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nent of modern histologists; Andrés Bello, Milá y Fontanals, Menéndez y Pelayo, Bonilla y San Martín, Menéndez Pidal, the erudite historians of literature, philologists, grammarians, and critics; Alcalá Galiano, Castelar, Sarmiento, the statesmen and orators; Ceán Bermúdez, the archaeologist; Juan de Toledo, Juan de Herrera, Churriguera, the architects; Averroes and Maimonides, the philosophers; Raimundo Lulio, San Ignacio de Loyola, and Santa Teresa, the religious mystics, theologians, and organizers; Alfonso el Sabio, the learned prince and lawmaker; the skilful astronomers who planned the "Tablas Alfonsinas"; the Pinzóns, Juan Fernández, Solís, and Juan de Grijalva, the navigators; Juan de Austria, Carlos V, the Duque de Alba, Gonzalo Fernández de Córdoba, Bolívar, and San Martín, the military leaders; the talented. García family,-including the divine Malibran, to whom Alfred de Musset is indebted for one of his finest inspirations,-Pedrell, Saldoni, Vittoria, Guerrero, Bretón y Hernández, the singers, musicians, and composers; Las Casas and Anchieta, the impassioned exponents of humanitarian principles; Pizarro, Cortés, Balboa, Hernando de Soto, Coronado, the explorers and conquerors; Murillo, Velázquez, Zurbarán, Ribera, Goya, Zuloaga, and Sorolla, the painters; Mariana, Gómara, and Vicuña Mackenna, the historians.

Undoubtedly, any catalogue of Spanish men and events compiled today would show a preponderance of soldiers, navigators, imperial and religious executives, artists, and literary men. That is in the nature of the case. The technological era is just beginning for the Hispanic nations. It has not been of very long standing, elsewhere, either. But it is to be presumed that Spanish genius will measure up to this test as it has done to others.

The important thing for us to do is to acquire more information on the extra-military and the extra-literary pursuits of Spaniards. Every Spanish newspaper and periodical in the United States should educate us in this respect. It is only by some such means that we shall be able to rehabilitate Spain and Spanish in the eyes of the world and acquire a portion of that "prestige" which is the dominant educational measurement. Facts may bring respect where ignorance brings nothing beyond good-natured tolerance, at most.

J. WARSHAW

UNIVERSITY OF NEBRASKA

SPOKEN SPANISH IN THE UNIVERSITY

The great war, having profoundly affected almost everything else, seems likely also to exert an influence upon modern language teaching. This, apparently, is not to be limited to a stimulation of interest. in this or that language, but bids fair to concern itself with methods and emphasis rather than with subject matter. President Butler has been the one, perhaps, to point out most conspicuously this phase of the matter:

Intelligent youths who have spent three, four, and five years on the study of one or both of these languages can neither speak them easily nor understand them readily nor write them correctly. . . . It is a sorry commentary as to what is going on in our secondary schools and colleges in this respect to learn on the best authority that there are now in France at least 200,000 American young men who, after six months of military activity in France and three or four hours of instruction a week in the French language can carry on a comfortable conversation under ordinary conditions and circumstances with the mastery of a vocabulary of at least a thousand words. On the other hand, many an American college graduate who has studied French for years is as awkward and as nonplussed in a Paris drawing-room as he would be in the driver's seat of an airplane. 1

Now certain obvious comments might be made upon this, but its general thesis is one which language teachers, however reluctantly, will frankly and honestly accept. It is a fact that most students of foreign languages in this country are unable, after two or three years of study, to express themselves decently in the language they have studied or to comprehend adequately the usual speech of those to whom that tongue is native. This fact has long been admitted by sincere teachers, and constitutes the chief weapon of those who deprecate the amount of emphasis, slight as this is, which has been given to the languages. The legitimate explanations of the circumstance, also, have already been set forth. Lack of time, over-crowded classrooms, insufficiently prepared teachers without foreign residence, incompetent native teachers, varying opinions as to the objects and purposes of language study, etc., all these have become familiar.

Now, however, that the traditional isolation of this country from international affairs seems to be definitely at an end and the fields of 1 Nicholas Murray Butler, in the Educational Review, January, 1919.

commerce and diplomacy alike are beginning to make manifest their demands and necessities, it is becoming apparent that we who teach languages, if we are not to fail in our duty, must teach our students to speak the language we "profess" or admit that we are incapable of doing so. The plea that our purpose is to do, not this, but something else, will no longer be accepted. The present writer will confine himself to Spanish, which is his own field, but the situation is the same for the other modern languages.

If we may assume that a speaking knowledge of modern foreign. languages has become or is soon to become of sufficient importance that institutions of higher education will make a serious effort to impart it, in how far is it possible to teach students of college age to speak a foreign language in two years, without infringing upon the other just demands of a crowded curriculum? The writer will resist the temptation to describe ideal conditions, impossible of realization in any reasonably near future, and confine himself, if he may be pardoned for so doing, to what is being attempted in his own institution.

