop the
student’s capacity to use spoken language.


8. HABIT-FORMING AND HABIT-ADAPTING

Language-study is essentially a habit-forming process. We speak and
understand automatically as the result of perfectly formed habits.
No foreign word or sentence is really ‘known’ until the student can
produce it automatically (_i.e._ without hesitation or conscious
calculation). No one can understand by any process of calculation
(_e.g._ translation or analysis) the language as spoken normally by
the native. Few people (if any) have ever succeeded in speaking the
language by a series of mental gymnastics; our progress is to be
measured only by the quantity of language-material which we can use
automatically. Adult students generally dislike the work of acquiring
new habits, and seek to replace it by forms of study dependent upon
the intellect, striving to justify their abstention from mechanical
work on educational grounds. This fear of tediousness is really
groundless; automatism is certainly acquired by repetition, but this
need not be of the monotonous, parrot-like type, for there exist many
psychologically sound repetition devices and varied drills intended to
ensure automatism and interest.

Most of the time spent by the teacher in demonstrating _why_ a foreign
sentence is constructed in a particular way is time wasted; it is
generally enough for the student to learn to do things without learning
why he must do them (due exception being made in special cases, notably
that of corrective courses).

The student should not only be caused to form new habits; he should
also be helped, when expedient, to utilize some of his existing habits;
it is even part of the teacher’s duties to aid the student to select
from his previously acquired habits those which are likely to be of
service to him.


9. ACCURACY

Accuracy means _conformity with a given model or standard_, whatever
that model or standard may happen to be. If we choose to take
colloquial French or colloquial English as our standard, the forms
pertaining to classical French or English (_i.e._ traditionally correct
forms) are to be rejected as inaccurate. There are two types of
inaccuracy: that in which a colloquial form is replaced by a classical
form and _vice versa_, and that in which a native form is replaced by a
pidgin form. In both cases the teacher’s duty is to react against the
tendency towards inaccuracy.

Appropriate drills and exercises exist which ensure accuracy in
sounds, stress, intonation, fluency, spelling, sentence-building and
-compounding, inflexions, and meanings.

The principle of accuracy requires that _the student shall have no
opportunities for making mistakes until he has arrived at the stage at
which accurate work is reasonably to be expected_.

If we compel a student to utter foreign words before he has learnt
how to make the requisite foreign sounds, if we compel him to write
a composition in a foreign language before he has become reasonably
proficient in sentence-building, or if we compel him to talk to us in
the foreign language before he has done the necessary drill-work, we
are compelling him to use the pidgin form of the language.

In addition to specific exercises and devices which ensure accuracy in
special points, we should observe certain general rules which will be
described and treated under the heading of gradation.


10. GRADATION

Gradation means passing from the known to the unknown by easy stages,
each of which serves as a preparation for the next. If a course or
a lesson is insufficiently graded, or graded on a wrong basis, the
student’s work will be marked by an excessive degree of inaccuracy. If
a course is well graded, the student’s rate of progress will increase
in proportion as he advances.

In the ideally graded course the student is caused to assimilate
perfectly a relatively small but exceedingly important vocabulary; when
perfectly assimilated, this nucleus will develop and grow in the manner
of a snowball.

Care should be taken to distinguish between false grading and
sound grading. The following applications of this principle are
psychologically sound:

(_a_) _Ears before Eyes._--The student to be given ample opportunities,
at appropriate intervals, of hearing a sound, a word, or a group of
words before seeing them in their written form (phonetic or other).

(_b_) _Reception before Reproduction._--The student to be given ample
opportunities, with appropriate intervals, of hearing a sound or
combination of sounds, a word, or a group of words before being called
upon to imitate what he hears.

(_c_) _Oral Repetition before Reading._--The student to be given ample
opportunities of repeating matter after the teacher before being called
upon to read the same matter.

(_d_) _Immediate Memory before Prolonged Memory._--The student should
not be required to reproduce matter heard a long time previously until
he has become proficient in reproducing what he has just heard.

(_e_) _Chorus-work before Individual Work._--In the case of classes,
new material should be repeated by the whole of the students together
before each student is called upon to repeat individually. This will
tend to ensure confidence.

(_f_) _Drill-work before Free Work._--The student should not be
given opportunities for free conversation, free composition, or free
translation until he has acquired a reasonable proficiency in the
corresponding forms of drill-work.

Each individual item in the teaching should be graded, and in addition
the whole course may be graded by dividing it into appropriate stages
or phases, which will succeed each other _en échelon_.


11. PROPORTION

The ultimate aim of most students is fourfold:

(_a_) To understand what is said in the foreign language when it is
spoken rapidly by natives.

(_b_) To speak the foreign language in the manner of natives.

(_c_) To understand the language as written by natives.

(_d_) To write the language in the manner of natives.

We observe the principle of proportion when we pay the right amount
of attention to each of these four aspects, without exaggerating the
importance of any of them.

There are five chief branches of practical linguistics:

(_a_) _Phonetics_, which teaches us to recognize and to reproduce
sounds and tones.

(_b_) _Orthography_, which teaches us to spell what we have already
learnt by ear.

(_c_) _Accidence and etymology_, which teaches us the nature of
inflected forms and derivatives, and also how to use them.

(_d_) _Syntax and analysis_, which teaches us how to build up sentences
from their components.

(_e_) _Semantics_, which teaches us the meanings of words and forms.

We observe the principle of proportion when we pay the right amount
of attention to each of these five branches, without exaggerating the
importance of any of them.

In choosing the units of our vocabulary we may be guided by several
considerations, such as intrinsic utility, sentence-forming utility,
grammatical function, regularity, facility, concreteness, or
completeness. We observe the principle of proportion when we select the
material of our vocabularies in such a way that due attention is paid
to all such desiderata, and without exaggerating the importance of any
of them.

We also observe the principle of proportion when we give the right
amount of drill-work or free work, of translation-work or ‘direct’
work, of intensive reading or extensive reading. A well-proportioned
course, like a well-graded course, ensures a steady and ever-increasing
rate of progress.


12. CONCRETENESS

We are enjoined by the principle of concreteness to teach more by
example than by precept. When we give explanations we should illustrate
these by striking and vivid examples embodying the point of theory
which is the subject of our explanation. One example is generally not
enough; it is by furnishing several examples bearing on the same point
that we cause the student to grasp that which is common to them all.

But this is not enough: the examples themselves may vary in
concreteness; therefore we should select for our purpose those which
demonstrate in the clearest possible way the point we are teaching
and which tend to form the closest semantic associations. We should
utilize as far as possible the actual environment of the student: the
grammar of the noun is best understood when we talk of books, pencils,
and chairs; the grammar of the verb is best grasped when we choose
as examples verbs which can be ‘acted’; _black_, _white_, _round_,
_square_ are more concrete adjectives than _rich_, _poor_, _idle_,
_diligent_.

There are four ways of teaching the meanings of words or forms:

(1) _By immediate association_, as when we point to the object
represented by a noun.

(2) _By translation_, as when we give the student the nearest native
equivalent.

(3) _By definition_, as when we describe the unit by means of a
synonymous expression.

(4) _By context_, as when we embody the word or expression in a
sentence which will make its meaning clear.

These four manners are given here in what is generally their order
of concreteness; it is interesting to note in this connexion that
translation is not nearly so ‘indirect’ or ‘unconcrete’ as the extreme
‘direct methodists’ have led us to suppose.

It is for the teacher to judge under what conditions each of these four
manners of teaching meanings may be appropriately used.


13. INTEREST

No work is likely to be successfully accomplished if the student is
not interested in what he is doing, but in our efforts to interest
the pupil we must take care that the quality of the teaching does
not suffer. Habit-forming work has the reputation of being dull and
tedious. The remedy, however, would not be to abandon it in favour of
work which in itself is or seems more interesting (such as reading,
composition, and translation exercises), for by so doing we should
merely be leaving undone work which must be done. The true remedy is to
devise a number of varied and appropriate exercises in order to make
the habit-forming work itself interesting.

The most ingenious and interesting arithmetical problems alone will
not assist the student in memorizing the multiplication table, and the
most ingenious and interesting sentence-building devices alone will
not cause the student to obtain the necessary automatic command of the
fundamental material of the language.

There are notably six factors making for interest (and the observing
of these will not in any appreciable degree violate the eight other
principles involved), viz.:

(1) _The Elimination of Bewilderment._--Difficulty is one thing:
bewilderment is another. The student must, in the ordinary course of
events, be confronted with difficulties, but he should never be faced
with hopeless puzzles. Rational explanations and good grading will
eliminate bewilderment and, in so doing, will tend to make the course
interesting.

(2) _The Sense of Progress achieved._--When the student feels that he
is making progress, he will rarely fail to be interested in his work.

(3) _Competition._--The spirit of emulation adds zest to all study.

(4) _Game-like Exercises._--Many forms of exercise so resemble games
of skill that they are often considered as interesting as chess and
similar pastimes.

(5) _The Relation between Teacher and Student._--The right attitude
of the teacher towards his pupils will contribute largely towards the
interest taken in the work.

(6) _Variety._--Change of work generally adds interest: an alternation
of different sorts of monotonous work makes the whole work less
monotonous. Spells of drill-work, however, should be relieved by
intervals devoted to work of a less monotonous character.


14. A RATIONAL ORDER OF PROGRESSION

Apart from all questions of grading, we may observe in most of the
branches of language-work different orders of progression. We may
proceed from the spoken to the written or from the written to the
spoken: we may start with ear-training and articulation exercises or
leave them to a later stage: we may treat intonation as a fundamental
or leave it to the final stage: we may proceed from the sentence to the
word or _vice versa_: irregularities may be included or excluded during
the first part of the course: we may proceed from rapid and fluent to
slow utterance or _vice versa_.

Modern pedagogy tends to favour the former of each of these
alternatives: whereas the teachers of the past generations generally
pronounced in favour of the latter. The ancient school said: First
learn how to form words, then learn how to form sentences, then pay
attention to the ‘idiomatic’ phenomena, and lastly learn how to
pronounce and to speak. The modern school says: First learn to form
sounds, then memorize sentences, then learn systematically how to form
sentences, and lastly learn how to form words.

The two orders of progression, it will be seen, are almost directly
opposite to each other. We who have carefully examined and analysed the
arguments on either side are forced to conclude that the modern order
is the rational order, and psychologists will confirm our conclusion.
The old order stands for cramming and for an erratic and weak curve of
progress: the modern order stands for results which are both immediate
and of a permanent nature. The old order teaches us much about the
language and its theory: the modern order teaches us how to _use_ a
language.


15. THE MULTIPLE LINE OF APPROACH

This ninth and last of the essential principles of language-study
welds the eight others into a consistent whole; it harmonizes any
seeming contradictions and enables us to observe in a perfectly
rational manner all of the precepts set forth under their respective
headings; it answers once for all most of those perplexing questions
which have engaged the attention of so many language-teachers and
controversialists for such a long time.

If this principle is in contradiction to the spirit of partisanship,
it is equally opposed to the spirit of compromise; it suggests a third
and better course, that of accepting any two or more rival expedients
and of embodying them boldly as separate items in the programme, in
order that each may fulfil its function in a well-proportioned and
well-organized whole.

The term ‘multiple line of approach’ implies that we are to proceed
simultaneously from many different starting-points towards one and
the same end; we use each and every method, process, exercise, drill,
or device which may further us in our immediate purpose and bring us
nearer to our ultimate goal; we adopt every good idea and leave the
door open for all future developments; we reject nothing except useless
and harmful forms of work. The multiple line of approach embodies
the eclectic principle (using the term in its general and favourable
sense), for it enjoins us to select judiciously and without prejudice
all that is likely to help us in our work. Whether our purpose is the
complete mastery of the language in all its aspects and branches, or
whether our purpose is a more special one, the principle holds good: we
adopt the best and most appropriate means towards the required end.


16. ‘MEMORIZED MATTER’ AND ‘CONSTRUCTED MATTER’

When more is known about speech-psychology and the ultimate processes
of language-study, it will be possible to embody as one of the
fundamental principles the following considerations:

The whole of our speech-material is possessed by us either as
‘memorized matter’ or as ‘constructed matter.’

_Memorized matter_ includes everything which we have memorized
integrally, whether syllables, words, word-groups, sentences, or whole
passages.

_Constructed matter_ includes everything not so memorized, _i.e._
matter which we compose as we go on, matter which we build up unit
by unit from our stock of memorized matter while we are speaking or
writing.

There are three manners of producing constructed matter from memorized
matter; we may term these respectively _grammatical construction_,
_ergonic construction_, and _conversion_.

_Grammatical Construction._--In this process, our memorized matter
consists of ‘_dictionary words_’ (_i.e._ uninflected and unmodified
root-like words). By learning the theories of accidence, syntax,
derivation, and composition we become (or hope to become) able to
produce constructed matter at will.

_Ergonic Construction._--In this process, our memorized matter
consists of two elements: _more or less complete sentences_ and
‘_working words_’ (units of speech ready inflected, ready modified,
ready derived, or ready compounded), which units may be termed
‘ergons.’ By means of appropriate tables and drill-like forms of work,
from this memorized matter we produce more or less spontaneously the
requisite constructed matter.

_Conversion._--In this process, our memorized matter consists of
classified series of sentences which are to be converted into other
forms by means of appropriate exercises of various kinds.

In the opinion of many, the greatest evil in present-day methods lies
in the fact that an almost exclusive use is made of the first of these
processes as a method of producing constructed matter. Instead of
concentrating their efforts on condemning this process as a vicious
and unnatural one, the reformers of thirty years ago merely advocated
what has been termed the ‘direct method,’ the chief features of which
are the abolition of translation exercises and of the use of the
mother-tongue as a vehicle of instruction.



THE PRINCIPLES OF LANGUAGE-STUDY



CHAPTER I

OUR SPONTANEOUS CAPACITIES FOR ACQUIRING SPEECH


What do we do in order to become skilful in the exercise of an art?
If we wish to become proficient in performing an unlimited series of
complicated acts, what course do we adopt in order to obtain such
proficiency? The first answer which suggests itself is to the effect
that such skill or proficiency is acquired by a process called _study_
or _learning_. We learn to do it; we _study_ the art; we follow a
course and all that the course implies; we attend lectures, we take
lessons, we read the text-book containing the principles (rudimentary
or otherwise) which embody the precepts relating to that art, we
perform exercises; in short, we become _students_. Very well; let
us accept the answer for what it is worth and proceed to formulate
a series of supplementary questions: What are the qualities which
mark the successful student? What sort of people are likely to study
with success? Of what people can we predict failure or incapacity for
making progress? Most people will answer: The student must possess
intelligence, assiduity, and perseverance; if at the same time he
should be ‘gifted,’ his progress will be much greater than the progress
of one who possesses no ‘natural talents’ for learning the art in
question.

This answer, on the face of it, seems a reasonable one and a right one;
it gives us the impression of being in accordance with the traditions
and maxims of the pedagogic world, and with our experience, either
as teachers or as learners. We think of our efforts (successful or
unsuccessful) to learn shorthand, piano-playing, violin-playing,
singing, chess, typewriting, dancing, drawing, painting, modelling,
carpentering, and a host of similar subjects; we remember the intensive
acts of analysis and synthesis, the efforts of attention, the strain of
comprehending, the striving to retain; we remember the hours of solid
labour, the exercises, the drills, the spade-work; we consider the
period of time covered by these continuous efforts, and we realize the
cost at which we have acquired our present proficiency.

And yet there exists an art, we are told, in which every one of us
has become proficient, an art in which every man, woman, and child
throughout the world is a skilful adept, an art which has been acquired
without any process resembling study, without lectures or lessons or
text-books or theory, without the exercise of our powers of conscious
or critical reflection, or analysis, or synthesis, or generalization,
without the giving of our conscious attention, without deliberate
effort or striving.

This art, we are told, requires no intelligence on the part of the one
who is learning it; on the contrary, the least intelligent often prove
to be among the most successful adepts, notably very young children,
idiots, or barbarians of the lowest scale.

This statement seems so strange on the face of it, so paradoxical and
so contrary to our preconceived notions concerning the acquiring of
knowledge, that we immediately suspect some ‘catch’; we are inclined
to treat as a joker the one who has so gravely made the statement. The
‘art’ in question is probably something of an absurdly rudimentary
character, something of such a simple nature that it neither admits of
analysis or synthesis nor requires any form of logical or co-ordinated
thought. But no, the art in question is one involving at least three
distinct sciences, each of which is so complex and so vast that the
learned world has not yet succeeded in unravelling it or in sounding
its depths.

Convinced by now that we are the object of some form of ingenious
witticism, we ask: What, then, is this strange art in which the dunce
excels, this art which requires of its adepts neither brains, industry,
nor patience?

The answer is: _The art of using the spoken and everyday form of any
given language_. Show me the child of three years of age, the madman,
or the savage, who is not an expert at it!

Let us make sure that we have understood this answer, in order that
we may not misinterpret it, in order that we may not read into it a
meaning which is not there. In the first place, there is no question
here of _reading_ or _writing_ the language, but of _understanding what
is said_, and of _expressing what we wish to say by speaking_; and
the art in question has nothing to do with alphabets, with letters,
with spelling, with calligraphy, which are artificial developments
deliberately invented by man. Nor is there any question of _literary
composition_ in prose or poetry; we are not dealing with any æsthetic
form, but merely with the ‘everyday’ form, the colloquial form, the
sort of speech we use on ordinary occasions in order to express our
usual thoughts. Let there be no mistake on this point: the higher
forms of language, the artistic developments, eloquence or literature,
may interest us, may interest us intensely, but the particular art of
which we are now speaking is far removed from these heights; we are
considering language as manifested by the normal colloquial form as
used by the average speaker in ordinary circumstances.

Now there is no doubt whatever that proficiency in this particular
sort of human activity is possessed by every human being who is not
congenitally deaf or dumb; we are all able to say what we want to
say, we are all able to understand what is said to us provided that
the communication concerns things which are within the limits of our
knowledge. We have acquired this proficiency not by a course of study
as we understand the term in its ordinary use; we have not learnt it
as a result of lectures or lessons; it has not come as a consequence
of deliberate effort and concentration. Some of us, in exceptional
circumstances, may have availed ourselves of our intelligence; but in
general our intelligence, our reasoning powers, our capacities for
deduction, for analysis and synthesis, have counted for nothing in the
process.

Might we not then call it a ‘gift’? Did we not mention specifically
that those who have a gift for a particular art can to a certain extent
dispense with the qualities of intelligence, assiduity, perseverance?
There is no objection against using the term ‘gift,’ provided that it
is clear to our minds that everybody possesses the gift in question.
Usually, however, we understand by ‘gift’ something ‘given’ to
certain individuals only; consequently we are not in the habit of
speaking about the gift of sight, of hearing, or of locomotion. It
would be safer to avoid the term and to speak rather of our natural,
spontaneous, and universal _capacity_ for using spoken language.

But are we right as to our facts? Is it true that we acquire speech
by some capacity other than our intelligence, our reasoning powers?
Let our answer be based on objective and easily proven evidence.
A child of two or three years of age can use the spoken language
appropriate to his age, but what does that child know of reasoning?
And what is its standard of intelligence? Not enough to cause it to
realize or understand that two and two make four. And yet that child
observes with a marvellous degree of accuracy most of the complicated
laws governing his mother-tongue. And the savage. By definition he
is unintelligent, he has never learnt to think logically, he has no
power of abstraction, he is probably unaware that such a thing as
language exists; but he will faithfully observe to the finest details
the complexities (phonetic, grammatical, and semantic) of his ‘savage’
language. He will use the right vowel or tone in the right place; he
will not confuse any of the dozen or so genders with which his language
is endowed; a ‘savage’ language (with an accidence so rich that Latin
is by comparison a language of simple structure) will to him be an
instrument on which he plays in the manner of an artist, a master: and
we are speaking of a savage, mark you, whose intelligence is of so low
an order that for him that which is not concrete has no existence!

In English we have a tone-system so complicated that no one has so far
discovered its laws, but little English children observe each nicety
of tone with marvellous precision; a learned specialist in ‘tonetics’
(or whatever the science of tones will come to be called) may make
an error, but the little child will not. The grammatical system of
the Bantu languages depends largely on fine shades of intonation; the
dropping of the voice a semitone at certain points in the sentence, for
instance, is an essential feature of their syntax, while the highly
complex system of tone-mutation serves as a basis of their conjugation
and declension; but no Bechuana or Matabele native, illiterate as he
may be, will ever commit the slightest error in the use of his tones.

