Chapter III: Preface (3)

But not only such ready-made pictures may be used in teaching languages. The teacher can often, by means of rough chalk-drawings on the blackboard, illustrate various things in the text which is being read and base his explanations (in the language) on them. The few times I have done it, the pupils immediately took to it, so that I began to deplore my great lack of skill in drawing. If there was any subject that was neglected when I went to school, it was drawing. Now people have, fortunately, begun to get their eyes open to the importance of this branch, first and foremost for teachers of all subjects as a help in their teaching, and, secondly, for the pupils as the good thing it is from an educational point of view for them to learn to see an object correctly and to reproduce what they see in a drawing. And just as in the case of natural history and geography, the drawings of the pupils now are an important feature of the instruction, so they might play a similar part in the teaching of languages. It is a splendid idea that has been put into practice in “Det danske selskabs skole.” I shall quote from its “Beretning,” 1900:

“Exercises in drawing have also played an important part. Before the lesson begins there is written on the blackboard one subject for each pupil to illustrate by a drawing. Each one has a certain amount of space apportioned to him. The pupil is ordered to draw only such things as he can mention and explain in German. But of course the intention is that much more is to be drawn. For instance, if the subject is a wagon, the pupil naturally draws both wheels, wagon-pole, stud-stave, side pieces, seat, driver with whip, horses, harness, etc. The pupil has to explain his drawing to the class, and of course he gets into a tight place; the result is that his interest is aroused for what all the things are called, and he pays close attention to the words when the teacher says them. Fourteen boys in a class can finish their drawings in 10 minutes, and it takes 30 minutes to go through the 14 drawings.” (C. Lambek.)

Here it looks as if the subject were given in Danish; and perhaps the words learned in the exercise have been taken up too much in detail. I should think it might be still better to announce the subject orally and rather fully in the language, to say, for instance, to a Danish pupil who is learning English--You draw a picture of a two-storied house with three windows in each story and one door; outside the house a man is to stand smoking his pipe; or, you draw a carriage and pair, inside the carriage is a gentleman, but you see only the tip of his nose; a dog is running fast behind the carriage. If there is--as there always ought to be--blackboard space enough for several pupils to execute their drawings at the same time, so much the better; the rest of the class can be occupied with something else until the drawings are finished; then they are first explained by the drawer, thereupon by one or several of the other pupils; of course both the teacher and the pupils call attention to anything that has been forgotten in the drawing, and new points are brought up, as suggested by Mr. Lambek. Also in connection with little stories, the pupils may be asked to make drawings to show that they have understood what they have been reading. In speaking about the use of pictures, I have wandered a little from my point of departure, namely, the ways in which (aside from translation) the pupil may be taught the meaning of a foreign word.

All of us who are further advanced must confess to ourselves that in reading foreign books we have often omitted to look up an unfamiliar word in the dictionary, because its meaning was perfectly clear from the _context_. And we have all learned thousands of words in our mother-tongue in the same way. Then why not use this experience in the teaching of foreign languages? Because it leads to guesswork, to carelessness in studying, to an approximate and uncertain comprehension, is the answer we get. Granted--as far as some cases are concerned! There are many combinations where the meaning of a word may be “scented” through the context, and where a conscientious teacher cannot remain satisfied without some proof that the pupil really understands the word; and there are cases where the teacher imagines that the pupils cannot help seeing the meaning immediately, and yet their guesses are all wrong. But still the ability to arrive at the meaning of an unfamiliar word through the text is valuable and does not deserve to be neglected, but should, on the contrary, be cultivated--under control, of course. At all events, there can be no danger in using really self-interpreting sentences where the meaning of an unfamiliar word may be assumed with unfailing certainty and without guesswork. In a sentence like “Il y a _douze mois_ dans _l’année_,” the pupil who is acquainted with any two of the three italicized words will be able to reason out the meaning of the third with as great accuracy as in the equation a + b = c the unknown quantity may be found when the two are given. And if you continue: le premier s’appelle janvier, le second s’appelle février, le troisième s’appelle mars, etc., then it is no guesswork at all if the pupils gather both the ordinal numerals and the names of the months. The same may be said of the following sentences--

Le jour se divise en vingt-quatre heures; l’heure se divise en soixante minutes, et la minute en soixante secondes.

