CHAPTER V. LANGUAGE-LESSONS, GRAMMAR, AND COMPOSITION. I. LANGUAGE-LESSONS AND GRAMMAR. 1. In considering this branch of school studies, it is well to bear in mind the following axioms: (1.) "Speech is acquired mainly by imitation." (3.) Language precedes arithmetic. (4.) Grammar comes, not before language, but after it. 2. In the primary grades, teachers must give patient and persistent attention to the correction of vulgarisms, provincialisms, and current blunders in speech, without waiting for any grammatical knowledge whatever. 3. Oral and written language-lessons should precede the use of a text-book on grammar. Begin written exercises by requiring pupils to construct short simple sentences that begin with a capital and end with a period. [See Part III., Chapter IV., I.] "Teachers who take the pains to observe well," says Professor Russell, "know that there is a stage in the life of childhood when expression is a spontaneous tendency and a delight; when to construct a sentence on his slate, or pencil a note on paper, is to the miniature ambitious student a conscious achievement, and a triumph of power." 4. For beginners in composition, after the prerequisite exercises in sentence-making, write a very short, simple story on the blackboard, and let them copy it on their slates, or on paper. Continue this for a time, and then let them copy short reading-lessons from the book, or interesting paragraphs from the longer lessons. A few exercises of this kind, taken at long intervals, are not enough; they must be continued daily for several years of school life. "The necessity of a progressive and graduated course of training in the mother tongue," says Professor Swinton, author of "Language Lessons," etc., "extending over some years, and beginning in practice and ending in theory, is now generally recognized and acted upon.' 5. One of the very best of exercises is to let children reproduce from memory, in their own words, stories told them by the teacher, or which they themselves have read or heard out of school. In this way writing becomes a pleasure instead of a task. Originality in thought must not be expected of children. Stories," says Miss Keeler, "offer the best opportunity to improve the child's language and culture. You can do almost anything with children if you will only tell them stories. You can refine their feelings, touch their emotions, rouse their enthusiasm, awaken their ambition, enkindle their devotion. There is nothing in the broad sweep of noble living or noble thinking that you cannot bring to their consciousness by means of a story. As for language, the story is the very royal road to its acquisition. Tell a group of children a story which awakens their interest and enchains their fancy, and then ask for it back again, and notice how accurately it will come." 6. If pupils are kept busy upon sentence-making and composition exercises up to the age of twelve, it will not be necessary to waste much time in "parsing" or sentence-analysis. On this point Superintendent Newell remarks, "Being an art, grammar must be learned in the beginning, as all other arts are learned, by the practice of it. We learn to draw by drawing, we learn to paint by painting, we learn to dance by dancing, and we must learn 'the art of speaking and writing the English language' by writing and speaking it, not by parsing and analyzing it." 7. In all grammar grades except the highest class, language-lessons and actual composition work constitute the best means of acquiring a ready and correct use of language, which, in its turn, becomes a sound basis for the study of technical grammar. "It is constant use and practice, under never-failing watch and correction," says Whitney, "that makes good writers and speakers." "As grammar was made after language," says Spencer, "so it ought to be taught after language.' 8. One of the most practical of all exercises is letterwriting. As soon as a child can write at all, it ought to be trained to write a short letter. In every grade during the whole course, repeated exercises in letter-writing should be given, so that on leaving school, at any age from ten to fifteen years, every scholar should be able to write a letter neatly and correctly, to fold it, direct it properly, and to put on a postage-stamp. [For suggestions in this exercise, see Part III., Chapter IV.] 9. Require pupils to memorize a part or the whole of a short poem, and then to write it out from memory, punctuate, and capitalize it. 10. Require pupils to write compositions drawn from their lessons in history and geography, thus utilizing their knowledge on those subjects. 11. Require only brief and reasonable forms of parsing, limited mainly to the construction of the word, or its office in the sentence, and its relation to some other word. The Latinized "models for parsing" in many text-books involve a great waste of time. "It makes one shudder," says President Chadbourne, "to think of the trash which scholars have been compelled to learn in connection with the simple studies of grammar, arithmetic, and geography." 12. Require a few essential definitions to be thoroughly learned, but first show your scholars how a definition is made up, and why it must be expressed in the words which are used, so that it may be remembered by meaning as well as in words. A comparison of the different ways of expressing the same definition is an excellent class exercise for discussion and criticism. 13. Explain clearly the meaning and use of the ten leading rules of syntax, and then require your pupils to get them by heart. But make sure that they first understand what the rules mean, and how they are practically applied. Thousands of pupils have repeated hundreds of times Rule I., "A verb must agree with its subject in number and person," without the slightest notion of its real meaning or practical application. 14. Give your older pupils some training in the analysis of sentences, but make use of brief and simple forms. Sentential analysis has its uses, but it must not be made a hobby of. Sentence-making is a more profitable exercise than complicated metaphysical sentence-analysis with a long array of minor modifiers. 15. Grammar is one of the most difficult of the common-school studies. To teach it successfully requires the highest degree of skill on the part of the teacher. "It is more difficult than arithmetic," says Bain," and is probably on a par with the beginnings of algebra and geometry. It cannot be effectively taught to the mass before ten years of age." "To teach grammar without a printed text is like teaching religion without a manual or catechism: either the teacher still uses the catechism without the print, or he makes a catechism for himself. There can be no teaching except on a definite plan and sequence, and good instead of harm arises from putting the plan in print. The grammar-teacher working without books either tacitly uses some actual grammar, or else works upon a crude, untested, irresponsible grammar of his own making." 16. Bear in mind that the main object of the study of grammar is not so much to enable pupils to speak and write correctly as to enable them better to understand what they read. A knowledge of grammar is essential to a right appreciation of the masterpieces of literature. With more advanced pupils, the right study of grammar is a means of mental discipline fully equal to that of mathematics. "I hold," says Tyndall, "that the proper study of language is an intellectual discipline of the highest kind. The piercing through the involved and inverted sentences of Paradise Lost; the linking of the verb to its often distant nominative, of the relative to its distant antecedent, of the agent to the object of the transitive verb, of the preposition to the noun or pronoun which it governed; the study of variations in mood and tense; the transformations often necessary to bring out the true grammatical structure of a sentence-all this was to my young mind a discipline of the highest value, and, indeed, a source of unflagging delight." |