When, therefore, we find that a person has become expert in a difficult
and complex subject, the theory of which has not yet been worked out,
nor yet been discovered, it is manifest that his expertness has been
acquired otherwise than by the study of the theory.

Let us furthermore examine what passes in our mind when we are speaking
our own language, and endeavour to ascertain whether we form our
sentences in unconscious obedience to some rules unknown to us, or
whether we are consciously applying rules we have learnt. Do you say _I
go always there_ or _I always go there_? You certainly use the latter
form. Why? Have you ever been told that a certain class of adverbs
(among them the word _always_) is placed before and not after the verb?
Have you been told that there are twenty-three exceptions to the rule,
and have you ever learnt these exceptions? It is most probable that you
have never had your attention called to the rule or to its exceptions.
You put _always_ in front of all verbs except the twenty-three
exceptional verb-forms for the very reason for which the African native
puts the right tone on the right syllable in the right case. In what
cases do you replace the word _far_ by the expression _a long way_?
What are the precise laws governing the respective uses of _went_ and
_did go_? Which are the English ‘postpositions,’ if any? In what cases
do we use nouns unpreceded by any article or other determinative word?
What is the exact difference between _had you_ and _did you have_?
These are a few odd examples chosen at random out of the thousands of
items the sum of which constitutes the theory of the structure of the
English colloquial language. Most of them are not contained in any
manual of English grammar nor ever taught as a school subject.

We are forced to conclude that we have become proficient in the use of
our mother-tongue by some process other than that of learning by dint
of conscious efforts of reasoning and synthesis.

While granting the above conclusion and recognizing its validity,
some may object that the process of unconscious assimilation is
_not_ sufficient to ensure skill and proficiency in the use of the
language. This objection may be supported by proofs to the effect that
the English of young children (not to mention adults) is frequently
‘incorrect’ or ‘ungrammatical.’ Can this process of nature be said
to have succeeded when it produces such results as “Any bloke what
don’t do it proper didn’t ought to come”? Certainly the process has
succeeded; most certainly the natural forces have operated with
perfect success! The only trouble is that users of such sentences have
succeeded in learning a dialect which most of us agree to consider a
deplorable one; this dialect is to our ears an ugly and a repelling
one, but in itself it is probably no easier to learn than the educated
colloquial. An educated person to whom this dialect is foreign would
probably have to pass a long period of study should he wish, for
any particular purpose, to become expert in its use. It is quite a
fallacy to suppose that a debased or vulgar form of speech is of easier
acquisition than the more elevated forms. The language, dialect,
patois, or form of speech taught by nature to the child (or adult) is
that form which he hears spoken by those about him during the period of
acquisition, be it the stilted speech of the pedant or the jargon of
the slums.

Let us accept the thesis as so far proven; let us agree that this
spontaneous capacity exists, that every child does become expert in
this art, and that his expertness has been gained by the exercise of
some powers other than those of conscious reflection or reasoning. But
does not this relate solely to the acquisition of one’s mother-tongue?
In the definition of the art in question the term ‘any given language’
was used. Do we conclude that this given language is the _first_
language, or are we assuming that the same process holds good for any
_foreign_ or _subsequently learnt_ language?

The question is a legitimate one; we may well ask ourselves whether
the forces which were operative in the case of our first language
are available for the acquisition of a second, third, or fourth
language. Let us, as before, go to the actual facts and collect
objective evidence on the point. What evidence is afforded by bilingual
children, that is to say, by children who have learnt two languages
simultaneously, children of mixed parentage, children whose care has
been entrusted to foreign nurses, children who live abroad with their
parents? In nearly all the cases of which we have any record it would
appear that the two languages have been acquired simultaneously without
mutual detriment; there has been practically no confusion between the
two, and the one has had little or no influence on the other. Both have
been acquired by the natural language-teaching forces which are at
present engaging our attention.

The next evidence will consist of the testimony afforded by children
who started their second language after the first had already been
acquired as a going concern. We find almost invariably that the second
language is picked up with the same facility and accuracy as the first.
Thousands of Belgian refugee children returned to their country in
possession of an English speech hardly to be distinguished from the
speech of English children of their own age. Their first language had
interfered in no way with their power of acquiring the second. There
were, however, exceptions; in some instances the possession of the
first language did interfere with the proper acquiring of the second.
What was the determining factor? To what was due this differentiation?
We find that in most cases the child was of a riper age, he had arrived
at the age of intelligence, and had been forced to use his rudimentary
intelligence as a means towards learning English. He was old enough
and clever enough to receive eye-impressions side by side with
ear-impressions. He was old enough to pay attention, he was intelligent
enough to concentrate, he was skilful enough to analyse and to compare
the second language with his first, he was able to translate. These
things had a harmful influence on his work; they interfered with the
processes by which nature causes us to assimilate and to remember,
and the quality of his English suffered; it was to a certain extent
‘foreigner’s’ English, whereas his younger brothers spoke ‘English’
English.

And what happens in the case of the adult, of one who starts his second
language from fifteen to twenty years after he has acquired the first?
The same thing generally happens as in the last instance quoted, but
in a more marked degree. The same interference takes place; the use of
the eyes inhibits the use of the ears; the utilization of his conscious
and focused attention militates against the proper functioning of the
natural capacities of assimilation. Moreover, he is encouraged and
trained to use the non-natural methods, he is directed by his teacher
to pay attention to everything, to use his eyes, to memorize spellings
(generally non-phonetic); his books show him how to analyse, they
provide him with exercises calculated to make him concentrate on the
detail, and in so doing to miss the synthetic whole. Examine the adult
who is supposed to have ‘learnt’ a foreign language; in the majority of
cases you will find that his speech is pidgin-speech, that his sounds
are wrong and wrongly distributed, that his inflexions are inaccurate,
that his sentences are constructed on the model of his native language,
that he uses foreign words in a way unknown to the native users of
these same words. Inquire in each case how the person acquired his
knowledge, and you will find that he acquired it by dint of exercising
his capacities for study.

And the minority? We find a minority (alas, a small minority!) who
have come to possess the foreign language as if it were their first.
Their sounds are right, the distribution is right, the inflexions are
accurate, their sentences are constructed on the model of those used by
the native speakers, they use foreign words as the natives themselves
use them, they are as accurate and as fluent in the foreign language
as in their own. They do not interrupt the speaker of the language
with requests to speak more slowly, to speak more distinctly, to spell
or to write the words; in short, they use the second language as they
use their first. Inquire in each case how the person acquired his
knowledge, and you will find that he acquired it by methods making no
call on his capacities for reasoning, for concentrating, for analysing,
or for theorizing. Instead of selecting and adapting previously
acquired habits connected with his first language, he was able to form
new habits.

To sum up our inquiry, we find that there are people who have been able
to use their spontaneous capacities of assimilation in order to acquire
a second or a third language; we find that young children nearly always
do so, that certain adults sometimes do so.

But we must make quite sure of our ground before proceeding farther.
We must ascertain definitely whether all adults possess what we are
calling this spontaneous capacity for assimilation, or whether this
is a ‘gift’ in the usual acceptation of the term, that is, whether
it is a capacity given to some but withheld by nature from others.
Some maintain that from the age of reason onwards none but the gifted
possess the capacity in question, and that those who do not possess it
are bound to use what we shall call the _studial_ processes. Others,
on the contrary, maintain that all possess the capacity either in
an active or in a latent state, that most adults deliberately but
innocently inhibit their power, or that, unaware that these powers
exist, they fail to take the necessary steps to awaken them from their
latent into their active state.

Which of these two is the correct view?

Let us endeavour to answer this all-important question by examining
those who undoubtedly do possess this ‘gift’ or natural capacity. We
first inquire whether they were encouraged or disposed to resist the
temptation to receive their impressions through the eyes, to resist the
temptation to rely on spellings, whether they did consent to use their
ears as the receptive medium. In each case we learn that they were so
disposed; they did resist the temptation towards eye-work and did allow
the ears to perform the work for which they were intended.

We next inquire whether the conditions were such as prohibited them
from focusing their consciousness, from paying an exaggerated attention
to detail, from submitting the language-matter to a form of analysis,
from comparing each foreign word or form with some word or form of
their native language. In each case we are informed that such _were_
the conditions.

Our next inquiry is directed towards ascertaining whether, in the
earlier stages, the conditions afforded them full and constant
opportunities of hearing the language used, _without being under the
necessity of speaking it themselves_. In each instance we are informed
that those were precisely the conditions.

This is almost conclusive; we have ascertained that each successful
acquirer of the foreign language was working precisely under the
conditions enjoyed by the young child (and we remember that the young
child is invariably a successful acquirer of foreign languages). It
is, however, not conclusive enough; we have yet to inquire under what
conditions the other type of adult (the supposedly non-gifted one) had
been working. We ask the same three sets of questions, and in answer we
learn:

(_a_) That he was encouraged by his teachers to learn by the medium of
his eyes, to base his knowledge on spellings (generally non-phonetic),
and in so doing to inhibit his ears from fulfilling their natural
function.

(_b_) That he generally focused his consciousness, that he paid
attention to detail, that he studied rules and practised analysis, that
he constantly established comparisons between the foreign word and the
nearest native equivalent.

(_c_) That conditions were such that he had few or no opportunities of
hearing the language used, while he was obliged to use the language
himself, to forge out sentences as best he might, neglectful of
accuracy and heedless of their conformity or non-conformity with
authentic models.

This is conclusive; there is no doubt about it now. Those who seemingly
do not possess the spontaneous capacity for assimilating _foreign_
languages are precisely those who were unwilling to avail themselves
of it, or who were precluded from availing themselves of it. And by
developing their studial powers they simply inhibited the spontaneous
powers and effectively prevented them from working.

No reasonable doubt remains: we are all endowed by nature with certain
capacities which enable each of us, without the exercise of our powers
of study, to assimilate and to use the spoken form of any colloquial
language, whether native or foreign. We may avail ourselves of these
powers by training ourselves deliberately to utilize them, or, having
more confidence in our studial efforts, or for some reason of special
expediency, we may choose to leave our spontaneous capacities in their
latent state and make no use of them. We cannot, however, afford to
ignore them, and it would be foolish to deny their existence.

We shall see later what steps we must take if we wish to rouse these
powers from their latent state, what we must do if we wish to enlist
them and have them at our disposal for the purpose of learning or of
teaching a foreign language.



CHAPTER II

OUR STUDIAL CAPACITIES AND HOW TO USE THEM


We have seen that each of us possesses certain spontaneous capacities
for learning how to use the spoken form of any language or variety
of language. We have seen that these capacities may be either in a
latent or an active state. We have seen that unless we enlist these
powers in our service we are unlikely to make any real progress in
language-study, either in point of quality or quantity. We shall see
later by what means we may awaken our latent capacities and cause them
to become active, and, incidentally, how we can exercise ourselves to
make the fullest use of them.

But we also possess capacities other than these for assimilating and
using a language. It is our purpose in the present chapter to see
what these are, and to differentiate between them and those already
described.

In the first place, let us note carefully that we have so far dealt
with no other form of language than the normal spoken colloquial, that
form which is used under normal conditions by the average educated
native. We have not been considering any written form of language
whatever, either colloquial or classical, nor have we given any
attention to the more classical or literary form of speech whether
spoken or written. We have, indeed, alluded to these aspects or
varieties of language, but merely in order to state that they are
beyond the range of any truly _spontaneous_ capacities. Reading and
writing are not spontaneous processes; they are even _unnatural_
processes if we do not already possess the spoken form. Learning how
to use classical or artificialized forms of language such as poetry or
rhetoric is a more or less studial process, an _unnatural_ process if
we do not already possess the normal colloquial. For this, then, if not
for other reasons, we must be prepared to adopt certain forms of work
unknown to man in his natural state (as exemplified by the very young
child); we shall allude to these as the ‘_studial_ methods.’

What, then, are these studial methods? Roughly speaking, we may say
that they comprise all those forms of work which require on the part
of the student _conscious efforts of attention_; work in which he must
think, reflect, or calculate; work necessitating the exercise of his
reasoning powers, work which cannot be performed automatically; this
constitutes conscious work, and all methods embodying conscious work
become _ipso facto_ studial methods.

Most work of analysis and synthesis is of this order; all that we do to
break up a sentence into words, into syllables, into sounds; all that
we do to piece together sounds, syllables, and words in order to form
sentences is of this order. Whenever we are distinctly conscious of the
words and constructions we are using, we are doing something unknown
to nature. Whenever we come to understand a sentence by analysing it,
or to utter a sentence by piecing together as we go on, we are working
by processes of the studial order; they were not used when we were
learning our mother-tongue.

All those forms of work which we may include under the heading of
‘conversion’ are studial, and these are many and varied. Dictation
consists in causing the pupil to convert the spoken into the written
aspect of language, reading consists in causing him to do the reverse,
most forms of translating consist in causing him to convert something
from one language into another. We may also at times require our pupils
to convert an affirmative sentence into a negative or an interrogative
one, to convert a present tense into a past, a singular into a plural,
passive into active, to convert a certain word-order into another.

All these things are of the studial order; sound they may be, necessary
or essential they may be, but they are not spontaneous forms of work,
for we have not by their aid learnt to use the spoken colloquial form
of our mother-tongue.

All methods which necessitate the use of the eye are studial methods;
nature never meant us to learn spoken language by eye. We may
therefore designate as studial all forms of reading, reading aloud or
mental reading, reading from traditional orthographies or phonetic
transcriptions, reading of isolated sounds or of connected passages.
More especially of the studial order are those curious and complicated
practices (common, alas! to so many students) of ‘reading what we hear’
or ‘writing what we speak.’ In the former case, we hear a sentence, we
reduce it mentally to written characters, and read mentally what we see
in our imagination; in the other case we write in our imagination what
we wish to say, and read aloud what we are writing.

It follows that all methods which require us to use the hand are
studial methods; nature knows no more of spellings and handwriting
than she does of shorthand, typewriting, and type-setting; all these
things are of comparatively recent origin, and all of them have been
deliberately invented by man.

All methods which teach meanings by means of etymology are of the
studial order; nature intended that each word should become attached to
that for which it stands and not become associated with its ancestral
etymon or modern cognates. The dictum of nature is that a word means
what all speakers of the same language (or variety of language) mean it
to mean.

Thus it would appear that nearly everything that the average person
actually does when learning a foreign language comes under the heading
of the studial processes. He learns rules in order to become proficient
in analysis and synthesis; for the same purpose, he memorizes the
exceptions to the rules. He becomes (or hopes to become) an expert
in pulling words to pieces and in reconstructing them from roots and
affixes, in sentence-making and sentence-breaking. He learns chiefly by
eye, and expresses himself chiefly by the pen-grasping hand. Indeed, he
becomes so proficient in converting the spoken into the written form
that he cannot understand or retain the foreign words or sentences
he learns until he has converted them into an imaginary written form
which, in his imagination, he reads off word by word. Similarly, he
finds himself only able to express himself by dint of reading aloud
the sentences which he is constructing bit by bit by a complicated
process of ‘mental writing.’ He aims at becoming (and often does
become) expert in converting one language into another by a process
(unknown to nature) called translating. His accuracy is gained by rapid
conversions of words from one inflected form to another: nominatives
into accusatives, singulars into plurals, infinitives into participles.
He attaches great importance to etymology, and the time he might spend
in associating words with their meanings is often devoted to working
out the family tree of foreign words. He spends little time in finding
out what meanings the natives attach to their words and forms, but much
time in identifying the units of etymology and in tracing them from one
language to another.

This does not necessarily imply that the student is always doing the
wrong thing, nor that his methods are always bad ones; we merely
observe that he uses (or is taught to use) all manner of studial
methods at the expense of spontaneous ones, and that, in so doing, he
develops his studial capacities of language-study at the expense of his
spontaneous ones. The question whether the studial methods should be
used at all and, if so, which should be used, forms the subject of the
next chapter.



CHAPTER III

WHY WE MUST USE OUR STUDIAL CAPACITIES


We should not conclude that methods involving our powers of study are
to be abandoned, and that nature alone is to be responsible for our
linguistic education. On the contrary, we suggest that an extensive use
be made of powers which are not possessed by the young child or the
barbarian.

In the first place, nature will not teach us to read or to write, but
merely to become proficient in the use of the _spoken_ form of a given
language. However valuable it may be to possess the spoken form, most
of us wish to go beyond this; we wish eventually to be able to use some
form of orthography. Some even desire to go beyond this and to learn
to use shorthand or the typewriter, man-made inventions of a still
more recent date. For we must remember that, after all, traditional
orthography is not a whit more ‘natural’ than shorthand, and a good
deal less ‘natural’ than phonetic transcription or reformed spelling.

To learn, however, the written form of a language before having learnt
how to assimilate the spoken form is unnatural and contrary to all our
linguistic instincts; it is comparable to learning to cycle before
having learnt to walk. At a certain stage, therefore, the learner will
be taught how to recognize by eye what he has already assimilated
by ear, and how to express with the pen what he has hitherto
expressed by means of articulate sounds. In each case the process
will be one of conversion, converting written characters into sounds
or converting sounds into written characters. In both cases there
will be articulation of some sort, for mental reading means mental
articulation, and when we write we only write what we are repeating to
ourselves mentally.

Neither of these forms of conversion is necessarily difficult. The
processes, without being spontaneous in the true sense of the term,
present at times certain analogies to truly spontaneous processes
in that they are apparently performed without effort. Much depends,
however, on the system of script; if the alphabet of the foreign
language is almost identical with an alphabet we have already learnt
to use, the difficulty will be less than in the case of a totally
strange alphabet or syllabary. Japanese script, which contains a
strange mixture of Chinese characters used both ideographically and
phonetically, together with two different systems of native phonetic
writing, presents difficulties unknown to the European student of
European languages.

The artificial element in writing is particularly evident when
we consider that many if not most orthographic systems are in
contradiction to the spoken form of the languages they claim to
represent. English spelling is an excellent case in point; its
divergences from the actual language are so numerous and so great
that we may be said to possess two distinct languages, the spoken and
the written. To learn and to apply the arbitrary laws and conventions
which serve to bridge the gap between the two requires capacities of
observation and reasoning of a special order, essentially studial. For
that reason we must make use of conversion devices of various kinds:
dictation, reading aloud, transcription (or transliteration), and
spelling drill. Many so-called ‘difficulties of grammar’ prove to be
mere difficulties of spelling; the French conjugation and what remains
of French declension are largely matters of spelling, often as baffling
to the native French speaker as to the non-French student.

There are other reasons why studial methods must be adopted in a
complete language-course. There exist forms of speech other than the
form which is used normally in everyday conversation. There exist
artificialized non-colloquial dialects, such as poetry, the language
of emotion and oratory, the language of ceremony, the liturgical, and
similar classical or archaic varieties. As we have already seen, nature
teaches us only those living forms which are used by the people of our
environment; for the others we must have recourse to studial methods.
The everyday colloquial form is something we learn at home or in the
street; the higher or more æsthetic forms are taught us at school or
at college; we have to _study_ them. The art of literary composition,
the art of selecting and assembling deliberately and consciously those
words which express our thoughts and emotions in the clearest and most
appropriate manner, differs widely and essentially from the art of
colloquy as exercised in our daily life. In order to become proficient
in literary composition, we must acquire habits of concentration, we
must be able to analyse, we must become expert in synthesis, we must
learn to discriminate, we must develop our intelligence. The young
child cannot do these things, nor can the savage or the idiot.

There is another reason why we cannot leave everything to nature: most
language-courses must necessarily be _corrective courses_. The teacher
generally finds among his adult students a large number who have
already acquired certain notions of the language; they may have spent
one or more years working at school-French, school-English, or whatever
the language may be; they may have spent some time in the country where
it is spoken, or they may have studied privately. In most of these
cases it is practically certain that the student will have formed bad
linguistic habits; his pronunciation will be deplorable, his command of
the inflected forms will be deficient, his syntax will be faulty, and
his semantic system will be that of his native tongue. In other terms,
he has acquired a pidgin form of the language, such as Anglo-French or
Franco-English, unnatural dialects unknown to native speakers; he may
have become accustomed to using this form of language, even to using
it automatically. Nor is that all; not only is his language-material
faulty (to say the least of it), but his manner of study will probably
have impaired very seriously his capacities for any sound form of
assimilation. He has not been trained to observe nor to imitate nor to
construct sentences by analogy; he has so trained himself to hearing
what he expects to hear and what he thinks he hears that he has no
notion of what he actually does hear; in short, he has generally learnt
wrong material in wrong ways.