Soixante secondes font une minute; soixante minutes font une heure; vingt-quatre heures font un jour; sept jours font une semaine; cinquante-deux semaines et quelques jours font une année; cent années font un siècle.

Here the pupil can infer the meaning of a number of words without needing the teacher’s translation. So it is only a waste of time to let the pupil himself translate such pieces--for he can do that half-asleep without looking very much at the French, and he does not learn much that way. No; let him repeat them in French until he can say them fluently, then let him isolate the ordinals: le premier, le second ..., thereupon the names of the months: janvier, février ...; thereupon go through both series backwards, and then finally answer questions at random: Comment s’appelle le troisième mois? Quel est le dixième mois? etc. Or in connexion with the second selection, let him go through all the divisions of time, first beginning with the smallest and then with the largest (with the use of the article _un_, _une_); then ask: Comment se divise l’heure? Comment se divise le jour? Combien de secondes a une minute? Trois heures, combien de minutes? Deux années, combien de mois? etc., etc. In this way it seems as if a teacher can with complete confidence continue for a long time to keep even those pupils occupied who do not know much French, without needing to mention a single English word.[11]

Now of course there are only few subjects which can thus be talked about in one self-interpreting sentence after the other: Sweet has, in his Elementarbuch, got hold of more of that sort of thing than any other author of similar text-books that I know of; but almost any text will be found to contain sentences where the general sense unmistakably indicates the meaning of the new words; the more of that kind of combinations the pupil commits to memory the better for him. The ability to infer the meaning from the context ought rather to be encouraged and practised than ought the tendency to go by resemblances to words in the mother-tongue or in other languages; even if much may be learned in this way (Eng. _send_, German _senden_; Eng. _ruin_, Ger. French _ruine_, etc.), yet there is still reason to caution against too much confidence in resemblances, for they often lead us astray (even in the case of “etymologically identical words”). Most of the really valuable associations of this kind come of their own accord.

But to continue, the new words may simply be explained in the language to the pupil--this of course really means that the teacher puts the word into a self-interpreting sentence, so it is merely a subdivision of what we have just been speaking about. Anyone who has been accustomed to use the excellent French and English dictionaries, large or small, all the way from Littré and Murray to the little Larousse or Annandale’s Concise, knows how often he has been able to find in them quite sufficient explanations of unfamiliar words. Why not use this experience too in the teaching of foreign languages? Thus, for instance, explain _veuf_: Un veuf est un homme dont la femme est morte; une veuve est une femme dont le mari est mort. This explanation, to be sure, contains no more information than is to be got out of the simple translation “widower” (“widow”); but there are cases where an explanation gives better information than a translation. It is not improbable that many Englishmen, when given the translation _primage_ or _hat-money_ for German _kapplaken_, will remain just as wise as they were before, but they will immediately understand it if it is explained in German: prämiengeld, das früher dem schiffskapitän ausser der fracht gezahlt wurde, ursprünglich freiwilliges geschenk, dann vertragsmässig bestimmt. The English word _dentil_ is in English-German dictionaries translated by _kälberzahn_, but I suppose that most Germans would get more out of Annandale’s definition: “the name of the little cubes or square blocks often cut for ornament on Greek cornices,” or Funk-Wagnalls’ definition: “One of a series of small square tooth-like ornamental blocks in the bed-moulding of the cornices of some Ionic and other entablatures” (here even an instructive illustration). Well, such technical words, where we do not even know the English term, we shall scarcely have much use for in school; but sometimes on account of the chance vagaries of language a translation does not give as exact an idea as an explanation. If I say that _stockwerk_ means _floor_, I run the risk of getting an exercise with _stockwerk_ used where there ought to be _fussboden_; but if I explain it as “eine der horizontalen einteilungen eines hauses,” or something like that, there is no danger of any misunderstanding.

