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

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.