The only suitable course for such a student would be a corrective
course, a course which would aim at replacing his faulty material by
sound material and at replacing his former methods of study by sound
methods. One by one his unsound acquisitions must be replaced by sound
ones; we must teach him a new language. Now this cannot be done by
means of spontaneous methods alone; unconsciousness will not undo the
work consciousness has done; the natural powers which enable us to
assimilate normal speech will rarely, if ever, turn bad habits into
good ones or convert pidgin-speech into normal speech. What has been
done consciously must be undone consciously. The student must be shown
specifically in what respects his speech differs from that used by
natives, and he must deliberately set to work to correct it item by
item; we must explain things to him; we must provide him with charts,
diagrams, and exercises; we must put him through courses of drill-work,
and all these things will require his careful and even concentrated
attention. We must also teach him how to correct his faulty methods of
assimilating; we must explain to him why they are faulty and convince
him that, however natural and easy they may seem to him, they are only
of utility to the learner of pidgin-speech. We must teach him how to
utilize the sound processes (both spontaneous and studial); he will not
like to do so, he will constantly tend to revert to the processes to
which he has become accustomed; we must react and cause him to react
against his vicious tendencies. After a time, if fortunate, we may
succeed in eradicating most of the faulty matter and in initiating the
right habits of assimilation. From that point onwards the course will
not be a corrective one but a normal one.

Do these considerations apply only to one who has already studied
the language faultily, to the user of pidgin-speech? Are we to take
it that the raw beginner is exempt from unnatural or vicious habits?
Unfortunately this is not the case: more often than not, the student
(even the student unspoiled by previous defective work) will tend to
let his first language influence his second. If he is English, he will
tend to insinuate English sounds, English forms, and English thoughts
into the new language, which will therefore tend to become pidginized.
This tendency will be greater with some than with others; much depends
on the attitude of the student towards the language he is about to
learn; he may already have studied other foreign languages, and in
doing so may have acquired the wrong attitude towards foreign languages
in general. If he considers them as branches of study similar to
mathematics, history, or geography; or if he considers them essentially
as orthographic systems of which the phonetic form is an unimportant
detail, he will already have become one for whom a corrective course
is necessary. We shall have to remove his prejudices and to modify his
point of view; a certain amount of preliminary work will have to be
done in order that he may see languages as they really are, in order
that he may see the nature of the task before him. This preliminary
work will be of the studial order, but will be succeeded at the
right moment by the more normal and more spontaneous methods. On the
other hand, many students start with no preconceived ideas whatever;
children, the less intelligent adults, and those who have been
unspoiled by the traditional classical fallacies will slip easily and
naturally into the right attitude. They will recognize the necessity
for learning new sounds and combinations, for assimilating foreign
material without at each instant comparing it with the material of the
mother-tongue; for retaining by the auditory memory strings of words
and sentences, for reproducing orally what they hear, and for forming
the right semantic associations. Such students will be immune or nearly
so from the vicious tendencies which so characterize the average
language-learner; they will merely have to be put on their guard at
certain critical moments; we shall at such moments observe certain
reasonable precautions in order that bad habits may not be acquired.

A fourth reason why we must not neglect the studial methods may be
mentioned here. Many set out not so much to acquire the capacity for
using the language as to learn its structure and peculiarities, just
as a mechanic may wish to become acquainted with a machine without
having the intention of ever using it. Phoneticians, grammarians, and
philologists must in the ordinary course of their work become familiar
with the characteristic features of many languages or dialects. For
this purpose it is by no means necessary that they should acquire the
capacity for understanding, speaking, reading, or writing the languages
which interest them.

In such cases the spontaneous methods would obviously be out of place;
no call need be made or should be made on the students’ natural powers
of language-assimilating. They would proceed by way of analysis and
synthesis, and instead of retaining the actual language-material itself
would retain merely the laws which govern the functioning of the
language.

We might place in this category of students those whose subsequent
intention is to teach the language to others. It may not be necessary
for the language-_learner_ to know much about the theory of phonetics,
but the language-_teacher_ must possess a considerable knowledge of
phonetic theory both general and as applied to the particular language
in which he is an instructor. The learner need know little about the
sciences dealing with inflexions, sentence-construction, or meanings;
but the teacher must know a good deal about these things in order
that he may foresee the special difficulties which his pupils will
encounter, and devise the necessary exercises to overcome them. The
technical side of language will therefore be of importance to all who
are or who intend to become teachers, and such knowledge, like any
other technical knowledge, is acquired by methods unrelated to our
spontaneous capacities for assimilating normal colloquial speech.

The four series of considerations set forth above are sufficient to
show that it would be either unwise or impossible to proceed by the
sole aid of nature or by the reconstitution of natural conditions.
Language-study is such a complex thing, with so many aspects, and it
requires to be looked at from so many points of view, that we must
enlist _all_ our capacities when striving to obtain the mastery we
desire; we must not neglect our spontaneous powers, nor should we
despise our intellectual powers; both are of service to us, both have
their place in a well-conceived programme of study, each will to a
certain extent balance the other and be complementary to it. An excess
on either side may be prejudicial to the student, and one of the more
important problems before the speech-psychologist is to determine in
what circumstances and on what occasions each should be used. More will
be said on this particular phase of the subject in Chapter XV (“The
Multiple Line of Approach”).



CHAPTER IV

THE STUDENT AND HIS AIM


What is the best method of language-study? This fundamental question is
one which is continually asked by all those who are seriously engaged
in teaching or in learning a foreign language. We say ‘seriously’ and
lay stress on the word, for among teachers and students there are many,
unfortunately, who are not disposed to take their work seriously, who
see no necessity for any earnest consideration of the ways and means
to be adopted. They are content to teach as they themselves have
been taught, or to learn as others have learnt before them, without
inquiring whether the plan or the programme is a sound one, without
even inquiring whether the method is one which is likely to produce any
good results whatever. But the serious teacher or student, who wishes
to perform efficient work, must of necessity ask himself whether the
path he has chosen is one which will lead anywhere near the desired
end or ends. He may experiment with various methods and try a number
of different systems in order to ascertain which of these secures the
best results, and after many such trials he may either hit upon what
seems to be an ideal type of work and stick to it, or, dissatisfied
with everything he has tried, he may once again seek counsel and ask
once more the old and hackneyed question: What is the best method of
language-study?

The first answer which suggests itself is: “The best method is that
which adopts the best means to the required end,” and indeed this is
perhaps the only concise answer which can be furnished off-hand. But
the answer is not satisfactory; it is too general, and so true that
it ranks as a truism; it is resented as being a facetious manner of
shelving the question. The inquirer has every right to return to the
charge and to put the supplementary question: “What is the method which
adopts the best means to the required end?”

In the present book we shall endeavour to find the best answer or the
best series of answers to this most legitimate question. In doing so
we shall set forth, with as much precision as is consistent with the
claims of conciseness, the conclusions arrived at by those who have
specialized in the subject and have obtained positive evidence bearing
on it.

Fundamental as the question appears, there is yet a previous question
of which we must dispose before going further, for we cannot determine
“what is the best method adopting the best means towards the required
end” until we know more precisely what _is_ the required end.

For there are many possible ends, and many categories of students, each
with a particular aim before him.

Many desire a knowledge of the written language only; they wish to be
able to read and write, not to understand the spoken language nor to
speak. Some may limit their attainment to a capacity for reading the
language; they wish to have direct access to technical or other books.
Others conceivably may wish solely to become able to write letters
in the language. Many are only concerned with spoken language; they
wish to be able to speak and to understand what they hear. Some wish
to possess an ‘understanding’ knowledge only, while others are content
merely to make themselves understood.

The student may limit his requirements to a very superficial knowledge
of some pidgin form of the language, and will be perfectly happy if
he just succeeds in making himself understood by using some atrocious
caricature of the language which he is supposed to be learning. Or
he may be more ambitious and set out in earnest to become master of
the living language just as it is spoken and written by the natives
themselves. The phonetician will wish to attain absolute perfection in
the pronunciation of the language; the etymologist will concentrate on
the historical aspect; the philologist will not be happy unless he is
comparing the structure with that of cognate languages; the grammarian
will specialize in grammar, and the lexicologist or semantician will
study the meanings.

The clerk or merchant will specialize in the commercial language
and learn how to draw up bills of lading or to conduct business
correspondence. The hotel-keeper or waiter will concentrate on hotel
colloquial, as also will the tourist or tripper. The _littérateur_ will
aim straight at the literature and disdain any of the non-æsthetic
aspects or branches. Every calling or profession will seek its own
particular line, and for each there will be a particular aim.

Many students have as their sole aim the passing of a given
examination. Whether they come to know the language or not is a matter
of comparative indifference to them; their business is to obtain as
many marks as possible with the least amount of effort, and what does
not lead directly to this aim is not of interest. It is the duty of
many or most teachers to coach or to cram their pupils in order that
satisfactory examination results may be obtained; they cannot afford to
do anything else, nor have they any desire to do so. If the examination
includes questions on phonetic theory, the pupil will be crammed with
phonetic theory; if it includes a test in conversation, the pupil will
be crammed with conversational tags; if it requires the capacity of
translating, the pupil will duly be coached in the art of translating;
if it requires a knowledge of a given text or series of texts, these
will be the subject of study. If the pupil or his teacher knows
something of the particular examiner, special efforts will be made to
please that particular examiner. But this has little or nothing to do
with the serious study of languages.

Some people are professional translators or interpreters; it is their
business to render a faithful account of a speech or a sentence
uttered in another language or to interpret the thoughts of some
foreign writer. This work requires very special qualifications and
necessitates a very special study, so much so that those who are
perfectly bilingual experience a great difficulty every time that
they are called upon to render a faithful translation of any document
or a faithful interpretation of any oral communication. The task of
the translator is quite distinct from that of the ordinary student
of language, and is to be dealt with as such. Generally speaking,
however, the language-learner will have comparatively little to do
with the profession of interpreter or translator, and even in the
exceptional cases he will do well to leave this particular branch
until he has attained a certain proficiency in using the foreign
language independently of any other. We have already alluded to the
special requirements of the technician; we have seen that some require
a knowledge of the structure or of certain aspects of one or more
languages.

Such people, having entirely different aims, require entirely different
methods; they must be furnished with everything that will facilitate
their work of analysis or synthesis, and we may omit from their
programme everything which does not lead directly towards the limited
and special end they have in view.

Yet another factor is present and must be considered before we can
draw up any definite programme of study. Are we giving a three
months’ course or a three years’ course? If we are to obtain concrete
and definite results in a limited space of time, our course must
necessarily be an intensive one; we shall have to make a generous
use of studial methods; we shall not be able to afford anything like
an adequate period of preparation; we shall be forced to take short
cuts and we shall reluctantly be compelled to sacrifice a certain
measure of soundness to the requirements of speed. If, however, at the
end of the short course to which circumstances limit our student’s
opportunity, he has a chance to continue his studies by himself or to
reside in the country where the language is spoken, we may devote the
whole of our time to preparatory work. We may give him an intensive
course of ear-training, articulation, or fluency exercises, cause him
to memorize a certain number of key-sentences, and drill him into good
habits of language-study. If we adopted this plan we should be laying
the foundations upon which the student would build later by his own
initiative, but the drawback would be that the student would have made
but small progress in the actual process of assimilating vocabulary; he
would be well prepared, but would have little to show as a result of
his two or three months’ work.

If, on the other hand, we know that we have a clear period of two
or more years before us, our task will be much easier. Instead of
proceeding at a breathless rate to produce immediate concrete results,
we may go to work in a more leisurely and more natural way. We may sow,
and be assured that the harvest will be reaped in due time; the natural
powers of language-study work surely but not rapidly; nature takes
her time but yields a generous interest. With a long period in front
of us, we may afford adequate intervals for ‘incubation’; it will not
be necessary for us to accelerate the normal process of assimilation,
but merely to let it develop in a gradual but ever-increasing and
cumulative ratio. At the end of, let us say, the first year, our
student will easily outstrip those whose initial progress seemed more
satisfactory.

Evidently it will not be possible to draw up a programme of study
which will be suitable for all the diverse requirements we have set
forth. Nor will it be possible for every teacher to consider the
individual requirements of each one of his pupils. We cannot have
a specially printed course, nor even a manuscript one, for every
student; but in the case of private lessons or of self-instruction
we may certainly give a large amount of consideration to individual
needs. The bad pronouncer will concentrate on phonetic work, the bad
speller on orthographic work, the bad listener on devices leading
towards immediate comprehension; the clerk will work with texts of a
commercial nature, the tourist will specialize on hotel colloquial,
etc. No student will ever be expected to work with one book only; each
will gradually acquire a miniature library, and this library need not
be the same for everybody.

In the case of collective courses and class teaching, individual
requirements will be less observed, but in drawing up the programme
the teacher will aim at the average result desired by or considered
desirable for the average member of the class. As we shall see later,
it is quite feasible to design lessons suitable for a class containing
pupils of different capacities; we can arrange that some shall take an
active part while others are assimilating more or less passively.

We see, in short, that when starting a new course under new conditions
the teacher must draw up a programme. This programme will be divided
into so many periods or stages, and for each period certain forms
of work will be specified, these being designed to lead in the most
efficient way to whatever the aim may happen to be. Without such a
programme the teacher will never know exactly where his class stands,
the work will be too much of a hand-to-mouth nature, and there will be
loose ends. This programme may of course be more or less experimental
or tentative; it may be modified in accordance with the teacher’s
experience and with the results he has so far obtained. The idea of
a hard-and-fast programme does not commend itself; it should, on the
contrary, be more or less elastic in order that it may be expanded or
contracted according to circumstances. Anything in the nature of a
‘patent method’ (guaranteed to work within so many lessons) suggests
quackery. Our programme should be something other than a rigid
procedure based on any one particular principle, however logical that
principle may seem to be. There are many logical principles, and we
must strive to incorporate all of them into whatever programme we
design. We shall treat of these in the next chapters.



CHAPTER V

THE SUPREME IMPORTANCE OF THE ELEMENTARY STAGE


Before examining and reviewing the principles of language-study, it
will be well for us to note one important point. The reader ere long
may protest that we pay no attention to anything except beginner’s
work, that we examine no evidence bearing on the more advanced stages,
that we give no advice nor offer any suggestions concerning the work of
the second and subsequent years. “We are not interested in elementary
work,” some may say; “what we require is a series of counsels as to how
to conduct the subsequent (and more difficult) work.”

And yet we shall have little to say concerning the more advanced
course; on the contrary, we shall constantly lay stress and insist on
the supreme importance of the elementary stage.

It is the first lessons that count; it is the early lessons which are
going to determine the eventual success or failure of the course. As
the bending of the twig determines the form of the tree, as on the
foundations depends the stability of the building, so also will the
elementary training of the student determine his subsequent success or
failure.

It is during the first stage that we can secure habits of accuracy,
that we can train the student to use his ears, that we can develop
his capacities of natural and rapid assimilation, that we can foster
his powers of observation. Good habits are easily formed (as also are
bad habits); at the outset of his studies the learner, whoever he may
be, educated or illiterate, child or adult, enjoys the advantage of a
plastic mind; it can be shaped according to our will; we can train it
to form good and sound habits of language-study. At no other period
shall we find such plasticity. Difficult, almost impossible, is the
task of undoing what has already been done, of removing faulty habits
of perception and of replacing them by sound ones. The student who has
passed through an unsound elementary course finds his road to progress
barred; the twig has been badly bent, the foundations have been badly
laid. All we can then do is to endeavour by means of a corrective
course to undo the mischief which has been done, and a thankless task
it is. No amount of advanced work can fully compensate or make good the
harm which has been wrought by the untrained or unwise teacher. It is
too late. Certain habits have been formed, and we all realize what it
means to eradicate a bad habit and to replace it by a good one.

What are some of these bad habits? What are the most characteristic
vicious tendencies which have been encouraged by an unsound elementary
stage? Some of these are positive, others are negative. In some cases
the student has acquired bad habits; in others he has neglected to
acquire good ones; often the two kinds are complementary to each other.
We find, for instance, that he has neglected to train his ears, he has
not been shown what to observe nor how to observe. The consequence is
that he is unaware of the existence of certain foreign sounds, and
invariably replaces them by absurd or impossible imitations based on
the sounds of his mother-tongue. Instead of French _é_ he will use
English _ay_; instead of French _on_ he will use English _ong_; a
trilled _r_ will be replaced by an English fricative _r_ or by no _r_
at all.

Lack of ear-training will cause him to insert imaginary sounds where
there are none. The French student will introduce an _r_ (and a French
_r_ at that!) in words such as _course_ or _farm_; he will insert a
weak _e_ [ə] in the _pl_ of _people_ or in the _bl_ of _able_. He has
never actually heard such sounds, but imagines that he has; his ears
have not been trained to observe. He has formed the habit of replacing
ear-impressions by eye-impressions; he believes what his eyes tell him,
and his untrained ears cannot correct the tendency; he has become the
dupe of unphonetic spellings.

The neglect of his powers of audition will cause him to rely absolutely
on his powers of visualizing the written form. He will refuse to
receive the language-matter by the auditory channel; he will declare
with insistence that “he cannot learn a word or a sentence until he has
seen it written”; he will even decline to learn a word except in its
traditional (and probably phonetically inaccurate) orthographic form.

If the elementary course has not provided for the development and use
of the powers of unconscious assimilation, the student will attempt the
hopeless task of passing the whole of the language-material through
his limited channel of consciousness. He will seek to concentrate
his attention on every simple unit of which the foreign language is
composed, and hope thereby to retain every one, a feat of memory which
we know to be impossible. He will therefore have formed the habit of
deliberately avoiding that natural process which alone will enable him
to make effective progress.

He will also have formed the ‘isolating’ habit, which consists in
learning the individual elements of a group instead of learning the
group as it stands. He will learn _chaise_ instead of _la chaise_,
_allé_ instead of _suis allé_ or _est allé_. In other terms, he will
have formed the habit of word-learning and have neglected that of
word-group-learning. Hence, instead of having at his disposal a number
of useful compounds such as _Je ne le lui ai pas donné_, _Il n’y
en a pas de ce côté-ci_, or _À cette époque-ci_, he will endeavour
laboriously and generally unsuccessfully to build up by some synthetic
process (probably that of literal translation) every word-group,
phrase, or sentence in the language.

Had his elementary course included the systematic memorizing of
word-groups, this would have become a habit; as it is, he has acquired
the habit of not doing so.

Bad semantic habits may also have been formed. That is to say, the
student may have trained himself (or even may have been trained) to
consider that each foreign word corresponds precisely to some word in
his own language. For him _prendre_ is the exact equivalent of _to
take_; _to get_ is an untranslatable word, and many foreign words are
meaningless!

If translation (not in itself a bad habit) has been carried to
extremes, and if the habit of direct association has been neglected,
the student will have formed the habit of translating mentally
everything that he hears or reads, and this will be fatal to subsequent
progress.

The principle of gradation may have been faultily applied in different
ways. The teacher may have considered it his duty to over-articulate
his words, to pause before each word, and to speak under the normal
speed of five syllables per second. In this case the student will have
formed the habit of understanding no form of speech other than this
artificialized type. The capacity for understanding normal, rapid, and
even under-articulated speech can only be developed by exercise in
listening to such speech, and he will not have had this exercise.

The elementary programme may also have been drawn up in such a way as
to preclude the study of irregular forms. If this has been the case,
the student, unprepared for irregularities, will not know how to deal
with them, and his rate of progress will be correspondingly diminished
when they occur in more advanced work.

These are some of the bad habits, positive and negative, which will
result from an unsound elementary course; these will be some of the
fruits of early lessons which have not been based on the essential
principles of language-teaching.