On the other hand, it must of course be admitted that there are many words where an English translation gives the information required more quickly and more clearly than it could be given in a long explanation in the foreign language; and the teacher ought to consider in each separate case which of the two ways of helping the pupil is to be preferred. Still he must not let laziness influence him to give the translation, which of course is always easiest for him, but he must remember that an explanation in the language always has the great advantage that the pupil, in addition to the new words, hears a number of others which he thereby reviews, as it were, and that the pupil is for the time being wholly occupied with the foreign language. Besides, these explanations amuse the pupils because they get more intellectual work out of them than out of translations, which are given to them gratis.

However, such explanations ought perhaps not to be used to any great extent in the glossaries of text-books, especially in readers for beginners; here it is best to weave them into the text itself. In the first place, in such glossaries or notes, the explanations naturally become drier and more like definitions than is necessary; in the second place, the pupil who does not feel inclined to read those few lines through is tempted to get some comrade, a parent, or a sister to tell him in short the meaning of the word: that is, to translate it. To counteract this by _always_ requiring the pupil to commit the given explanation to memory is not exactly a wise plan, since it may easily lead to mere thoughtless memory-work. For the glossary ought to play no more important part in really good teaching for beginners than as a help to the forgetful pupil in his home-preparation, where he can look up the meaning (and pronunciation) of a word which he cannot remember, I do not hesitate to use translation there.[12]

The explanations in the foreign language are especially in place when the teacher assigns the lesson and goes through it orally. This must be done with the greatest care and with a view to giving the pupils a really full and all round insight into the new selection to be read--with as much life and as few English words and sentences as possible. Much depends upon the way in which the teacher reads the piece; many pieces can be read in such a way that the pupils cannot help understanding them: for instance, by the use of stress, emphasis of contrasts, change of voice, etc. And then he can point to various things by way of illustration--and it does no harm to point at the window, for instance, on coming across the word _fenêtre_, even if the class has had that word before. Many words can be made clear by means of gestures, etc.; _scie_, for instance, can be illustrated by a sawing movement accompanied by a wheezing sound; for _tailler_, it is only necessary to cut for half a second with an imaginary knife; thus the meaning of _boire_, _chanter_, _coup de pied_, _grimper_, _joyeux_, _mécontent_, _pleurer_, _dormir_, _taper_, and many other words can be given; as a rule, merely little (not noisy!) suggestions are necessary for the class to understand immediately.

Finally there are circumlocutions in the language, not straightforward definitions as in the dictionaries, but also other explanations; often it is only necessary to lead the thoughts of the pupils in upon the right track. On coming across German _hauptstadt_, for instance, the teacher can say: London ist die hauptstadt Englands, Paris ist die hauptstadt Frankreichs, und Kopenhagen ist die hauptstadt Dänemarks--and then ask one of the pupils: Heinrich, weisst du jetzt was hauptstadt bedeutet? Perhaps he will answer, “Capital,” but then the teacher can say: Ganz richtig, aber kannst du nicht das wort auf deutsch erklären? The pupil: Ja, die hauptstadt ist die grösste stadt eines landes. The teacher: Ja wohl, es ist die erste stadt, die grösste stadt, die wichtigste oder bedeutendste stadt eines landes. Then he may add: Nun, Johan, kannst du andere hauptstädte Europas anführen, and when he has mentioned a few, the teacher says: Schön, das genügt, and passes on. Even if many words are used, yet they are not superfluous because they are foreign words, and therefore a few minutes’ conversation in this manner is about just as useful as if a whole page had been read in the language. And the pupils will ever after remember the meaning of the word _hauptstadt_ much better than if the teacher had simply told them the translation and then continued with the reading. In every separate case, the teacher must feel his way to decide where there yet remains something that is not understood, and where further explanation would be superfluous or tiresome; that is also one of the reasons why such circumlocutions had better be left to the teacher than included in the text-book.