In the first place, and as the merest preparation for attacking the problem, all the teaching members of the department who are to be concerned with the teaching of the language, as distinct from the literature, must, obviously, speak the language themselves, readily and well, and all classes for the first two years must meet five times a week. Further, we must reconcile ourselves to teaching, during the first two years, the language only, leaving the study of Spain's great literature for those students who proceed in the subject beyond the second year. Still further, every department which possesses more than two teachers should number among them at least one native Spaniard.1

Being equipped to this extent, the way to begin is to begin at the beginning. In many departmental schedules one will find perhaps a course in conversation, disguised, very likely, under some other name and open, under restrictions, to advanced students, while in the classes of the first two years, which contain at the very least seventy-five per cent of the students, the spoken language is all but unheard. The theory is, of course, that the pupils must acquire by reading a considerable vocabulary before they can begin to speak. This theory is fun

1 That classes should be limited to a number smaller than twenty-five is highly desirable but probably not possible.

damentally unsound. The person who is already experienced in the language can indeed greatly strengthen and increase his vocabulary by wide reading; the beginner cannot acquire a spoken vocabulary in that way. On the contrary, the instructor should begin to speak Spanish to his class the first day, choosing his words, of course, and making perfectly sure that he is understood by everyone. This work requires a certain personal ingenuity and must be judiciously limited in amount.

At this point it is perhaps wise to say that the writer would be quite as rigid in his insistence that the facts of grammar be accurately learned as the most reactionary follower of classical methodology. Without them the student of college age will flounder endlessly in a sea of inaccuracies dotted here and there with set phrases acquired by rote. The grammatical material should be presented and discussed in English, as a saving of time and for the added reason that it does not furnish a subject which the student may be expected to make a very enthusiastic effort to discuss in Spanish. The point involved is that grammar is not, for our present purpose. an end in itself but a means.

Let the instructor never neglect his few minutes of conversation in Spanish with his class, and let him choose the subjects for this from among those most personal to his students and most intimately connected with their every-day life. The dance given the night before by the "Pi Alfs" is a much more stimulating topic of conversation than the mythical adventures of Juan and María as somewhat tediously set forth in the reader. It is astonishing how rapidly students will assimilate Spanish terms for the things that really interest them. It is in this matter of interest that we fail perhaps most often. When the point is reached where the class can be involved in a discussion among themselves, a good bit of the journey, so far as morale is concerned, has been accomplished. If the instructor has the blessed gift of humor his task is made the easier. A spontaneous joke told in Spanish which the class catches is not without effect in dispelling the impression of unreality which so often clings to a foreign language in the students' minds. The personal dignity of the instructor will be so entirely a matter of course that he may say what he likes to his class without fear of compromising it. This matter of classroom conversation is difficult only at first, and for that reason should be attacked early. Once started it grows surprisingly easier with every passing month.

All the common agencies for imparting language instruction, with the exception of grammar, should be made to contribute directly to the end desired, without for that reason losing any of the other valuable qualities that inhere in them. The students will begin early in their course to read simple Spanish prose, which will gradually increase in difficulty as they progress until it becomes the ordinary drama or novel of the present day (however reluctantly, we must leave the classics severely alone in these two years). Now one of the most futile things in all education is the requirement that classes which have conscientiously prepared (by translation) a certain number of pages of a Spanish text should spend the precious fifty minutes of the recitation period in repeating this translation aloud, to the boredom of their teacher and of each other. This practice of translating line after line and page after page is either a matter of habit, or it is the facile refuge of the teacher without initiative or resource. This does not mean that translation is useless or that it has no place in the kind of work under consideration. Merely this that every time one asks a student to translate a passage he should have a definite object in view. Either the passage itself is difficult, presenting idioms and turns of expression foreign to English modes of speech and not easy to render, or the instructor cherishes a suspicion that a given student has a tendency to take advantage of the situation to neglect his preparation, or some equally cogent reason exists for the exercise. The bulk of the classroom reading should certainly be done in Spanish, and it should be done well from the outset. The natural tendency of the beginner to pronounce the Spanish sentence as a series of words without connection or meaning must be combated vigorously from the start, for once tolerated it quickly becomes established as a habit, when it is very difficult to eradicate. Much repetition by the student, together with frequent demonstration by the teacher during the first few class exercises after reading has been begun will tend to establish instead the habit of reading properly. To further this end, as well as to acquire a certain momentum, the reading of the first year should be as simple and at the same time as interesting as possible, and the students should be constantly trained both for accuracy and speed. By "speed" is meant, of course, nothing beyond the natural tempo of ordinary speech or reading in any language. The ability to utter Spanish up to this tempo, whether in speaking or reading, is

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