One of the functions of an elementary course is to enable the student
to make use, even if only in a rudimentary way, of the language he is
learning. It is therefore maintained by some that any form whatever of
teaching which leads to such result may be considered as satisfactory.
On these grounds it might be urged that, as pidgin-speech is better
than no speech at all, we should at the outset aim at pidgin, and leave
it to the more advanced stage to convert this type of speech into the
normal variety as used by the natives.

But those who may hold this view forget that the elementary course has
a second and more important function, viz. so to prepare the student
that his subsequent rate of progress shall constantly increase.

The quantity of matter contained in even the everyday language is
great--greater than most of us generally imagine. Not only are there
thousands of words, but the majority of these consist of a group of
allied forms, declensional, conjugational, and derivative. Very many
words also stand for two, three, or more different meanings; moreover,
the meaning of any word is influenced by the presence of other words in
the same sentence. Were the beginner able to see in advance the full
extent of the work that lies before him, he might abandon his task at
the outset.

The work of assimilating this enormous mass of language-stuff will
certainly never be accomplished on retail lines; it will not be done
by mere efforts of analysis, synthesis, and eye-work. Unless the rate
of progress increases continuously, unless the principle of gradation
is observed strictly, there is no prospect of the student gaining that
mastery of the language which is his aim.

It is the elementary stage, long or short, which will prepare the
student for this increasing rate of progress, and an elementary
course which has not so prepared the student cannot be said to have
accomplished its purpose. It is during the elementary stage that we
turn out the good or the bad worker. The function of the first lessons
is not only to teach the language, but, more important still, _to teach
the student how to learn_.

When we have instilled into him the habits of correct observation, of
using his ears, of using his capacities for unconscious assimilation,
of forming direct associations--in short, when we have taught him how
to learn--the subsequent stages may safely be left to the student and
to nature. Let us take care of the elementary stage, and the advanced
stage will take care of itself.



CHAPTER VI

THE PRINCIPLES OF LANGUAGE-TEACHING


The art of method-writing (or of course-designing, which is not very
different) is in its infancy; it has all the marks of the early or
even primitive stage; it is in a state of slow evolution comparable
to that which characterized the gradual perfecting of mechanical
inventions and devices such as the typewriter, the bicycle, or the
calculating machine. In the early stages of each of these (and many
similar things) each model was more or less rudimentary and clumsy.
A dozen different inventors working individually produced a dozen
different machines; although all designed to accomplish the same work,
the means adopted in each case differed fundamentally. In 1890 it was
possible to distinguish even at a distance the make of any particular
bicycle. At the present day we can still see great differences of
structure between the different makes of typewriters and calculating
machines. As time goes on, however, we notice a gradual convergence
of types; one inventor profits by the work of others; in spite of the
laws of patent, certain improvements are copied or adapted, individual
defects are gradually eliminated and devices or dispositions which have
proved their worth are adopted. The tendency is always towards the
more perfect type, the more efficient apparatus; and the path towards
perfection is marked by an ever-growing convergence of types. The
ideal appears to be reached when there is practically no scope for
further improvements; by that time the theoretical principles have
been worked out and have become common property; what divergences
do continue to exist are not concerned with essentials, they are
merely variations of equal value. Were we to ask a hundred different
bicycle-makers or boat-builders to design what they considered an ideal
model, the hundred resultant models would be for all practical purposes
identical.

Now, if we asked a hundred different language-teachers to design what
each considered an ideal course or text-book, the result at the present
day would certainly be a hundred different courses. They would differ
in every conceivable way; most of them would differ from the others
fundamentally. This would prove that the art in question is in a very
early stage; it would prove that few or no fundamental principles
are generally recognized. If, however, at some date in the distant
future we were to make the same request, restricting our invitation
to those who will have made a special study of the subject, to those
who will have been striving towards perfection, we should probably
find no great degree of diversity in the treatment; we should see the
converging tendency at work, and should gather that the fundamental
principles were beginning to stand out and to be respected. In the yet
more distant future the answer to our request might take the form of
a hundred manuscripts, all essentially the same, and differing only
in non-essential details; we should then know that the fundamental
principles had been established and had been accepted, but by that time
none but experts in the subject will ever venture to carry out such
highly technical work.

Much time will probably elapse before we arrive at this desirable state
of things; much error will have to be eliminated and much experimental
work will have to be accomplished. We shall have to ascertain exactly
what does take place when we learn, and exactly what are the mental
processes involved. We shall then have to grope about and feel our
way, adopting and rejecting, modifying and adapting, improving and
perfecting. We shall have to co-ordinate our efforts so that each may
profit by the success or failure of fellow-workers; we shall have to
experiment under all sorts of conditions, with all sorts of learners,
and with all sorts of languages. There are distinct signs to-day that
this kind of co-operation is coming about. We see, for instance, that
the branch of language-study concerned with pronunciation is already
far advanced in the experimental stage. For years past phoneticians
have been busily engaged in research work; at first working apart,
they are now coming together and pooling their efforts, each profiting
by the discoveries of the others. A universal terminology is coming
into existence; a universal phonetic alphabet is well on its way; the
principles of phonetics and of phonetic transcription are developing
rapidly, and the inevitable experts’ quarrels are becoming more
and more confined to matters of detail and to non-essentials. The
remarkable advance in this comparatively new science is one of the most
hopeful signs of progress, and a pledge of eventual perfection.

A similar advance in the sister sciences such as grammar and
semantics is not yet apparent, but there are signs that ere long the
many isolated workers in these domains will be able to do what the
phoneticians did twenty or thirty years ago; they will enlist new
workers, they will open up the field of research, they will draw up,
first tentatively and then decisively, the broad principles on which
the experimental and constructive work will repose, there will be
co-ordinated and co-operative effort in many countries, and we shall
witness the coming into existence of the general science of linguistics.

In the meantime, the subject is engaging the attention of
psychologists. Strangely enough, the psychologists, whose function
it is to ascertain how we learn, have not been consulted by writers
of language-courses, and few of them have ever intervened in the
matter. Each language-teacher has had to feel his way as best he
could, proceeding empirically, dabbling in psychology, which meant
that he did not always apply and often misinterpreted whatever
principles of the subject he may have picked up. There are signs that
speech-psychologists are about to co-ordinate their efforts with
those of the phoneticians and with the experience of those who are
actively engaged in making their language-teaching more efficient. We
can point to more than one centre both in England and abroad where
this co-operation is in its initial stage, and once this co-operation
becomes an accomplished fact progress will be very rapid, and the
progress will be sound. The work of Sweet, of Jespersen, and of de
Saussure (to cite only three of our modern leaders) has already paved
the way for the new and growing contingent of workers who are prepared
to take up the threads and to weave them together in the fabric of the
future.

What are the principles of language-study so far evolved? What are the
fundamental axioms so far postulated? Do they give us the impression
of soundness? Do they appear to us to be reasonable? Do they bear the
aspect of finality? We shall judge. We shall endeavour to formulate
the leading principles which have resulted from long periods of
experimental work so far carried on by individual workers. The list
will probably not be exhaustive, nor will the items be presented in
that perfectly logical sequence which the future reserves for it. It
will, however, seek to embody the largest number of important precepts
under the smallest number of headings, in order that we may see in a
concise form something which is still evolving and progressing towards
further efficiency and simplicity. We purposely omit from the list
certain minor principles and modes of application, nor can particular
details connected with the study of particular languages be well
included in the present work.

At the present day nine essential principles seem to stand out fairly
clearly, and may provisionally be named as follows:

  (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 spontaneous
capacities 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 sides in 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.



CHAPTER VII

INITIAL PREPARATION


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 an _art_ and not a _science_;
to become proficient in an _art_ is to acquire the capacity for
_doing_ something; to become proficient in a _science_ is to acquire
_knowledge_ concerning 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 ‘she
went.’ By the method of theory he will remember that past actions are
generally expressed by the French _passé indéfini_ (or _perfect_); 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 infinitive _aller_ the past participle
_allé_; theory will also tell him that this particular verb requires
the auxiliary _être_ and not _avoir_, and that the present tense third
person singular of _être_ is _est_. If he is writing the sentence, he
must remember that the participle must in this case agree with the
subject and be spelt _allée_.

By the method of practice he will merely reproduce by imitation the
sentence _elle 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
termed _the 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 is the term _trial and error_ an 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 of
_accuracy_ (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 of _bad_
habits 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 fairly evident 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 by _é_. 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 French _é_
by the English _ay_. If this is too unsatisfactory he will strive to
modify his _ay_ until it seems to resemble sufficiently the required
sound. Similarly, he will substitute for French _au_, _u_, or _on_,
English _o_ (as in ‘boat’), _ew_ (as in ‘new’), and _ong_.

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 acquire _new_ habits. 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 the _right_ previously acquired habit, that is to say,
the _nearest_ native 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 is
_unconscious assimilation_; we learn without knowing that we are
learning. What we therefore have to do is to train ourselves (or our
students) _consciously_ to learn _unconsciously_; 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 word _via_ the 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-perceptions and 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]

[1] It will be preferable for these to be ‘nonsense words,’ that is
to say, artificial words with no meaning, for if real known words are
articulated to us we may possibly write down not the sounds that we
really hear but some sort of ingenious phonetic transliteration of the
orthographic form of the word.

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 the _ears_ and 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 unfamiliar
combinations. We are shown how to convert voiced into voiceless sounds
and _vice 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 term _imitation_ is not adequate to express the
process by which he should work; what we require is absolute _mimicry_.
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 reproduction of what you
imagine to be my standard of pronunciation; go further and mimic _me_.”

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 in _reproducing 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 be
gained 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 which we 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 by _reading_ instead of _listening_, but this will only
be after we have become proficient in reproducing what we _hear_. 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.

[2] Victor Egger, _La Parole intérieure_: “Souvent ce que nous
appelons _entendre_ comprend un commencement d’articulation
silencieuse, des mouvements faibles, ébauchés, dans l’appareil vocal”
(Ribot).

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 concrete to 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 (_oui_ or _non_, _ja_ or _nein_, 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 systematic _questionnaire_ exercises 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 has been 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.



CHAPTER VIII

HABIT-FORMING AND HABIT-ADAPTING


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 a
_science_, by studying the _theory_; but proficiency in the _use_ of
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 our lips 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. One set 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 years is 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 word _chauve-souris_ it is not necessary
to point out that this is literally equivalent to ‘bald-mouse’; and
if we tell our student that _ça se comprend_ really means ‘that
understands itself,’ we are telling him something which is not true,
and something that will cause him needless perplexity. _Hauptstadt_ is
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 a flat 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 sound _é_ the English student persists in replacing it by some
form of the English _ay_; conversely, the French student of English
tends to replace the English _ay_ by the French _é_. Most of these
acts of substitution are illegitimate; French _eu_ is a very poor
substitute for English _u_ in _but_, the English word _air_ is a mere
caricature of the French word _air_; of the six sounds contained in
the word _thoroughly_ [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 efforts are not all
misplaced; some foreign sounds _are_ actually identical with some
native sounds, some foreign constructions _are_ actually parallel with
some native constructions, and some foreign words and expressions _do_
possess 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. French _a_ in _patte_ is frequently not far removed
from a perfectly English variety of _u_ in _cut_, but the average
Frenchman pronounces _cut_ with the French vowel _eu_ in _veuve_, and
the average Englishman pronounces _patte_ either with the vowel of
_pat_ or of _part_. The last syllable of _pleasure_ is practically
identical with the French word _je_, but the average Frenchman does
not know this, and substitutes some sort of French _ure_ or _eure_.
The French words _souhaite_, _semelle_, _laine_, _dialecte_ are very
similar to the (real or imaginary) English words _sweat_, _smell_,
_len_, _d’yullect_, but the average English student does not know
this, and uses pronunciations such as _soohate_, _semell_, _lane_,
_dee-ah-lect_ instead.

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 sentence _Je marcherai à la
gare_ on the wrong model; if he must use an English habit at all, he
should in this case proceed from _I shall go on foot to the station_
and not from _I 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]

[3] A typical example has just been noticed by the writer: a Dutch
student’s pronunciation of ‘know it’ was almost unintelligible, but
when advised to replace this rendering by the Dutch word _nooit_ he
produced a very close approximation to the English pronunciation.



CHAPTER IX

ACCURACY


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 imply
_conformity 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 use
_cela_ instead of _ça_ and every time we use the _passé défini_ (or
whatever the present name of this tense may be) or the _imparfait 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’chose_ may 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, then _de bon pain_, _ce n’est pas cela_, _il m’a dit
quelque chose_ will 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 as _To whom did you give it?_ _What
have you?_ _It is I_, _In the circumstances_.

When, therefore, we use the terms _inaccuracy_, _mistake_, _fault_,
_wrong form_, _error_, etc., we shall always mean _something 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,
or _vice 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.

[4] Or, in some cases, by natives when speaking to foreigners.

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 correct form. 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 terms _accuracy_ and _inaccuracy_, 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 in _sounds_. 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 Chapter VII) will tend to make
him accurate in this respect.

(_b_) There may be accuracy or inaccuracy in the use of _stress_ and
_intonation_. 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 when
speaking 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 in _combining 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 say _la table_ (and not _le table_) as it is to say
_latitude_ (and not _letitude_); it is as easy to learn _je ne le lui
ai pas donné_ as 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 of _inflexions_.
It is as important to learn the right inflected forms of a word as to
learn the uninflected word. If our methods are right, it is as easy
to learn the word _enverrai_ as it is to learn the word _envoyer_, and
far easier to learn _enverrai_ than _envoyerai_. 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 in _meanings_. The meaning
of a word may vary considerably according to its context. _Open_ in
the sense of _open the door_ has not the same meaning as _open_ in the
sense of _open 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, and _vice 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 of accuracy, 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 of _trial 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 Chapter I, 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 exist methods, 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.



CHAPTER X

GRADATION


_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 be divided 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 are _useful in themselves_ on account of their intrinsic
meaning, and words which are _useful 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 verb _to afford_, let him begin
by using it in such sentences as _I can’t afford it_, and not in such
examples as _It affords me the necessary opportunity_. If we are
teaching French, let us first use _ciel_ in the sense of _sky_ and
leave the idea of _heaven_ to a later stage. _I may go_ has more than
one meaning, but let us first teach it in the sense of _Perhaps I
shall go_; the other varieties are not of pressing importance. When we
introduce _but_, let us associate it with its usual meaning and forget
for the moment that semantic variety which is equivalent to _except_.

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 the _word_ should be treated before the _sentence_. 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 verb
_to comprehend_ before the verb _to 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 the _written_
form of a language should be studied before its _spoken_ form. 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 have become 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 as _dog_ or _sheep_ should be preceded by
_bow-wow_ or _baa-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 as possible 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 really _heard_ the 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 as _und’stand_; instead of reproducing
the exaggeratedly shortened form as represented above in two syllables,
he will say _understand_ in 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 word _turn_ pronounced
in Southern English (_i.e._ without an _r_) and he will insert an _r_
because he imagines that he heard one. The sentence _il doit venir_ is
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 word _veneer_).

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 written form 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 called _immediate 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 called
_prolonged 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 Hungarian word
_szenvedni_, meaning _to 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 say _to suffer_ in Hungarian? [´sɛnvɛdni.]
Quite correct; we have reproduced the word from immediate memory.
To-morrow or the day after let us ask ourselves how they express _to
suffer_ in Hungarian. If we are able to answer correctly without
referring to the book, it will be by dint of our _prolonged 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 perhaps laughter 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 term _drill-work_ may 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.

Now _free work_ in all its varied forms, such as free conversation,
free translation, and free composition, differs greatly from
drill-work, and we can all testify to the ludicrous results these forms
of work yield when performed by one who has had no previous drilling.
If the student has not been put through a proper course of drill-work,
all his efforts at free work will be based on that most unnatural and
vicious of processes--conventional translation from the mother-tongue.
The undrilled French student will be speaking and writing not English
as we understand the term, but anglicized French. Having formed no
English language habits, he will cast all his thoughts in the French
mould, and when the exact English equivalents to his French words and
phrases are missing he will break down.

Free work without the essential preparation means faulty work,
uncertain and erratic work; it means the formation of nearly all the
bad habits which characterize the average student and which mar his
work.



CHAPTER XI

PROPORTION


In language-study as in any other branch of activity we must observe a
sense of proportion; we must pay due attention to the various aspects
of the question in order to ensure a harmonious whole. It is possible
to devote too much time and effort to a given aspect or branch; this
is the case when such time and effort are spent at the expense of an
aspect or branch of equal or of greater importance. It is necessary,
for instance, to give much attention to the understanding of the
language as spoken rapidly and idiomatically by natives; but if this
occupies the whole of our time we shall be able to do nothing else, and
shall neither learn to speak, nor to read, nor to write. This would be
an obvious violation of the principle of proportion. It is necessary to
know something of the grammar of the language, but if we devote every
lesson of a three years’ course to the study of grammar we shall again
be offending against this principle.

We tend to give too much attention to things which interest us, and too
little to those things in which we are not particularly interested.
Such inequality of treatment is more particularly apt to occur in these
days of specialization; the intonation specialist thinks of little but
intonation, and tends to think that everything else is of secondary
importance; the phonetician is so keenly alive to the immense
importance of ear-training and of correct articulation that he may tend
to dismiss all other things as trivialities; the grammarian grinds away
at declensions and conjugations regardless of the existence of such
things as sounds and tones; the semantician is so intent on meanings
that all has to be sacrificed to his special branch.

The most typical example of disproportionate treatment is, of course,
that afforded by the orthographist of the old school; for him language
is nothing but a set of spelling rules; pronunciation for him is the
interpretation of spellings; grammar is a branch of orthography,
and meanings themselves are largely dependent on the way a word is
spelt. In the present-day reaction against the orthographist we may
expect a swing to the other extreme, and we may find schoolmasters
welcoming spelling mistakes as the signs of a healthy tendency towards
phoneticism.

Already the reaction against the over-use and abuse of translation
exercises has resulted in an almost equally grave over-use and abuse of
the ‘direct’ method.

There are, however, times when a seemingly undue proportion of
attention should be directed to certain things, notably when we have
to react against a vicious tendency. If our student is too keenly
interested in orthography and oblivious to the importance of phonetics,
we may be justified in excluding orthography from his programme.
If he is morbidly interested in grammar and analysis, we may find
it necessary to give him overdoses of semantics and unconscious
assimilation in order to re-establish some sort of equilibrium. With
the student who refuses to learn a word until he sees it written we
must for some time make an exclusive and seemingly disproportionate use
of oral work and phonetic writing.

The principle of proportion, then, does not necessarily imply
_equality_ of treatment nor even a fixed standard of ratios; it simply
means that all the items in the whole range of subjects and aspects
must receive an appropriate degree of attention, so that the student’s
knowledge of them may ultimately form a harmonious whole.

It is impossible to observe the principle of proportion without having
in view the ultimate aim of the student. If his sole object is to
become a master of colloquial expression, our sense of proportion
will tell us to exclude in a very large measure the study of the
conventional orthography.

The ultimate aim of most students is fourfold:

  (_a_) To understand the language when spoken rapidly by natives.

  (_b_) To speak the language in the manner of natives.

  (_c_) To understand the language as written by natives (_i.e._ to
  _read_ the language).

  (_d_) To write the language in the manner of natives.

Each of these four aspects requires special methods of teaching. A
method or device which will rapidly enable the student to understand
the language when spoken will be inefficacious as a method for teaching
him to produce a written composition. No amount of composition work,
on the other hand, will teach him how to understand what is rapidly
uttered by natives. If (as is freely admitted) a command of the spoken
language is a great help towards acquiring command of the written, the
converse is not the case; proficiency in written work does not imply
progress in oral work. To pay too much or too little attention to any
of these four aspects is a violation of the principle of proportion.

The principle may also be violated by paying too much or too little
attention to any of the five chief branches of practical linguistics:
phonetics, orthography, word-building, sentence-building, and
semantics. Let us pass them in review in order to make quite sure that
we understand the scope of each and have properly discriminated between
them.

_Phonetics_ teaches us how to recognize and how to make the sounds of
which the language is composed; it teaches us the difference between
two or more sounds which resemble each other, and between a given
foreign sound and its nearest native equivalent.