Of course it is necessary to have practice and a good deal of tact in order to give this kind of explanations naturally and well, and carefully adapted to the needs and standpoint of the class; the teacher must have a pretty good idea of what the class knows beforehand, and thereby which words and expressions he may use with certainty; the easier and the more colloquial the words are which are used in the circumlocution, and the more concretely it is expressed, the better. It is better to explain too much than too little, and one must not be afraid of using a number of words when they only are in the foreign language. There is some truth in Gabelentz’ remark: “Gesprächige leute von engem gedankenkreise sind für den anfang die besten lehrmeister”[13]; the teacher must not exactly make himself stupid, but he must admit that no matter how high he himself stands intellectually, he can very well learn something from the nursery-method of teaching languages: for instance, that taciturnity or conciseness of expression do not lead to the goal. It pays to give some attention to this form of instruction and to find out what kind of explanations are of the greatest linguistic benefit to the pupils. It is not difficult, as a rule--even without direct questions, which, however, the teacher ought not to be sparing of[14]--to feel what is understood and what is not, just as the boys can easily be trained to say so immediately when there is something that they do not understand. All that is necessary is to make them feel confident that their teacher is always willing and glad to answer their questions, and that they will never be made fun of for asking. Sometimes, of course, he may also make another pupil answer the question if it is an easy one.

The following may serve as a connected specimen of the method of procedure, even if I have, perhaps, explained a word or two which for an English class would need no explanation.

_Devant la porte d’une maison forestière_ [c’est à dire une maison
située dans une forêt. Vous ne savez pas ce que c’est qu’une forêt?
Eh, bien, c’est plus grand qu’un bois, une très grande collection
d’arbres, ça s’appelle une forêt. Adolphe, peux-tu me nommer une
forêt en Angleterre? La maison dont nous allons parler, était située
dans le milieu d’une forêt, et devant la porte] _une jeune femme, les
bras nus, cassait du bois à coups de hache sur une pierre_. [Elle
avait les bras nus, il n’y avait rien pour couvrir ses bras, elle
n’avait pas de manches. Pierre, dis-moi si Jean a les bras nus? Elle
cassait du bois (shown by a gesture) et elle employait pour ça une
hache (if the word is not known, and is not understood at once, you
may give the translation); chaque fois qu’elle fait un coup de hache
elle casse un morceau de bois.] _Elle était grande et bien faite, une
fille de forêt, fille et femme de forestiers_ [son père et son mari
étaient des forestiers, ils avaient des emplois dans la forêt; et
elle avait été élevée dans la forêt de sorte qu’elle appartenait tout
à fait à la forêt. C’est ce qu’on a exprimé en l’appelant fille de
forêt.] _Une voix cria de l’intérieur de la maison_:

_Nous sommes seules ce soir, Berthine, il faut rentrer_ [il faut que
tu rentres], _voilà la nuit_ [il commence à se faire tard]; _il y
a peut-être des Prussiens_ [les Prussiens sont les habitants de la
Prusse; ceci se passe pendant la guerre entre les Allemands et les
Français--il y a peut-être des Prussiens] _et des loups qui rôdent_
[qui vont çà et là; le mot rôder s’emploie très souvent en parlant de
bêtes féroces].

_J’ai fini, maman, répond la jeune femme, n’aie pas peur; il fait
encore jour._ [Elle dit que la nuit n’est pas encore arrivée; elle y
voit encore, et elle n’a pas peur, elle; mais, du reste, elle a fini
son travail; il n’y a plus de bois à casser.]

_Puis elle ferma les volets_ [les volets, ce sont les pièces de bois
qu’on applique sur les fenêtres pour les protéger. Paul, dis-moi s’il
y a des volets sur les fenêtres de cette salle-ci? Il y en avait dans
la maison dont nous parlons dans l’histoire; Berthine les ferma],
_rentra, et poussa les lourds verrous de la porte_ [un verrou est
fait de fer, on le pousse pour empêcher d’ouvrir la porte.]