_Orthography_ (with which we may associate orthoepy) teaches us how to
spell what we have already learnt by ear; it also teaches us how to
pronounce what we have learnt by eye from an ordinary orthographic text.

_Word-building_ (accidence and etymology) teaches us inflexions,
prefixes, and suffixes, and how to use them, how to form plurals
from singulars, accusatives from nominatives, finite tenses from
infinitives; most of the mysteries of declension and conjugation are
included under this heading; the collecting of word-families pertains
to this branch.

_Sentence-building_ (syntax and analysis) teaches us how to combine
words into sentences, how to form compound tenses, phrases, and
clauses; it teaches us the places of the various sentence-components,
the nature and use of concord or agreement; it shows us the differences
between regular and irregular sentences. When properly systematized
(according to a special science to which the name of ‘ergonics’ has
been given) this particular branch of linguistics shows us how to form
the largest possible number of sentences with the fewest words.

_Semantics_ teaches us the meaning of words, of inflexions, and of
compounds; it shows us how to transform our thoughts into language, to
select the most appropriate word or form, and to interpret correctly
what we hear and read. It is more especially this branch which teaches
us the differences in style and dialect, and enables us to distinguish
the colloquial from the classical and to keep either from contaminating
the other.

If we are to judge by the average teacher and the average
language-course, the principle of proportion is usually violated by
teaching:

  (_a_) No phonetics at all.
  (_b_) Too much orthography or orthoepy.
  (_c_) Too much word-building.
  (_d_) Too little sentence-building.
  (_e_) Practically no semantics.

The principle of proportion may also be observed or violated in the
selection of vocabularies and of grammatical material. To include in
early lessons words or forms which are comparatively rare, archaic, and
useless, while excluding some of the commonest and most useful items
of language-material, is an offence not only against the principle
of gradation but also against the principle of proportion. Too
little attention also is usually paid to ensuring a just proportion
between the various parts of speech. There is a fairly well defined
series of laws which determine the relative number of nouns, verbs,
and adjectives occurring in a given vocabulary radius, and with the
growing attention which is being given to this sort of statistical
work these laws are standing out more clearly and are coming to be
better understood. We have also to note a regrettable tendency to
give preference in vocabularies to words of special utility (such as
names of plants, animals, parts of the body, tools, implements, and
such-like semi-technical words) and to neglect unduly words of general
utility, words which may occur in any context and which are common to
any subject. This is a particularly grave case of disproportion when we
consider that the bulk of any given text (probably from 80 per cent. to
90 per cent. of it) is made up of these general words.

Proportion must be observed in determining the respective quantities
of drill-work and free work, of translation-work and ‘direct work,’ of
intensive reading and extensive reading, of chorus-work and individual
work needed; throughout the whole range of the subject there are
possibilities of good or of bad proportion. It is for the teacher or
for the designer of language-courses to see that the principle is
reasonably well observed.



CHAPTER XII

CONCRETENESS


Such expressions as _for instance_, _for example_, or _here is a case
in point_ are fairly common in our speech. Whenever we hear somebody
explaining something we may be certain that one of these expressions
will occur not once but many times. When we ourselves set out to
explain anything we may be quite sure that in a very few moments we
shall use one of the expressions in question, and indeed our certainty
is justified in almost every case. The reason for using such phrases is
quite clear; every time we do so it is because we feel instinctively
that we have just made a statement which is not sufficiently explicit;
we are more or less aware that we have expressed something in terms
rather too abstract, and we wish to reduce our statement to more
concrete terms; we feel the necessity for _concreteness_. There is
a similar reason for using such expressions as _in other terms_,
_in other words_, or _that is to say_. We feel in these cases that
an explanation just given is wanting in lucidity, and we add a
supplementary explanation in order to make our point more concrete.

The substance of the principle of concreteness is contained in the
maxim, “Example is better than precept”; we intuitively know this to be
true, and our own experience confirms our judgment; we remember on how
many occasions a few typical examples have been of greater help to our
understanding than the best-worded definitions or the most detailed
descriptions. Psychologists confirm us in our impression and assure
us that it is correct; indeed, one of the fundamental principles of
the psychology of study is that we must work from the concrete to the
abstract.

Let us take a concrete example to serve as an illustration. One of the
things we have to teach the French student of English is that anterior
duration is expressed in English by the use of the perfect tenses (if
possible in their progressive form) and not by the use of the ordinary
non-perfect tenses as in French, and that _depuis_ or its equivalent
is not merely _since_. The whole point can be expressed more or less
abstractly by the following formula:

            _French_                             _English_

  Non-perfect tense + _depuis_     }
    + measure of duration          }
              _or_                 }   { Corresponding perfect
   _Il y_ + (non-perfect tense of  } = {   (progressive) tense + (_for_)
    _avoir_) + measure of duration }   {   + measure of duration.
    + _que_ + non-perfect tense    }

  Non-perfect tense + _depuis_     }   { Corresponding perfect
    + term signifying initial      } = {   (progressive) tense +
    moment of duration             }   {   _since_ + term signifying
                                       {   initial moment of duration.

Now this is a very concise formula and probably covers the whole of
the ground. But it is expressed in such abstract terms that we cannot
expect the average student to grasp it, still less to apply it in his
speech. We can concretize it by furnishing one or two typical examples.
We can say: “Look at the clock, it’s just half-past twelve--we started
this lesson at twelve, didn’t we? Well, it means that we have been
working since twelve o’clock; we have been working for half an hour.
How long have we been working? For half an hour. Since when have we
been working? Since twelve o’clock. Repeat that after me. Repeat it
again. Now just note that we say _We have been working_, not _We work_
or _We are working_. Now, then, how do you say _Nous travaillons depuis
midi_? And _Nous travaillons depuis une demi-heure_? Note that _nous
sommes_ sometimes becomes _we have been_.”

That would be a fairly concrete (but not ideally concrete) way of
teaching the point in question. The average student would grasp the
point, and the conscientious student would probably observe it and
incorporate it into his usage.

But the principle of concreteness goes beyond this; it does not merely
state that examples of every rule should be given, it specifies various
degrees and various kinds of concreteness. An example in itself is
more concrete than a rule, but one example may be more concrete than
another; let us therefore choose the more concrete examples, that is
to say, those which will create the strongest semantic associations.
Concreteness will be the chief determining factor in the choice of
the early vocabularies; it will tend to make us give a preference to
words and compounds lending themselves to ‘direct’ work. It will not,
however, be the sole factor, for if we decided to make an exclusive use
of such words it would be at the expense of the principle of proportion.

Here is another example of what is implied by concreteness. It often
occurs that a student will learn how to construct a sentence--indeed,
he may even memorize it--and yet fail to realize that it is a real
living sentence, an integral part of his linguistic repertory ready
for immediate use. He may have learnt the construction _Would you
mind ----ing_ and be able to translate it backwards and forwards and
invariably to quote it in his list of compounds requiring the use
of the _ing_-form, and yet, instead of using it in actual practice,
may replace it by _Would you be so kind as to_ or some such stilted
equivalent. In such cases we may be sure that the principle of
concreteness has not been sufficiently observed.

The ‘direct methodists’ of the more extreme type interpret concreteness
in a curious way, and identify it with the non-translation principle
and with the principle of the exclusion of the mother-tongue as a
vehicular language. They tend to think that by keeping English out of
the French lesson, the teacher causes French to be acquired concretely.
In certain cases this is true, but there are probably far more contrary
cases.

In the example relating to the expression of anterior duration the
concreteness consists very largely in pointing out the difference of
usage in the two languages. In order to make the construction _Would
you mind_ perfectly concrete to a Frenchman, we must insist on its
semantic equivalence to his _Est-ce que ça ne vous ferait rien de_. One
of the things we must do to concretize the difference between _I did
so_, _So I did_, and _So did I_, is to furnish the student with his
respective native equivalents.

There are four ways and four ways only of furnishing a student with the
meaning of given foreign units:

(1) _By immediate association_, as when we point to the object or a
picture of the object designated by a noun or pronoun, when we perform
the action designated by a verb, when we point to a real example of the
quality designated by an adjective, or when we demonstrate in similar
ways that which is designated by a preposition of place or certain
categories of adverbs.

(2) _By translation_, as when we give the nearest native equivalent or
equivalents of the foreign unit.

(3) _By definition_, as when we give a synonym or paraphrase of the
word or word-group or a description of that which is designated by it.

(4) _By context_, as when we embody the unit in sentences which will
make its meaning clear (_e.g._ January is the _first_ month of the
year; London is the _capital_ of England).

These four methods or modes of ‘semanticizing’ a unit are here given
in order of what are generally their relative degrees of concreteness.
There may, however, be some cases in which translation will be more
concrete than immediate association. Translation is not in itself
necessarily ‘indirect’ (or ‘inconcrete,’ as we should prefer to express
it); it may be relatively indirect when compared with good examples
of immediate association, but it is undoubtedly more ‘direct’ than a
cumbrous or vague definition, or an obscure context.

The following precepts may serve as concrete examples of the way we can
carry the principles of concreteness into practice:

(1) Let the example precede or even replace the rule. A well-chosen
example or set of examples may so completely embody the rule that the
rule itself will be superfluous.

(2) Give _many_ examples to each important rule. We have noted that
the suggested treatment of the problem of anterior duration was not
an ideal one. In order to make it ideal we should have taken a second
example (e.g. _How long have you been learning English?_) and still
more examples (e.g. _How long have you been in this room?--been living
in England?--been living at your present address? Have you been sitting
here since twelve o’clock or since a quarter past twelve? How long has
France been a republic?_). Too often the teacher imagines that one
example constitutes a complete exposition of a given point: whereas
in reality it is by finding (consciously or unconsciously) the common
element in many examples that we come to grasp the usage exemplified.

(3) When teaching or alluding to the peculiarities connected with
nouns, choose as examples the nouns which are the names of various
objects actually in the room, and in each case point to or handle the
object in question. Handling pencils, pens, and books while talking
about them very much facilitates the grasping of principles of
declension.

(4) When teaching or alluding to the peculiarities connected with
verbal forms, choose as examples verbs such as _take_, _put_, _see_,
_go_, _come_, _sit_, _stand_, etc.--that is to say, verbs that can
be ‘acted.’ Present, past, and future tenses are much more easily
distinguished and retained if the teacher illustrates them by actions.
(_In a moment I shall take the book_--_Je prendrai le livre. J’ouvrirai
le livre_--_J’ouvre le livre_--_J’ai ouvert le livre._) If a Frenchman
cannot grasp the difference between _to go in_ and _to come in_, it is
because the explanations given to him are lacking in concreteness.

(5) When teaching or alluding to the peculiarities connected with
adjectives, choose as examples such words as _black_, _white_, _large_,
_small_, _round_, _square_, etc., and avoid the traditional _good_,
_bad_, _beautiful_, _idle_, _diligent_, etc.

(6) When teaching or alluding to the peculiarities and semantic values
of prepositions choose as far as possible prepositions such as _in_,
_on_, _under_, _over_, _in front of_, _behind_, _beside_, etc. Useful
work in this connexion can be done with a match and a matchbox (_in the
box_, _on the box_, _under the box_, etc., etc.).

(7) Choose as many real examples as possible, examples suggested by
present and actual conditions. Do not teach the mechanism of direct and
indirect objects by allusions to imaginary farmers giving imaginary
oats to imaginary horses, but give books, pencils, and pens to the
students and make them give them to you, and then talk to them about
what you are doing. Do not illustrate the active and passive voices by
reference to men beating boys and boys being beaten, but speak about
writing words and words being written or about speaking English and
English being spoken.

(8) In as many cases as possible cause the student to make active use
of any form he has just learnt. When you have taught him to say _I
don’t understand_ give him an opportunity of using the sentence. If you
teach him to say _It’s time to stop_ see that he duly makes use of the
expression at the end of the lesson.

(9) Encourage gestures, even in the case of English students. In the
earlier stages they should shake their heads when uttering a negative
sentence, raise their eyebrows when using an interrogative form, and
use other appropriate gestures for such words as _here_, _there_, _me_,
_that_, _these_, etc.

In short, observe the principle of concreteness by using examples, many
examples, cumulative examples, real examples, and examples embodying
the personal interest.



CHAPTER XIII

INTEREST


We have laid great stress on the necessity for drill-like work, for
mechanical work, for exercises calculated to secure automatism, for
habit-forming types of work. It has even seemed at times that we take a
malicious pleasure in pillorying and condemning precisely those forms
of work which are generally the most attractive to the average student.
“The writer of this book,” some may say, “takes a savage delight in
reproving teacher and student whenever they contemplate work of an
interesting nature, heads them off whenever they approach anything
resembling intellectual work, and turns them into channels of routine
and repetition. He positively gloats over words like ‘automaticity,’
‘passivity,’ ‘mechanism,’ or ‘unconscious assimilation,’ and apparently
glories in the theory that language-learning like life itself should be
‘one demd horrid grind.’”

We readily plead guilty to a firm insistence on habit-forming exercises
and drills, but continue to urge in mitigation that the practical
study of language, the mastery of any form of actual speech, is a
habit-forming process and little else. We must have the courage and
honesty to face facts as we find them: a language cannot be mastered
by learning interesting things about that language, but only by
assimilating the material of which that language is made up.

But our attitude, far from being a pessimistic one, is positively
optimistic. We are prepared to deny most emphatically that good
drill-work _is_ dull and uninteresting, and if some teachers make it
so it is our duty to tell them not to. Those who have seen the sort of
lessons that embody the forms of teaching which result from the rigid
observance of these principles all testify that they are ‘live’ lessons
(to use the term they most generally employ), that the students are
keen and the teachers enthusiastic.

It is only too evident that every lesson must be made as interesting
as is compatible with pedagogic soundness. Few people learn anything
well unless they are interested in what they are learning. Hope of
reward and fear of punishment are certainly stimuli to work, but very
poor stimuli compared with that represented by interest. If the method
is the machinery of language-study (or any other study for the matter
of that), then interest is the motive power. Be the clock ever so
well and ingeniously constructed, it will not go without some sort of
mainspring; be the method ever so efficient as a method, it will not
work unless the student is interested. All these statements are of
course truisms and are accepted as axiomatic; the trouble comes when we
discuss the means by which interest can be induced and maintained, for
we are not all in agreement on this point.

There is, too, the question of intrinsic and extrinsic interest; the
subject may be interesting in itself or it may derive an artificial
sort of interest from some attendant circumstance, such as the hope of
reward and fear of non-success and all that that may imply.

But a point arises at the outset which deserves our attention. A
fallacy exists in connexion with interest, a fallacy which is the
cause of much error and of much bad teaching. This fallacy when
reduced to the absurd consists in saying, “We can make a subject of
study interesting by changing the subject of study.” Now obviously
it is absurd to say that we can make the study of French interesting
by teaching geometry in its stead, or that we can make arithmetic
interesting by replacing the arithmetic lesson by a history lesson. And
yet this is the sort of thing that frequently does take place in some
form or other.

It is necessary that the student shall learn how to understand spoken
French, spoken English, or spoken Pekingese; it is assumed that the
necessary phonetic and oral repetition work will be uninteresting, so
we change the subject and teach the student to _read_ French, English,
or Mandarin Chinese, or to analyse these languages or to construct
sentences in them by synthesis. Now reading and analysis and synthesis
may to some people be more interesting than ear-training and oral
memorizing, but whether this is the case or not it is certainly beyond
the point. If we wish to learn to read, let us read; if we wish to do
analytic and synthetic work, let us analyse and synthesize; but if the
object of our study happens to be the command of the _spoken_ language,
it is no use to amuse ourselves by doing work which does not further
our aim.

“Parrot-work is so monotonous, uninspiring, and uninteresting: let us
rather translate the work of some author into our mother-tongue.” “I
don’t find the study of the colloquial language elevating: I prefer to
work at the classical.” Very well, we will not quarrel about tastes,
but we will ask you to make it quite clear what you are setting out to
learn and what your object really is; when we have ascertained that, we
will see how we can make your path an easy and pleasant one. A journey
to London may or may not be an interesting one, but if your object is
to get to London it is no use taking a ticket to the Isle of Wight or
to the Highlands of Scotland, however interesting such journeys may be.

The general tendency among educationalists to-day is towards
interesting methods, methods involving the intelligent use of the
intelligence, methods which develop the reasoning capacities, methods
which form the judgment, which proceed from the trivial, familiar, and
known towards the more profound, unfamiliar, and unknown. Geography
is no longer a process of learning lists of place-names by heart,
history is no longer represented as a catalogue of dates, arithmetic
is taught by playing with cubes, chemistry is presented as a series
of experiments in the laboratory, botany and geology are studied in
the field. The old cramming process is being replaced by the method
of discovery; the teacher furnishes the documents and the students
discover the rules; the teacher suggests the problems and the pupils
set their wits to work and find out the solutions. All of which is very
interesting and, on the whole, very good.

There is, however, this danger: these interesting and mind-developing
methods do not tend towards automatism and habit-formation; they are,
indeed, not intended to foster any form of mechanical command.

Proficiency in shorthand cannot be gained by any method of discovery,
and the capacity for doing good and rapid work on a typewriter is not
attained by the heuristic method. Mathematics is a science, but the
absolute mastery of the multiplication table is an art and cannot be
gained by the exclusive practice of playing with cubes.

“The memorizing of the multiplication table is a wearisome grind; let
us therefore make it interesting by teaching in its place the theory
of numeration!” “Practising scales on the piano is monotonous and
inartistic; let us therefore abolish such finger-gymnastics and replace
all such work by the theory of harmony!” “Learning sentences by heart
and performing these drills are so tedious; let us therefore reject
these forms of work, and replace them by analysing a text or by trying
our hand at literary composition!”

Now, as we have seen and proved to our satisfaction, language-learning
is essentially a habit-forming process, is an _art_ and not a
_science_, and if we insist on considering as a science what is an art
we are confusing the issues and creating a breeding-ground for all
sorts of fallacies. Linguistics is a science, language-teaching is
largely a science, but the practical study of languages is not; let us
remember this primordial fact while we are endeavouring to make our
subjects interesting.

What are the chief things making for interest? We suggest six rational
and reasonable factors calculated to produce interest if not enthusiasm
without any detriment to any of the eight other fundamental principles,
viz.:

  (1) The elimination of bewilderment.
  (2) The sense of progress achieved.
  (3) Competition.
  (4) Game-like exercises.
  (5) The right relation between teacher and student.
  (6) Variety.

(1) _The Elimination of Bewilderment._--“I can’t make out what it’s all
about! What on earth is the teacher driving at? I don’t understand
these new terms nor the use of them. What is it all for? What good is
it going to do me? I do hate this lesson!”

Have you ever heard comments of this sort? Have you ever made them
yourself? The attitude of one making such comments (either openly or
inwardly) is not a hopeful one; it gives no promise of successful work;
it shows that interest is entirely lacking. What is the cause of this
attitude, and how can we change it? Is it because the subject is too
difficult? No, surely not, for some of the most difficult subjects
may be most fascinating, even for the average student; difficulty
often adds to the attractiveness of work and may even induce interest.
Difficulty is not necessarily an unfavourable factor. But bewilderment
invariably is!

There is an immense difference between difficult work and bewildering
work; of difficulties there must necessarily be many, but of
bewilderment there should be none.

New methods often bewilder those who have become used to the old ones;
unfamiliar grammatical systems are bewildering to those who think that
one system of grammar is common to all the languages of the world.
It is disconcerting to face the fact that languages have classical
and colloquial grammars existing side by side, which grammars are
mutually exclusive in many respects; it is more especially bewildering
to those who have never made any study of colloquial language. Easy
things and easy systems are more bewildering than difficult ones
if one has already become more or less familiar with the difficult
system. To those who have wrestled for years with difficult and
tangled orthographies a phonetic system of writing, the acme of ease
and simplicity, may appear bewilderingly difficult. A good deal of
bewilderment may be ascribed to prejudice or to preconceived notions
concerning the nature of language; this is why (other things being
equal) children are generally less bewildered than adults when learning
how to use the spoken form of language; they have fewer prejudices or
even none at all.

There are two ways of eliminating bewilderment. One is to give in the
clearest possible way certain fundamental explanations whenever there
appears to be confusion in the mind of the student; the other is to
see that the programme is properly graded. Once the student grasps the
scope of the particular problem or series of problems, and once the
programme is reasonably well graded, there will be no more bewilderment
and there will be no more puzzled learners.