_Sa mère filait auprès du feu._ [To explain _filer_, a gesture and
the imitation of the sound of the wheel may be employed, or else
the translation supplemented, perhaps, by: filer, ça vient de fil
puisqu’en filant on fait des fils.]

_Je ne suis pas tranquille, dit-elle, quand le père est dehors._
[Vous voyez que la mère a plus peur, elle, que la fille. C’est que
son mari n’est pas là.] _Deux femmes, ça n’est pas fort._ [Ce n’est
pas beaucoup; c’est si peu de chose que deux femmes si les Prussiens
viennent.]

_La jeune répondit:_

_Oh! je tuerais bien un loup ou un Prussien tout de même._

_Et elle montrait du doigt un gros revolver suspendu au-dessus de la
cheminée._ [La cheminée, c’est là où on fait du feu.]

_Son mari s’était engagé dans l’armée_ [il s’était fait soldat] _au
commencement de la guerre, et les deux femmes étaient demeurées
seules avec le père, le vieux Nicolas Pichon, qui avait refusé de
quitter sa demeure pour rentrer en ville_ [refusé? Si tu dis à Alfred
de te prêter son canif, il refuse s’il dit: “Non, je ne veux pas te
prêter mon canif.” On avait dit à Pichon d’aller en ville, mais il
avait dit: “Non, je ne veux pas quitter ma maison”; donc il avait
refusé].

_La ville prochaine, c’était Rethel. On y était patriote_ [vous
savez que celui qui aime sa patrie, est nommé patriote]; _et les
bourgeois_ [les habitants de la ville] _avaient décidé de résister
à l’ennemi. Tous--boulangers, épiciers, bouchers, menuisiers,
libraires, pharmaciens, manœuvraient à des heures régulières_ [Tout
le monde s’était fait soldats; le boulanger, c’est celui qui vend du
pain; l’épicier vend des épices, du thé, du café, du chocolat, et
mille autres choses; le menuisier fait des tables et des chaises; le
libraire vend des livres; le pharmacien vend tout ce dont on a besoin
quand on est malade--donc vous voyez que tous les hommes, de toutes
occupations et de toutes classes, allaient manœuvrer tous les jours à
une heure fixe] _sous les ordres de M. Lavigne, ancien sous-officier
de dragons_ [il n’était plus sous-officier, mais il l’avait été;
c’est ce qui est indiqué par le mot ancien], etc., etc.

It is best to go through the lesson for the next time in the beginning of the hour, when both the teacher’s and the pupils’ powers are freshest, and when there is sure to be plenty of time for it; at the end of the hour the teacher may be too hurried and nervous in his anxiety to get through the proper amount before the bell rings. In going through it, the teacher may either let the pupils look at their books or require all books to be closed. The latter is the better way, since then the pupils can give more undivided attention to the teacher; for they must drink in all his words and follow his slightest movements. In that case it is no doubt always best for him to write down on the blackboard each new word as he explains it, and after everything has been explained he may close either by reading the piece aloud himself (without interpolations) or by letting one of the pupils read it. Yet it is not well to follow one method of procedure all the time; and if the piece is easy, so that there are only a few new words, it may immediately be read aloud by one of the pupils (slowly, not in a forced way!), who may stop and ask whenever there is anything that he does not understand. If a sentence contains two or three unfamiliar words or some other difficulty which has given occasion for a question, it must by all means be read again connectedly without interruption as soon as a period has been reached. Finally the teacher can, if it seems necessary, as a further guarantee, let one of the pupils give a free rendering of the contents in his native language; that is a sort of control, at all events until the class has become quite accustomed to having the lesson gone through in this way.