We might perhaps add here that there are times, strangely enough, when
the teacher finds it necessary to induce a temporary bewilderment.
Categoric and unconventional devices have occasionally to be adopted
in order to break certain undesirable associations; ‘mystery words’
and ‘mystery sentences’ often play a useful part in destroying false
associations and vicious linguistic habits. But these intentionally
created mysteries, puzzling for the time being, are not of the same
order as those hopeless and perpetual mysteries which are the cause of
so much discouragement and discomfiture.

It is a subject of debate whether we ought to use explanations at all
for the purpose of teaching anyone to use a language. Some maintain
that we should no more explain a point of theory to a schoolchild or an
adult than we should to a child of eighteen months. The young child,
it is said, learns to speak the language which he hears around him by
dint of sheer imitation; he learns no theory and would understand no
explanations; why therefore should we explain at all?

We would suggest that the chief function of explanations is to
prevent bewilderment. It may or may not be useful for a schoolchild
or an adult to know why certain things are so, why French nouns
are either masculine or feminine, why it is sometimes _avoir_ and
sometimes _être_, why we do not say in English he _comesn’t_, why we
do not say _I had better to go_, and why certain French conjunctions
require the use of the subjunctive. Appropriate explanations may
induce a more rapid rate of progress or they may not (probably in the
long run generally not), but they certainly do have the effect of
satisfying that instinctive curiosity which, if unappeased, will induce
bewilderment and so cause the student to lose interest.

We might add (although this is not pertinent to the subject under
discussion) that in the case of a ‘corrective course’ simple and
rational explanations should form an essential part of the treatment.

With regard to the second manner of eliminating the factor of
bewilderment, viz. the proper grading of the course, we would refer the
reader to the chapter dealing specifically with this subject.

(2) _The Sense of Progress Achieved._--All work becomes more
interesting when we are conscious that we have made and are making
progress in that work. That sense of discouragement which is so
inimical to interest arises when, in spite of our efforts, we seem
to be no nearer to our goal. Statistics compiled by those who have
made a special study of the psychology of learning show us that
periods frequently occur in which there is no apparent progress and
during which, as a necessary consequence, the interest of the student
diminishes. It is generally during such periods (technically called
_plateaux_) that the adult student gives up his study as a bad job and
retires from the contest.

The cause of such _plateaux_ would appear to be a defective system of
gradation; the student has overreached himself and has temporarily
absorbed more material than he can retain permanently; he has worked
too fast for his habit-forming capacities and has to mark time until
the previously acquired material has been properly assimilated.

Novelty always gives a certain amount of interest to a new subject,
and during the first period students often gain the idea that they are
making more progress than is warranted by the facts; when the novelty
wears off the reaction occurs, and a period of depression follows.

In order, therefore, to make it possible for the student always to
feel he is making progress, and thus to maintain interest and zest,
it is necessary to see that the course is properly graded, that the
repetitions are kept up regularly and systematically, and that the rate
of progression is consistently increased.

(3) _Competition._--The spirit of emulation gives zest to a study.
The fear of being outdistanced by one’s fellow-students or rivals,
the satisfaction of gaining ground on them, and the hope of becoming
or remaining the best student in the class is a stimulus not to
be despised. This is really one of the chief _raisons d’être_ for
examinations, tests, and registers of progress.

(4) _Game-like Exercises._--In the case of young students a
considerable amount of interest can be induced by making certain
forms of exercise so resemble games that the pupils do not quite know
whether they are playing or working. Games of skill such as chess are
almost indistinguishable from many subjects of scholastic study, and
many types of puzzles and problem-games are practically identical with
mathematical problems. The only danger here is that language-games
may not further the student sufficiently in the habit-forming
process; some types certainly will not; indeed, we can imagine types
of exercise-games which would tend to inhibit it. If, however, the
necessity for habit-forming is constantly present to the teacher’s
mind, it is permissible to introduce at appropriate moments forms
of exercise such as ‘action drill,’ ‘living grammar,’ or ‘sorting
exercises,’ possessing real educative value and an interest-giving
value at the same time.

(5) _The Relation between Teacher and Student._--“No, I don’t take
French lessons now. M. Untel used to be my teacher, but he went away,
and I didn’t much like the man who took his place, and so I lost
interest and stopped. The new man was all right in his way, but it
wasn’t at all the same thing as with M. Untel; he didn’t have the same
way of giving the lessons, and somehow or other I didn’t seem to get on
with him.”

“I like the French lesson; M. Untel makes it so interesting; he’s got
a nice way of explaining things, and we are never afraid of asking him
questions. He doesn’t laugh at you if you say something that sounds
silly; he understands what you’re trying to drive at, and always knows
what the trouble is. I didn’t use to like French lessons at all. We had
another master then; he always seemed to be telling you things that
you didn’t feel you wanted to know, and yet when you did want to know
something he never understood what it was you wanted to know.”

These expressions of opinion (written in colloquial English) give
us a good idea of why two students (one an adult and the other a
schoolchild) are interested in learning French when M. Untel gives the
lesson.

(6) _Variety._--A monotonous type of drill-work is performed during
an entire lesson. In the next lesson a second and different type of
monotonous drill-work is performed. The third lesson is devoted to a
third type of drill-work. A fourth lesson consists of sixty minutes of
another sort of grind. A fifth and a sixth lesson are similarly devoted
to two other sorts of mechanical work. The net result is six dull and
monotonous lessons.

Another case. Six lessons are given. Each lesson is divided into six
periods of ten minutes. Each period is devoted to a different type
of mechanical work or drill-work. The net result is six moderately
interesting lessons.

Not that any lesson should consist exclusively of drill-work or
mechanical work; there is a place in every lesson for listening to the
living language in actual use; there is a place in every lesson for
interesting explanations and for the factor of human interest, for
the use of devices which usually engage the keenest attention of the
students. If, however, there are forms of work which generally appear
less popular or less vivacious, if the repeating of word-lists and the
reciting of groups of sentences do tend towards dullness, then we can
compensate for this temporary lack of vivacity by introducing an extra
dose of variety.

A change of work is in itself a factor of interest even if the work
should not be particularly interesting; variety will relieve any
tedium which may possibly be associated with mechanical work. Let us
suppose that on one or more occasions we do find it necessary for some
particular purpose to introduce an unpopular form of exercise; we can
sandwich that exercise between two popular forms of work, and the evil
ten minutes will pass unnoticed.

This point will be treated incidentally when we come to examine
principle 9 (the multiple line of approach); we shall see what bearing
this theory has on the question of variety and the interest engendered
thereby.



CHAPTER XIV

A RATIONAL ORDER OF PROGRESSION


One of the greatest differences between the old-fashioned manner of
teaching languages and the new manner towards which we are feeling our
way is a difference in what we call ‘order of progression.’ This term
and the principle which is involved therein cannot, at the present
stage of our knowledge, be defined in very categoric terms; its
connotation is somewhat loose, for it may be applied to the general
programme of study and also to any particular item of study. In some
ways the principle seems to have a close connexion with gradation, and
yet on the whole it appears to cover other ground, for we can imagine
entirely different orders of progression, and each may be well or badly
graded.

Under this particular heading we have to consider the order in which
the various aspects and branches of a language may be dealt with. We
may conceivably work from the written to the spoken or _vice versa_;
we may start with systematic ear-training and articulation exercises
or leave these to a later stage; we may advise or we may reject the
use of a phonetic alphabet; we may teach or we may leave intonation;
we may proceed from the word towards the sentence or we may take the
sentence as our starting-point; we may exclude irregularities during
the early stages or we may include them; we may insist on a slow and
distinct pronunciation at the outset and leave abbreviations and
shortened forms to a later stage. In all these matters, and in other
cases as well, we have to consider very seriously two alternatives; we
have to weigh the respective advantages and disadvantages, remembering
always that our object is to secure rapid but permanent progress. Each
of the pairs of alternatives enumerated above has been and still is
the subject of discussion and controversy; there is much to be said
on both sides, and an argument in favour of the one side may seem
conclusive--until we have heard the argument for the other. Let us
examine each of the points we have mentioned and place the opposing
views in parallel columns; for the sake of convenience we will in each
case place the arguments of the older school on the left-hand side and
the modern answer on the right.


_Written or spoken first?_

The most stable form of speech is written speech; it does not vary from
one person to another or from one region to another as spoken language
always does. In the written form we find the essence of a language
and its treasure-house. Spoken language is a faint and attenuated
counterpart, generally more or less debased and altered by slang,
dialect, and slovenly habits of utterance.

  The only true form of speech is spoken speech; it constitutes the
  living language itself. All languages were spoken long before they
  were written. Orthographies are comparatively recent inventions, and
  have no more claim to being the essence of language than shorthand.

  The written aspect of language is artificial; the spoken aspect alone
  is pursuing the normal course of evolution, and is always freeing
  itself from archaic and useless encumbrances. The spoken language
  is a token of life, for dead languages are those which exist but in
  written form.

An unwritten language is almost a contradiction in terms, for a
language without a literature is but a barbarous jargon, primitive in
its structure, weak in vocabulary and in means of expression.

  The facts are all wrong. Most, if not all, unwritten languages so
  far investigated prove to be of a remarkable richness. The Bantu
  group, to quote one example, has an inflexional system rivalling and
  excelling those of Latin and Greek, and possesses wonderfully rich
  syntactical and semantic systems.

When a child goes to school, he starts learning his language on its
written basis. He starts at the A B C.

  In the meantime he has already become an expert user of the spoken
  language, including the complete phonetic system unconsidered in
  written speech and a most complex and beautiful system of intonation
  unknown to orthographies.

Grammar only exists in written language.

  If the grammar of the written language only exists in the written
  language, the grammar of the spoken language only exists in the
  spoken language.

It is easier to learn a written word than a spoken word, for the
written word remains before the eyes, whereas the spoken word is
intangible and evanescent.

  Consequently if we learn the written word we are unable to understand
  what is said to us and to express ourselves orally.

It is easy to convert eye-knowledge into ear-knowledge. Once we know
how a word is written we easily learn how to pronounce it.

  The facts are all wrong again. The most difficult thing in
  language-study is to convert eye-knowledge into ear-knowledge. Once
  we know how a word is pronounced we can recognize and reproduce its
  written form with the greatest ease.


_Shall we start with systematic ear-training and articulation
exercises?_

No. Both are of doubtful value under the best of conditions. The
majority of students manage eventually to understand and to make
themselves understood without such adventitious and fanciful aids.

  Certainly. Unless the teaching rests on this foundation all the
  subsequent work will be distorted and false.

The young child does not have to undergo such processes when learning
his native tongue, and yet he succeeds in hearing and in articulating
correctly.

  The young child at the cradle age does little else than go through
  a course of such exercises. He listens and imitates, at first
  imperfectly, but later with great expertness, recognizing and
  reproducing isolated sounds and complex combinations of these.

Such exercises are extremely monotonous and dull; they are likely to
kill interest and to cause the students to dislike the whole process of
language-learning.

  Such exercises are always found extremely interesting, and tend to
  constitute an additional attraction to the study of the language.

Few language-teachers know how to make the foreign sounds correctly,
and therefore few can give such exercises without causing the students
to acquire bad habits.

  No teacher should be allowed to do language-work who is not
  proficient in the sounds of the foreign language, for those who are
  incapable of making the sounds cannot be good language-teachers.

It is useless to attempt to teach systematically the sounds of the
language, seeing that these vary from one region to another and from
one person to another.

  Any form of normal speech will serve as a model, provided that the
  speech is that of educated natives. In the absence of any model at
  all, the student will speak the foreign language with the sounds of
  his mother-tongue!


_Shall we admit or reject the use of phonetic transcription?_

Reject it certainly, for various reasons.

  Accept it certainly for various reasons.

It is extremely difficult; those who have been learning languages for
years, even languages with strange alphabets, find phonetic symbols so
puzzling that they are forced to discontinue their efforts.

  It is extremely easy; young children learn to use it readily and
  accurately. Those who experience any difficulty are those who
  are unable or unwilling to form new habits. A language is such a
  difficult thing that we must utilize every means of making our work
  easier.

It would take weeks or even months to learn the strange and unnatural
symbols.

  The half a dozen strange symbols usually required in addition to
  those of the ordinary alphabet can usually be learnt at sight without
  any special practice. Even a strange ‘orthographic alphabet’ such as
  the Russian one can be mastered in a few days.

The whole proceeding is an unnatural one, contrary to all the laws of
language.

  All writing is an unnatural process in the sense that it is not
  performed by instinct, but has to be learnt as an art. Of all
  systems of writing, however, the phonetic system is the one most in
  accordance with logic and natural law.

It is trying to the eyes.

  Most phonetic alphabets are clearer than those used in German and
  Russian, for instance.

It is a waste of valuable time to learn an artificial alphabet.

  The learning of a perfectly natural alphabet is in itself of
  educative value; it inculcates the idea of phonetic writing and
  serves once for all as an essential preparation for the study of any
  number of foreign languages.

It is evident that the use of a phonetic alphabet will make havoc of
the ordinary spelling to be learnt subsequently.

  It has been ascertained experimentally that those who have been
  taught to read and to write a language phonetically become quite
  as efficient spellers as those not so trained. In many cases the
  phonetically trained student becomes the better speller.

To learn phonetic writing means learning two languages instead of one.

  In all cases where the traditional orthography is not in agreement
  with the native pronunciation the student is necessarily forced to
  learn the two things. The use of a phonetic alphabet is the only way
  to perform this double work rapidly, rationally, and with the minimum
  of confusion.

Phonetic texts always give slovenly and incorrect manners of
pronouncing words.

  Authors of phonetic texts always strive to give an accurate rendering
  of the language as really and effectively spoken by educated natives;
  they rarely attempt to teach forms that have no existence in the
  language as actually used in ordinary speech.


_Should we teach intonation in the early stages?_

No. It is a fancy subject of little or no importance and certainly
forms no integral part of language-study.

  Yes. It is a subject of great importance and forms an integral part
  of language-study. In many languages speech without the correct tones
  is only half intelligible; in Chinese and other languages it is
  perfectly unintelligible.

In any case it can be left to the very final stage of the programme.

  If it is not taught in the very earliest stage correct intonation
  will be very difficult to acquire. Language-study is a habit-forming
  process, and the habit of speaking with wrong tones is a bad habit.


_Word or sentence first?_

The word is the unit of language.

  Whatever the unit of language is, it is not the word.

Words are definite entities and constitute the component parts of
sentences.

  Sentences may be reduced to component parts; sometimes these are
  words, but quite as often they are word-groups (such as compounds and
  phrases) or units less than words (such as affixes).

The word, not the sentence, is the basis of translation. Since a word
has a definite meaning and conveys a definite idea it is easy to find
the foreign equivalent.

  A sentence has generally, if not always, a definite foreign
  equivalent. A word is so unstable that it may entirely change its
  meaning when used with other words.

It is easy to memorize words and difficult to memorize sentences.

  It is as easy to memorize a six-word sentence as six words.

We speak in words.

  We express our thoughts in sentences.

If we learn a few dozen words we can build up thousands of sentences
from these by the synthetic process.

  If we learn a few dozen sentences we can construct thousands of
  others from these by disintegration and substitution, and, what is
  more, we can recognize them and use them even in rapid speech.

Words are the basis of grammar.

  Sentences are the basis of syntax.

The collection of word-families is a valuable way of enriching one’s
vocabulary.

  The enriching of one’s vocabulary should be left to a comparatively
  late stage in the study of language, especially in the study of most
  derivatives and compounds.

Words constitute the ‘primary matter’ (_i.e._ matter to be memorized
integrally without analysis or synthesis). Sentences constitute the
‘secondary matter’ (i.e. matter to be derived synthetically from
primary matter).

  It is precisely because sentences are so rarely considered as
  ‘memorized matter’ that so few people manage to understand the
  foreign language when spoken or to express themselves correctly in it.

Take care of the words and the sentences will take care of themselves.

  Take care of the sentences and the words will take care of themselves.


_Should irregularities be included or excluded during the earlier
stages?_

The regular is easy, the irregular is difficult; in the interest of
gradation let us therefore exclude temporarily the irregular.

  Irregular forms are generally more used and more useful than regular
  ones; in the interest of gradation let us therefore include all
  necessary irregularities even in the earlier stages.

Irregular forms make it difficult to formulate precise rules.

  Rules with numerous exceptions are not worth formulating at all.

The normal and logical should precede the abnormal and illogical.

  Then, as natural languages are full of abnormalities and bad logic,
  let the student start with an artificial language!


_Immediate fluency or gradual fluency?_

It is easy to pronounce a sentence slowly and distinctly; difficult to
pronounce it rapidly and fluently.

  It is just as easy to pronounce a sentence rapidly and fluently as to
  pronounce it slowly; it is even easier in some cases. The converse is
  only true when we are constructing our sentences synthetically, word
  by word, but this is not a sound process.

It is more correct to articulate clearly and deliberately.

  To articulate more clearly and deliberately than the average educated
  native is a mark of inaccuracy, for, as Dr Cummings says, “fluency is
  an integral part of accuracy.”

‘Shortened forms,’ such as _don’t_ or _I’m_, should never be taught.
The student, alas! will only too soon pick up these undesirable
vulgarisms. Don’t hasten the process.

  All ‘shortened forms’ which are invariably used in normal speech
  by educated natives (_e.g._ _don’t_, _I’m_) should be taught to
  the exclusion of the longer form. The student, alas! will only too
  soon acquire the habit of using pedanticisms. Let us not hasten the
  process.

It is always easy, too easy, to transform clear and incisive speech
into a blurred and slovenly style of speaking.

  It is almost impossible, in the case of foreign students, to convert
  an over-distinct and halting speech into a smooth, harmonious style
  of utterance with the proper cadence and rhythm. It is for this
  reason that when a foreigner wishes to say _Sunday_, _two to two_, or
  _four for four_, we so frequently understand _some day_, 2, 2, 2, or
  4, 4, 4.

A vowel or even a consonant may perhaps disappear when we are speaking
very rapidly or very carelessly. When, however, we are deliberately
teaching a word, we should give the most perfect model and employ the
most sonorous forms.

  The maintenance of such syllables in ordinary rapid speech is one
  of the characteristics of pidgin or foreigner’s speech. It is not
  yet sufficiently realized that the use of certain sounds is only
  correct in slow speech or in isolated words. If ‘stayshun’ is a more
  sonorous and correct rendering of s-t-a-t-i-o-n than ‘stayshn,’ then
  ‘stayshon’ is still better, and ‘stay-si-on’ or ‘stay-ti-on’ better
  still.


_Conclusion_

On the basis of the foregoing considerations, we conclude that it is
desirable, if not essential:

  On the basis of the foregoing considerations, we conclude that it is
  desirable, if not essential:

(_a_) To learn to read and to write before learning to speak and to
understand what is said.

  (_a_) To learn to speak and to understand what is said before
  learning to read and to write.

(_b_) To avoid systematic ear-training and articulation exercises, at
any rate in the early stages.

  (_b_) To start a language-course with systematic ear-training and
  articulation exercises.

(_c_) To reject the use of phonetic transcription.

  (_c_) To make a most extensive use of the phonetic transcription,
  especially in the early stages.

(_d_) To leave to a very late stage or to omit altogether the study of
intonation.

  (_d_) To teach intonation at a very early stage.

(_e_) To memorize words and to learn to inflect them, before memorizing
and learning how to construct sentences.

  (_e_) To memorize sentences and to learn how to construct them,
  before memorizing words and learning how to build either inflected
  forms or derivatives.

(_f_) To avoid irregular and idiomatic forms in the earlier stages.

  (_f_) To include irregular and idiomatic forms even in the earlier
  stages.

(_g_) To pronounce very slowly and distinctly, leaving fluency to a
later stage.

  (_g_) To teach from the outset a rapid and fluent style of
  pronunciation, reserving more distinct utterance to a later stage.


All our experience leads us to endorse most emphatically all the
statements made in the right-hand column.

Numbers of those who were formerly of the opinion expressed in the
left-hand column have become and are becoming converted to the opposite
view; the contrary case is practically unknown. The modernists are
not arguing in the dark; they have their data and their evidence, and
are perfectly well acquainted with the arguments of the ancients,
whereas few of those professing the older views have ever even heard
of the modernists’ case, still less given it any reasonable amount of
consideration.

We should note that the protagonists of each of the two schools are not
invariably as sharply and as consistently divided as in the foregoing
comparison. It is only natural that we should find individuals taking
the modern view in the case of certain of the points quoted, and the
ancient view in the other cases.

An enthusiastic adherent of the phonetic theory will not necessarily
endorse the view that rapid and fluent speech should precede slow and
distinct speech. One may believe in teaching sentences before words and
yet be unconvinced as to the necessity for phonetics and all that that
implies. Some may favour the memorizing of sentences at an early stage,
but will not agree that the colloquial language should be given a more
favoured place than the classical.

The two schools, however, do appear to be fairly well defined, for in
the majority of cases it will most probably be found that those who
favour the ancient view in any one respect will generally favour the
whole of the ancient programme and regard with distrust and misgivings
the order of progression generally recommended by the modernists.

Let us sum up, and set forth in parallel columns the two most widely
differing orders of progression in order that we may fully realize that
each is the antithesis of the other.


THE ANCIENT ORDER (_based on tradition_)

  THE MODERN ORDER (_based on psychology_)

_First_, learn how to convert ‘dictionary-words’ (_i.e._ etymons)
into ‘working sentence-units’ (_i.e._ ergons). This will be done by
memorizing the rules of accidence and derivation.

  _First_, become proficient in recognizing and in producing foreign
  sounds and tones, both isolated and in combinations.

_Secondly_, learn the general structure of sentences. This will be done
chiefly by reading and translation exercises.

  _Secondly_, memorize (without analysis or synthesis) a large number
  of complete sentences chosen specifically for this purpose by the
  teacher or by the composer of the course.

_Thirdly_, memorize the irregular or idiomatic phenomena of the
language.

  _Thirdly_, learn to build up all types of sentences (both regular
  and irregular) from ‘working sentence-units’ (_i.e._ ergons) chosen
  specifically for this purpose by the teacher or by the composer of
  the course.

_Lastly_, (if necessary) convert the eye-knowledge’ of the
language into ‘ear-knowledge’ by means of reading aloud and by
‘conversation-lessons.’

  _Lastly_, learn how to convert ‘dictionary words’ (_i.e._ etymons)
  into ‘working sentence-units’ (_i.e._ ergons).


An irrational order of progression is bound to entail much ‘cramming,’
a process by which much information (valuable or valueless) is retained
for a short time (generally for examination purposes), but without
ensuring any permanent results except bad results.

A rational order of progression will not only rapidly secure useful and
desirable results, but will also encourage the formation of the right
sort of language-habits and ensure as a permanent result the capacity
for using the foreign language in the fullest sense of the term.



CHAPTER XV

THE MULTIPLE LINE OF APPROACH


The ninth and last of the essential principles is, in reality, more
than a mere principle of language-study, it is even more than a
principle of study, it is almost a philosophy in itself. It seems to be
a special application of a doctrine which, to many, constitutes a line
of conduct, an attitude, towards most of the problems and interests of
our daily existence. This attitude is fairly well designated by the
term _eclectic_; this, however, is not an ideal term, seeing that, like
so many others, it possesses a double connotation. Its first sense is
distinctly pejorative; it suggests unoriginality, a lack of coherent
system, a patchwork of other people’s opinions. In its second and
broader sense, so far from being a term of disparagement or reproach it
implies the deliberate choice of all things which are good, a judicious
and reasoned selection of all the diverse factors the sum of which may
constitute a complete and homogeneous system. If, therefore, we speak
here of the doctrine or attitude of eclecticism, we are obviously using
the term in its second and broader connotation; used in this way it
stands as the antithesis of prejudice, of faddiness, of crankiness,
and of fixed ideas. Many of those who practise eclecticism call it
the ‘philosophy of the complete life’; whether this is or is not a
philosophy in the true sense of the term, we will leave to philosophers
to discuss; we will content ourselves by quoting a few maxims or
aphorisms which will serve to make clear the attitude in question.

All is good which tends towards good.

The recognition and appreciation of any particular good thing does
not necessarily invalidate those things which do not resemble it, nor
even cause us to disparage or deprecate things which are seemingly in
conflict with it.

Let us neglect nothing except futilities and things which we have
proved to our satisfaction to be in themselves bad and harmful.

Two or more opposing principles, ideas, likes, operations, interests,
in short any two or more conflicting tendencies, may be combined, and
this combination can be effected by other means than the expedient of
compromising. Lobster salad and fruit salad may be attractive to the
gourmet, but no compromise between the two would be palatable.

It is not always the height of wisdom and expediency to kill too many
birds with one stone.

This attitude towards life in general does indeed solve many problems
and vexed questions. It constitutes a method of conciliating
inconsistencies, both real and apparent. It explains how it is that one
can appreciate both classical and popular music, classical and light
literature, how idealism may exist side by side with a keen interest
in material things. The real and the ideal, scientific precision
and unscientific emotion, patriotism and internationalism, are not
incompatible with each other in the ‘philosophy of the complete life.’

And what has all this to do with language-study? What bearing have
these fanciful or fantastical philosophical considerations on the
problem of teaching or learning a language rapidly and well? The
connexion is clearer than one might imagine at first sight, for each
of the aphorisms quoted above may serve, if not as a definition of the
ninth principle, at least as a strong suggestion of what the principle
implies.

Those who have followed us, point by point, in our enumeration and
analysis of the eight preceding principles may be in perfect agreement
with our conclusions, but may, nevertheless, be sorely troubled as to
how they are to be carried out in practice. On many points there appear
to be conflicts and inconsistencies; in many cases it would appear to
be exceedingly difficult, if not impossible, to observe two or more
of these principles simultaneously. How is habit-forming consistent
with interest? How can we combine a study of phonetics with a study
of orthography? How can we combine the development of our spontaneous
capacities with that of our studial capacities? How can we observe the
principle of accuracy and combine it with other principles which are
seemingly in conflict with it--such as the inhibition of our powers of
analysis and synthesis? How are we to foster a keen appreciation of
the classical or literary style of composition, and yet concentrate on
the colloquial and trivial? The principles of gradation and of order
of progression seem to reveal inconsistencies when they are compared
with each other; there is more than a seeming inconsistency between the
process of unconscious assimilation and the principle of concreteness.
Translation is destructive, or is often considered so, of the power of
‘thinking in the foreign language,’ and yet it is suggested that the
student should do translation work and at the same time train himself
to think in the foreign language.

These and many other problems or difficulties suggested by the careful
study of the foregoing eight principles can only be solved by the
thorough understanding of the spirit of eclecticism underlying this
ninth principle. We have alluded to the philosophy of the complete life
in order that we may better realize the significance of what we may
term the complete method.

This complete method, mark you, is not a compromise between two or more
antagonistic schools; it boldly incorporates what is valuable in any
system or method of teaching and refuses to recognize any conflict,
except the conflict between the good and the inherently bad. The
complete method will embody every type of teaching except bad teaching,
and every process of learning except defective learning.

The complete method (of which the multiple line of approach is the
expression) is the antithesis of the special or patent method. Patent
or proprietary methods very often, but not always, resemble patent
medicines. We know what they are. A patent language method, like
a patent medicine, claims to prevent or to cure all possible ills
(linguistic or physical, as the case may be) by repeated applications
of one special device or drug; both of them claim to kill innumerable
birds with one stone. One is always inclined to doubt the efficiency
of an instrument which is designed to perform too many distinct
functions; a tool designed to serve both as a hairbrush and as a hammer
is not likely either to brush or to hammer very efficiently, and our
imagination refuses to picture what one vehicle could possibly afford
us all the advantages of a bicycle, a motor-car, a wheelbarrow, and an
express train, not to mention those of a boat or balloon. One dish,
however nutritive, succulent, and satisfying, will not constitute a
complete banquet.

Let us apply the principle of the multiple line of approach to the
solving of a number of vexed questions, well known to all those who
have read or participated in discussions and controversies on the
subject of language-teaching.

Shall reading be intensive or extensive? That is to say, shall we
take a text, study it line by line, referring at every moment to our
dictionary and our grammar, comparing, analysing, translating, and
retaining every expression that it contains? Or shall we take a large
number of texts and read them rapidly and carelessly, trusting that
quantity will make up for the lack of quality in our attention and the
lack of intensity?

Shall we translate? We can learn much from translation; it affords
us many types of interesting and valuable exercises. Or shall we ban
translation? For we know that under certain conditions translation may
foster and encourage more than one vicious tendency.

Shall we memorize sentences or shall we learn to construct them, both
synthetically and by the substitution process?[5] Either plan seems to
have its advantages and its disadvantages.

[5] See page 176 and footnote, and p. 177.

Which is better: drill-work or free work? The principle of accuracy
inclines us towards the former; the principle of interest and our
instinctive striving for naturalness incline us towards the latter.

Are we to study with conscious attention or with effortless attention?
In the average lesson or language-course, the former alone is
considered, but the young child, or the adult assimilating a language
under ideal conditions, knows no other than the latter.

Shall we assimilate our language-material by reading or by listening
to people? Many claim to have mastered a language rapidly and
successfully by the one method, while many others ascribe their success
to the fact that they have learnt exclusively by the other.

Which is the best method of retaining language-material: by repeating
it aloud or by writing it? There again, we find many who are staunch
adherents of either method (and consequently opponents of the other).

Active or passive work? Do we gain and retain our impressions by
speaking and writing, or do we in reality acquire proficiency in the
use of language by the processes of reading and listening?

Without the principle of the multiple line of approach there are
only two ways of settling these and all similar questions. One is to
adopt one alternative, rejecting the second; the other is to effect
a working compromise between the two. Shall we read intensively or
extensively? “Read intensively,” says one; “No, read extensively,”
says another; and the compromiser comes along and says, “Read neither
very intensively nor very extensively.” Shall we translate or shall
we banish translation? “Translate by all means,” says one; “Banish
translation,” says another; and the compromiser says, “Translate a
little occasionally, but do not let the translation be particularly
good.” Drill-work or free work? The compromiser suggests something
between the two, mechanical enough to destroy naturalness, and free
enough to encourage inaccuracy. Shall we memorize sentences, or shall
we construct them? The compromiser suggests that we should aid our
memory by doses of mental synthesis, in fact just enough to prevent the
laws of memorizing from operating.

The principle of the multiple line of approach suggests a third and
better procedure. Instead of accepting the one and rejecting the
other, instead of adopting the middle course which frequently militates
against the success of either extreme, this principle says, “Adopt
them both concurrently, but not in one and the same operation. At
times read intensively; at others read extensively. At appropriate
moments, and for specific purposes, make the fullest use of all sorts
of translation work; at other moments, and for other specific purposes,
banish translation entirely. At times, more especially during the early
stages, let there be an abundance of drill-work; later, but not before
the student is perfectly ripe for it, let us introduce free work; and
then let the two types alternate. At certain moments, more especially
during the early stages, let the memorizing of sentences be carried
out on a most extensive scale; at other moments, as a distinctly
separate operation, let us cause the student to perform exercises in
constructing correct sentences himself.”

We have had occasion to note that this principle suggests the
inadvisability of killing too many birds with one stone. The principle
goes farther and adds to the figure of speech just quoted the two
following corollaries, viz.: “Find the right stone to kill the right
bird,” and “It is often advisable to kill one bird with more than
one stone.” There are many different ways of teaching a difficult
sound, there are many different ways of teaching a difficult point in
grammar, a curious form of construction, or of causing the student
to discriminate between two things which ought not to be confused.
In these and in all similar cases, there is no reason why several
methods should not be used concurrently; they need not be strictly
co-ordinated. The cumulative effect of approaching the difficulty from
different and independent angles will certainly secure the desired
result. Superficial and rapid work on most points plus intensive and
thorough work on certain essential specific points will generally
ensure a well-assimilated whole. Either of these methods will tend
to correct any disadvantages attached to the other and will be
complementary to the other. The high degree of accuracy which results
from intensive work will tend to spread by contagion to that portion of
the work which must necessarily be done in a more summary fashion.

This principle, which underlies all others, leaves the door open for
new devices, new methods, and improvements on the old ones. It leaves
us free to welcome and to adopt all sorts of innovations, provided such
innovations are likely to prove of value.

We will quote one example of what may happen when we do not
sufficiently realize the importance or the scope of the ninth principle.

The teacher of French may consider that a certain amount of theory is
useful and helpful; he may consider it necessary to explain all manner
of things to students--how certain sounds are formed, how certain verbs
are conjugated, why certain constructions must be used; he may consider
it his duty to give information on hundreds of doubtful or difficult
points. And he is often perfectly justified in doing so; explanations
of the right sort and given at the right moment are indeed valuable.

This same teacher considers also that many opportunities should be
given of hearing French spoken, in order to train his student’s
powers of observation and of semantic association. This also is good
and reasonable; passive audition, unconscious or semi-conscious
assimilation, immediate understanding and expression, are processes the
value of which we have always insisted upon.

But this teacher, too anxious to kill two birds with one stone,
combines the two forms of work; he says, “I have a number of difficult
things to explain, and I will explain them in French; the student will
therefore have a double gain.” The student, however, unless already
very considerably advanced, is not a gainer but a loser; he fails
to understand the explanation, and in his efforts to do so he fails
to adopt the proper receptive attitude towards the actual language
material. After all, we do not learn how to write shorthand from books
written exclusively in shorthand, and the book which teaches us how to
use the Morse code is not printed exclusively in the Morse code. To use
the foreign language for the purposes of a vehicular language under the
pretext that the more the student hears of the foreign language the
better he will learn, is a method which stands fully condemned when
we properly realize the nature and scope of the principle we are now
examining.

We may sum up this principle of the multiple line of approach fairly
concisely in the following terms: Let us approach the language, or any
specific point in the language, simultaneously from several distinct
points of departure, by several distinct but gradually converging
avenues. The observing of this principle will alone enable us to
observe consistently and successfully the eight other vital principles
which it has been the object of this book to set forth.



CHAPTER XVI

‘MEMORIZED MATTER’ AND ‘CONSTRUCTED MATTER’


Until we know more about speech-psychology and the ultimate processes
of language-study, it is doubtful whether we can embody in the form of
a concrete principle the subject treated in this chapter. The writer
would prefer, at this stage of our knowledge, simply to submit the
following considerations in the hope that future research will throw
further light on the subject and render it possible to co-ordinate it
with those branches of linguistic pedagogy which are more familiar to
us. Indeed, when we have ascertained experimentally the exact nature of
what we shall call ‘memorized’ and ‘constructed’ speech-material, it
is conceivable that the whole subject will become so clarified that it
will be possible to reduce to one main principle all or most of what
has been said in the foregoing chapters.

Now, whenever we open our lips to speak, or whenever we set pen to
paper, it is with the object of producing one or more _units of
speech_. These units may be short and simple, such as: _Yes_, _No_,
_Here_, or they may be word-groups, such as: _Very well_, _I don’t
know_, _Yes, if I can_, or they may be complete and even complicated
sentences containing one or more subordinate clauses. But whatever the
unit may be, long or short, simple or complex, one thing is clear:
_each unit has either been memorized by the user integrally as it
stands or else is composed by the user from smaller and previously
memorized units_. This is a fundamental fact about speech which stands
out clearly and unmistakably; it is not a fanciful supposition or an
idle conjecture, it is an axiomatic truth.

Now let us term ‘memorized matter’ everything that we have memorized
integrally, and ‘constructed matter’ everything that we have not
so memorized, but which we compose or build up as we go on. Can we
distinguish the two things? In most cases we can. Monosyllabic words
have generally (although not necessarily) been memorized as they
stand; we say and understand the word _cat_, because once upon a time
we had the occasion to hear the word in question and the opportunity
to connect it with its meaning and to retain it. The word _cat_ is
included in our memorized matter. Probably most words of two or even
more syllables have been acquired as memorized matter. Great numbers of
compound words have also been acquired in the same way. A considerable
number of word-groups and sentences are included in our memorized
matter. Such sentences as _I don’t know_, _Just come here_, _Pick it
up_, _I don’t want it_, are most probably memorized with most speakers.

Now consider a unit of speech such as: _I saw Henry Siddings between
six and half-past at the corner of Rithington Lane_. Is it the sort of
unit which we should use as a result of having memorized it integrally?
An actor or reciter may indeed have occasion to do so, but apart from
those whose duty or hobby it is to memorize ‘lines’ it is an extremely
unlikely specimen of memorized matter. The writer has just composed it,
and does not even know whether there exists such a surname as Siddings
or a place called Rithington Lane; there are millions of chances to one
that it is an entirely original sentence. Most of the things we utter
or write come into the category of constructed matter; their component
parts have been memorized integrally and so constitute memorized
matter; but the complete units are _constructed_, they are the result
of rapid and probably unconscious acts of synthesis.

This is no place for statistics, even if data were available; it
must be left to investigators to ascertain the relative amount of
memorized and constructed matter used by the young child in his first
months or years of speech. Inquiries of this sort should afford some
valuable and surprising evidence; the writer has had occasion to note
that a French-speaking child of about ten was even unconscious of the
composition of units such as _pomme de terre_ or _quatre-vingts_, just
as the average adult English person is unconscious of the composition
of _fortnight_ or _nevertheless_.[6] What will certainly complicate
such research work is the paradoxical fact that constructed matter
may become memorized by dint of frequent repetition. A further
complication is added by the fact that the two types of matter may also
be considered from the point of view, not of the speaker, but of the
auditor.

[6] See _The Scientific Study and Teaching of Languages_, pp. 103-119.

One of the questions that concerns us at present is to ascertain what
should be the right proportions of memorized and constructed matter in
the initial stages of learning a foreign language.

Too large a proportion of memorized matter will render study
unnecessarily tedious, for memorizing work, even under the best of
conditions, is less interesting than the piecing together of known
units. Too large a proportion of constructed matter, on the other hand,
will certainly result in an artificial sort of speech or a pidgin form,
with all its evil consequences. At the present day, as in the past,
the tendency in language-study is to pay far too much attention to
constructing and not nearly enough to memorizing.

What concerns us still more is to ascertain definitely by experiment
what is the exact nature of those processes by which constructed matter
is derived from memorized matter. We must find out what really does
happen in the case of young children in the first stages of their
speech-experience, and by what mental processes those persons called
born linguists attain their results.

There would appear to be three distinct manners of producing
constructed matter; these may be termed respectively:

  (_a_) Grammatical construction.
  (_b_) Ergonic construction.
  (_c_) Conversion.


(_a_) GRAMMATICAL CONSTRUCTION

This process consists in memorizing ‘dictionary words’ (the infinitives
of verbs, the nominative singular of nouns, the masculine nominative
singular of adjectives, etc.) and of forming sentences from them (with
or without the intervention of translation) by means of applying the
various rules of accidence, syntax, derivation, and composition.

The following is a typical example of the process. An English student
wishes to form as constructed matter the German sentence: _Ich habe
mit grösstem Vergnügen seinen freundlichen Vorschlag angenommen_,
from the previously memorized units _ich_, _haben_, _mit_, _gross_,
_Vergnügen_, _sein_, _freundlich_, _Vorschlag_, _annehmen_. Besides
having to determine (in accordance with rules of word-order) the
relative position of the nine primary units, he has to perform the
twelve following operations:

  (1) Choose the appropriate form of the pronoun of the first person
  singular.

  (2) Choose the appropriate tense of the verb _annehmen_.

  (3) Derive the present tense first person singular form of _haben_.

  (4) Determine the case governed by the preposition _mit_.

  (5) Derive the superlative form of the adjective _gross_.

  (6) Determine the gender of the noun _Vergnügen_.

  (7) Derive the masculine dative singular form of the superlative
  adjective _grösst_--when not preceded by a determinative.

  (8) Determine the gender of the noun _Vorschlag_.

  (9) Determine the function of the same in this particular sentence.

  (10) Determine the form of the possessive adjective of the third
  person masculine singular when modifying a masculine accusative
  singular noun.

  (11) Determine the form of the adjective _freundlich_ when preceded
  by a possessive adjective and when modifying a masculine accusative
  noun.

  (12) Derive the past participle _angenommen_ from the infinitive.

It will be noticed that most of these operations require, in addition
to a perfect memory of the grammatical rules (including numbers of
word-lists), a fine power of logical discrimination. Needless to say,
no speaker of German actually does perform any of these operations
(except perhaps on very special and rare occasions), and we dismiss
as a patent absurdity the supposition that the young native child
constructs his matter in any such way.


(_b_) ERGONIC CONSTRUCTION

In this process we work from an entirely different sort of memorized
matter; instead of being merely ‘dictionary words’ it consists of (_a_)
more or less complete sentences, and (_b_) units of speech which we may
term ‘ergons,’ _i.e._ ‘working units’ derived and inflected in advance
by the teacher (or the author of the course), each ergon being thus
quite ready for use.

The following is a typical example of the process:

A fairly simple sentence is memorized; let us say, _Ich kann meinen
Stock heute nicht nehmen_, “I can’t take my stick to-day.” Appropriate
groups of ergons are also memorized, such as:

        A
  ich, _I_

        B
  kann, _can_
  muss, _must_
  soll, _am to_
  werde, _shall_
  könnte, _could_
  musste, _had to_
  sollte, _ought to_
  würde, _should_

        C
  meinen Stock, _my stick_
  meinen Bleistift, _my pencil_
  Ihren Regenschirm, _your umbrella_
  den Stuhl, _the chair_
  denselben, _the same_
  ihn, _him_, _it_
  sie, _her_, _it_
  es, _it_

        D
  heute, _to-day_
  morgen, _to-morrow_
  heute morgen, _this morning_
  morgen früh, _to-morrow morning_
  um zwei Uhr, _at two o’clock_
  nächsten Monat, _next month_
  nächste Woche, _next week_
  nächstes Jahr, _next year_

        E
  nicht, _not_

        F
  nehmen, _take_
  sehen, _see_
  bringen, _bring_, _take_
  tragen, _carry_, _take_
  suchen, _look for_
  finden, _find_
  bekommen, _get_

The student will then form (as constructed matter) as many of the
16,128 resultant sentences[7] as is considered necessary for this
particular vocabulary. This will be done by means of drills and
habit-forming exercises based on the following substitution table:

[7] See _100 English Substitution Tables_, by the author of the
present book (Heffer, Cambridge). Also the series of “Auto-Translators”
(International Students’ Bureau, 56 Russell Square, W.C. 1).

  +---+------+-----------------+--------------+-----+--------+
  | A |  B   |        C        |      D       |  E  |   F    |
  +---+------+-----------------+--------------+-----+--------+
  |Ich|kann  |meinen Stock     |heute         |nicht|nehmen  |
  |   |muss  |meinen Bleistift |morgen        |     |sehen   |
  |   |soll  |Ihren Regenschirm|heute morgen  |     |bringen |
  |   |werde |den Stuhl        |morgen früh   |     |tragen  |
  |   |könnte|denselben        |um zwei Uhr   |     |suchen  |
  |   |musste|ihn              |nächsten Monat|     |finden  |
  |   |sollte|sie              |nächste Woche |     |bekommen|
  |   |würde |es               |nächstes Jahr |     |        |
  +---+------+-----------------+--------------+-----+--------+

The essential difference between grammatical and ergonic construction
lies in the sort of memorized matter used in either case. In
grammatical construction the memorized matter consists exclusively of
what we have called ‘dictionary words’ (a large proportion of which
require modifying in some form or other before being available for use
in a sentence), whereas in ergonic construction two sorts of memorized
matter are required: a more or less complete sentence and a number of
ergons (units of language inflected or composed in advance for the
student, instead of by the student).


(_c_) CONVERSION

This process consists in memorizing a number of sentences all composed
in a more or less uniform way.

When these sentences have been memorized, the student is taught by a
series of appropriate drills and habit-forming exercises to convert
each sentence into another form.

The following is a typical example of the process. The student
memorizes the ten following sentences:

   (1) _He goes to the station._
   (2) _He comes here._
   (3) _He takes it._
   (4) _He waits for it._
   (5) _He stays there._
   (6) _He writes a letter._
   (7) _He reads a book._
   (8) _He speaks French._
   (9) _He gets up._
  (10) _He’s here._[8]

[8] The inclusion of an exceptional form (‘He isn’t here’) in a
conversion table is a useful feature in these exercises.

He then listens to the teacher, who says:

  _He goes to the station_      _He doesn’t go to the station._
  _He comes here_               _He doesn’t come here._
           etc.                             etc.

and after one or more repetitions performs the conversion himself in
the same way, with or without prompting by the teacher or the book.

The teacher will then change the sentences in some other manner, for
instance:

  _He goes to the station_      _Does he go to the station?_
  _He comes here_               _Does he come here?_
           etc.                             etc.

The student listens, and subsequently performs the same series. On
other occasions each of the ten sentences may be converted into forms
such as:

  _He’ll go to the station_, etc.
  _He wants to go to the station_, etc.
  _He’s going to the station_, etc.
  _He didn’t go to the station_, etc.
  _He went to the station_, etc.
  _He’s gone to the station_, etc.
  _It’s impossible for him to go to the station_, etc.
  _He always goes to the station_, etc.

In the case of conversion the difference between memorized and
constructed matter is not so marked as in the two synthetic operations,
nor is the yield of constructed matter so great. Indeed, in extreme
cases, the form into which the original sentence is to be converted
will have to be learnt integrally, and so becomes in itself memorized
matter. On the other hand, some forms of this type of work are
practically identical with exercises based on ergonic construction,
and for these two reasons it has been held that conversion is not a
distinct process for forming constructed matter, but merely a modified
form of ergonic work. Whether this view is justified or not is a matter
more of academic than of practical interest to the language-teacher.

These then appear to be the only three processes known by which
memorized matter can be developed and expanded into original
composition. What we have called grammatical construction is the
classical and almost universal method. What we have called ergonic
construction is embodied more or less unsystematically in a number
of language-courses and the more enlightened books of instruction.
Conversion is also practised, but still in a sporadic and desultory
fashion.

Now, some thirty years ago the reform movement started. In several
different countries bands of zealous pioneers took up arms against
the then prevailing system and sought to put an end to it. The reform
prospered. The reformers have carried all before them, and the daring
innovators of twenty or thirty years ago now enjoy the prestige that
their efforts have earned for them.

What was the nature of this reform? What abuses has it swept away? And
for what innovations have we to thank it? It would appear, on analysis,
to have had a threefold object:

  (_a_) To promote the rational and systematic study of pronunciation
  by means of phonetic theory and transcription.

  (_b_) To promote the idea that a language is used primarily as a
  means of communicating thoughts.

  (_c_) To promote the idea that foreign languages should be learned by
  methods approximating to those by which we learn our native tongue.

The first two objects have certainly been attained; phonetics is the
order of the day, and both teachers and students have to use phonetic
symbols whether they like it or not; moreover, the new generation does
recognize that the deciphering and analysis of ancient texts is not the
primary use of language.

The third object has not been so successfully pursued; indeed, we are
still very far from learning the foreign tongue by the same processes
as those by which we learnt our own. The chief reason for this
failure was a bad diagnosis of the chief evils of the system hitherto
employed. Many of the reformers and most of their disciples imagined
‘translation’ to be the root of the evil, and so translation in every
shape or form was banned; there must be no bilingualism at all, and so
the mother-tongue must be excluded from the course, the lessons must be
conducted entirely in the foreign language.

But translation and the use of the mother-tongue, as it turns out,
are perfectly harmless and in many cases positively beneficial; the
evil lay in the exaggerated attention which had always been paid to
grammatical construction; that was the dragon that the St Georges
might well have slain had not the red herring of ‘translation’
unfortunately been drawn across the track. As it was, the red herring
was duly run down and annihilated, and the dragon still lives!

The misunderstanding was natural enough; logicians would quote it as an
example of the fallacy of the False Cause. The process of grammatical
construction was carried out by means of a vicious form of translation
exercise, and the result was utterly bad. Two important reforms might
have been effected: in the first place, the vicious form of translation
might have been replaced by a beneficial form; and secondly, new and
more worthy uses of translation might have been found. But the act
of translation itself (nay, the mere use of the mother-tongue) was
made the scapegoat and so paid the penalty. It is now time for a
second band of reformers to attack and to destroy the original cause
of unsuccessful language-study, viz. grammatical construction, or at
any rate to limit it to special cases and to appropriate occasions.
It is time, too, to rehabilitate in some measure the character of
the comparatively innocent process of translation, and to remove the
stigma attached to those who still use the mother-tongue as a vehicular
language, and by so doing proceed naturally enough from the known to
the unknown.

These are no reactionary suggestions; they are made in the spirit of
the nine essential principles treated in the previous chapters, and
are not in contradiction to the urgent plea set forth in these pages
for the recognition and fostering of our ‘spontaneous’ capacities
for language-study. We can afford to ignore no necessary tool in our
efforts to teach well and to produce perfect results, and translation
is often a necessary tool, especially during the process of deriving
constructed from memorized matter.

We suggest for the moment no tenth principle based on these
considerations; we submit the problem and we more than hint at a
solution. It is now time for experimental work on ‘ergonic’ lines, and
the data to be obtained thereby will enable us to form our conclusions
and to embody them among the principles of language-study.



INDEX


  Accidence, a branch of linguistics, 24, 126

  Accuracy, principle of, 21, 22, Chapter IX

  Action-drill, effect of, 96

  Active or passive work?, 166

  Aim of the student, 15, 16

  Archaic speech, 54, 127

  Articulation exercises, object of, 20, 121

  -- -- at what stage to introduce, 28, 151

  -- -- description of, 89, 90

  -- -- as a means of ensuring accuracy, 108

  Articulation, mental or ‘inner,’ 53, 93

  Attention, conscious and unconscious, 165

  Audition, opportunities for, 118, 119

  Automatism, necessity for, 20, 21

  -- nature of, 98, 99

  -- acquired by repetition, 101


  Bantu languages, 38, 150

  Bewilderment, elimination of, 27, 140, 141


  Children, and language, 37

  -- bilingual, 40, 41

  -- Belgian refugee, 41

  -- use spontaneous capacities, 43, 82

  -- successful acquirers of foreign languages, 44

  -- studial methods unknown to, 48

  -- not averse to forming new habits, 86

  -- linguistic environment of, 111

  -- early phonetic work, 151

  -- unconscious of elements in compound words, 172

  Chinese characters, in Japanese writing, 53

  -- -- habit of writing, with brush, 85

  Chinook jargon, 107

  Chorus-work, 23, 120, 121

  Classical speech, studial process necessary in order to learn, 48, 54

  Colloquial speech, as standard, 22

  -- -- as used by average speaker, 36, 47

  -- -- compared with vulgar speech, 39

  -- -- and studial work, 49, 54

  -- -- and inaccuracy, 106, 107, 108

  -- -- grammar of, 141

  -- -- used in passages, 145

  Competition as factor of interest, 27, 144

  Complete method, 164

  Concreteness, principle of, 25, 26, Chapter XII

  “Constructed matter,” 30, 31, Chapter XVI

  Context as method of teaching meanings, 26, 133

  Conversion, a studial form of work, 14, 49, 50

  -- method for producing constructed matter, 30, 31

  -- drills as aid to accuracy, 110, 121

  -- process described, 177, 178, 179

  Corrective courses require studial capacities, 15

  -- -- require explanations, 21, 143

  -- -- when necessary, 55

  -- -- nature of, 56

  Course, length of, 16, 64, 65

  Course-designing, 18, 75

  Cramming, 28, 139, 160

  Cummings, Dr T. F., quoted, 156


  Deaf-mutes, 93

  Definition as method of teaching meanings, 26, 133

  _Depuis_, English equivalent of, 130, 131, 133, 134

  Dialect, 39, 40

  ‘Dictionary-words,’ compared with ‘working words’ or ergons, 30,
        159, 173, 175

  Direct method, 31, 179, 180, 181

  ---- ---- abuse of, 124

  ---- ---- and concreteness, 131, 132

  Drill-work, to ensure automatism, 21

  ---- compared with free work, 24, 25, 121, 128, 165, 166, 167

  ---- various types of, 96

  ---- necessity for, 136

  ---- not necessarily uninteresting, 137, 146


  Ear-training, necessity for, 17, 70, 108, 157

  ---- as initial preparation, 20, 28, 64

  ---- description of, 88, 89

  ---- as a means of reception, 118

  ---- arguments for and against, 151

  Eclecticism, 29, 161, 162, 164

  Egger, Victor, quoted, 93

  Elementary stage, supreme importance of the, 16, 17, 18, Chapter V

  Ergonics, 127, 182

  Ergonic construction, compared with grammatical construction, 30, 173

  ---- description of, 175, 176, 177

  Ergons, 159, 160

  Etymology, a branch of linguistics, 24, 126

  ---- of the studial order, 50

  ---- abuse of, 51

  Etymons, 159

  Examinations, 62, 63

  Exercises, articulation, 20, 28, 89, 90, 108, 121, 151, 157

  Exercises, conversion, 14, 30, 31, 49, 50, 110, 121, 177, 178, 179

  ---- fluency, 90, 121

  ---- question and answer, 96, 121

  Explanations, abuse of, 102

  ---- as means of eliminating bewilderment, 142, 143

  ---- sometimes helpful, 168

  ---- in foreign language, 169

  Extensive reading, compared with intensive reading, 165, 166, 167

  Eye-work contrasted with ear-work:
    Ears before eyes, 23, 53, 117
    Abuse of eye-work, 42, 49, 70
    Successful results from ear-work, 44
    Eye-work of the studial order, 49
    Opposing views on subject, 150


  Facility, fallacy of, 116

  False gradation, 116, 117

  Fluency, exercises, 90, 121

  ---- accuracy in, 108

  ---- immediate or gradual?, 156, 157, 158


  Game-like exercises, 27, 144, 145

  German prepositions and cases, 100

  ---- substitution table, 177

  Gestures, 96, 135

  Gift for language-study, 14, 33, 36, 43, 44, 94

  Gradation, principle of, 22, 23, 24, Chapter X

  ‘Grammatical construction’ compared with ‘ergonic construction,’ 30,
        173, 174, 179, 181


  Habit-forming and habit-adapting, principle of, 20, 21, 43, 80,
        Chapter VIII

  ---- process, 17, 19, 20, 21, 136

  ---- and interest, 26

  ---- in initial stage, 69

  ---- as initial preparation, 85, 86, 93

  Habits, utilization of existing, 19, 21, 85, 86, 104, 105

  Habits, bad, positive and negative, 72

  ---- ---- forming of, 84

  ---- ---- how to prevent, 121

  ---- ---- cause of, 122

  Heuristic method, 139


  Idiomatic forms, 159

  Immediate association, 26, 132, 133, 134, 135

  ---- comprehension, 20, 94, 95, 96

  ---- and prolonged memory, 23, 119, 120

  Imperative drill, 96

  Inaccuracy, two types of, 22

  Inconsistencies, seeming, 163

  ‘Incorrect’ or ‘ungrammatical’ English, 39

  Incubation, periods of, 65

  Initial preparation, principle of, 19, 20, Chapter VII

  Intensive and extensive reading, 165, 166, 167

  Interest, principle of, 26, 27, 28, Chapter XIII

  ---- fallacy in connexion with, 137, 138, 139

  Intonation, when to introduce, 28, 153, 154, 157

  ---- accuracy in, 108

  ---- and proportion, 123

  ---- English system of, 37

  Inventions, evolution in, 75, 76

  Irregularities, shall we include or exclude? 27, 155, 158

  Isolating habit, 17, 71


  Japanese writing, 53

  Jespersen, Professor, 78


  Language of ceremony, 15

  ---- of savage peoples, 37

  Latent capacities for language-study, 46, 47, 82

  Linguistics, five chief branches of, 24, 80, 126


  ‘Memorized matter,’ 30, 31, Chapter XVI

  Memorizing key-sentences, 64

  ---- word-groups, 71, 157

  ---- on a large scale, 91, 92

  Memorizing contrasted with theory-learning, 100, 165, 166, 167

  ---- and fear of tedium, 101

  Mental reading and writing, 50, 87, 91

  Method of discovery, 139

  Methods of the future, 76, 77

  Mimicry, 20, 90, 91

  Morse code, 169

  Multiple line of approach, principle of, 29, 30, Chapter XV

  Mystery words and sentences, 142


  Nonsense words, 88 _n._


  Oral repetition, 119

  Order of progression, ancient and modern, 159, 160

  Orthography, a branch of linguistics, 24, 126

  ---- not a product of nature, 52

  ---- accuracy in, 109, 112

  ---- and proportion, 124

  Phonetics, a branch of linguistics, 24, 126

  ---- progress made by science of, 77

  ---- English and French systems compared, 103

  ---- data furnished by, 112

  Phonetic dictation, 88

  Phonetic transcription, more ‘natural’ than traditional spelling, 52

  ---- ---- exclusive use of, 109

  ---- ---- and proportion, 124

  ---- ---- the acme of simplicity, 141

  ---- ---- arguments for and against, 152, 153, 157

  ---- ---- and the reform movement, 180

  Pidgin-speech, a form of inaccuracy, 22, 42, 55, 56, 110, 111

  ---- as an aim, 62

  ---- better than none, 72

  ---- definition and examples of, 107

  ---- and constructed matter, 173

  _Plateaux_, 144

  Principles of language-teaching, 18, 19, Chapter VI

  Progress, a factor of interest, 27, 143, 144

  Programme of study, depends on aim of student, 15, 16, 65, 66

  Proportion, principle of, 24, 25, Chapter XI

  Psychologists and language-study, 78, 109


  Question-and-answer exercises, 96, 121


  Rate of progress, 23, 65, 73, 80, 113, 114

  Rational order of progression, principle of, 28, 29, Chapter XIV

  Reading should be preceded by oral work, 119

  Reception before production, 23, 118

  Reform movement, 179, 180, 181

  Repetition, and automatism, 21, 101

  ---- and interest, 21, 101

  ---- definition of, 101

  Rules and exceptions, lists of, 115


  Saussure, de, 78

  Semantics, a branch of linguistics, 24, 25

  ---- bad habits in connexion with, 71

  ---- future of, 77

  ---- inaccuracy in, 110

  ---- data afforded by, 112

  ---- and gradation, 115, 116

  ---- and proportion, 127

  Shortened forms, 156

  Shorthand, and orthography, 49, 52, 149

  ---- not learnt by method of discovery, 139

  ---- text-books not written in shorthand, 169

  Special or patent method in language-study, 164

  Spelling, reformed, 52

  ---- difficulties of, 54

  Spontaneous capacities for acquiring speech, 13, 14, Chapter I

  Student and his aim, 15, 16, Chapter IV

  Studial capacities for acquiring speech, 14, Chapter II

  ---- ---- why we must use, 14, 15, Chapter III

  Substitution process, 165

  ---- table, 176 _n._, 177

  Sweet, Dr, 78

  Syntax, a branch of linguistics, 24, 126

  ---- and gradation, 115


  Teacher and student, 27, 145

  Theory and practice, 19, 82, 83, 168

  'Tonetics,’ 37

  Translation, as method of teaching meanings, 26, 132

  ---- abuse of, 17, 71, 180

  ---- a form of conversion, 49

  ---- a studial process, 50

  ---- the art of, 63

  ---- or no translation? 165, 166, 167

  ---- and the reform movement, 180, 181

  Trial and error, method of, 19, 83, 84, 111


  Unconscious assimilation, 87, 95, 168

  Units of speech, 116, 170

  Unphonetic writing, 53

  Unwritten English grammar, 38, 39


  Variety, necessity for, 27, 147

  Vicious tendencies, we must react against, 56, 107, 124

  ---- ---- relative immunity from, 57, 58

  ---- ---- various types of, 70, 71, 72, 102, 122

  Vocabulary, nucleus of, 114

  ---- selection of, 127


  Word-order, inaccuracy in, 109

  Word or sentence first? 154, 155

  Written or spoken language first? 149, 150



       *       *       *       *       *



Transcriber's Note


The alternating left-aligned and indented paragraphs following the
heading "_Written or spoken first?_" were printed in parallel columns.

The following apparent errors have been corrected:

p. 123 "variou saspects" changed to "various aspects"

p. 155 "‘secondary matter’ (i.e" changed to "‘secondary matter’ (i.e."





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