Let me suggest here that, in going through the new lesson, the teacher can also counteract the injury which an unusual order of words or expression occurring in a selection of poetry might do to the pupil’s instinct for the natural language, by giving the prose order of words and explaining it. For instance, the lines: “And everybody in the house On tip-toe has to creep” can first be explained as if they ran: “And everybody in the house has to creep on tip-toe”; again, such an expression as _at eve_ may be altered to _in the evening_. Then when the pupil sees the changed order of words and the unusual expression in his book, he will understand that they are due to the poetical form. Therefore he will not be tempted to imitate them; if he should do so in later exercises, the teacher must correct him, since there is no earthly reason why the pupil should practise _using_ anything else but everyday language. It is, however, a matter of course that whenever I have used verses in my own books for beginners in English, I have tried to find such as contained very few deviations from the usual form of the language.

FOOTNOTES:

[11] See below about exercises in counting.

[12] It is quite a different matter if the (literary) texts which more advanced students can read are to a large extent annotated in the language itself. But the annotated editions prepared for native students in many cases assume too much for our pupils, and on the other hand are apt to give a good deal of information which is not so valuable for them; so it were best as soon as possible to prepare editions of works of foreign literature with commentaries in the language, which especially meet the requirements of _our_ pupils.

[13] _Die Sprachwissenschaft_, 70.

[14] But which, of course, ought not to be asked in the form “Do you understand?” with the obligatory answer “Yes,” which too often means nothing.

VI

We have then come to the following result with respect to translation as a means of interpreting a foreign language to the pupils (p. 56 _a_): it is not the only and the best means; it ought to be used sparingly; and at all events it is not necessary to translate whole connected pieces, but merely a word or, at the very most, a sentence now and then. But this investigation has already thrown some light upon our next point, namely, translation as _a means of testing_ whether the pupils understand the foreign language (p. 56 _b_).

Here, too, observation may take the place of translation. The pupil who obeys the teacher’s command, _montre-moi la fenêtre_, by pointing at the window shows that he understands the word just as well as the one who in answer to the question: what is the meaning of _fenêtre_? answers, window. Likewise the one who can point to the right thing when the teacher shows him a picture and says; _où est le chapeau du garçon?_ _où sont ses souliers?_ _vois-tu le toit de la maison?_ etc., or the one who carries out a command like _prends la craie_, _lève-toi_, _assieds-toi_, _donne-moi ton livre_, _prends le livre de Jean et donne-le à Henri_--especially when he at the same time says: _voilà la fenêtre_, _voilà le chapeau du garçon_, _voilà la craie_, _je me lève_, etc., with a correct application of the words desired. Nor can there be any doubt that a boy has understood a French question when he can give a sensible answer in the same language, or that he has understood a narrative which has been told or read to him when he can retell it (in English, or still better in French).

The teacher is no doubt most tempted to let the pupils translate when he wants to make sure that they know the new selection which has been assigned to them for home-study. But even in this case, if the teacher has only gone through the lesson on assigning it (as indicated above) in a detailed and lively way, and with continual appeal to the pupils, so that the whole does not become a mere monologue by the teacher, the translation test is not as necessary as it would have been if the lesson had either not been gone through at all or if the teacher had merely translated it rapidly. He will often find it sufficient to ask a question now and then about some single point in the selection, especially if the selection is used for such exercises as will be described below, which directly and indirectly show whether the pupils have understood it all or not.

But still, let us assume that the teacher insists on having the selection translated--and of course this may always be a good thing once in a while by way of a change, most so perhaps when the teacher has not been quite able to digest and absorb the new methods. Then the best thing for him to do is to require the translation immediately, before the pupil has read the piece aloud. This is the most reliable test as to whether the lesson really has been learned in time, for the pupil has not the chance while he is reading aloud to speculate about how it is to be translated, and, on the other hand, when he comes to read it in the foreign language, he is not disturbed by irrelevant thoughts in his native language. Besides, the teacher must understand that this translation is not the most important event of the hour; it ought therefore to occupy as little time as possible. The pupil must be required to deliver his translation quickly, and it is not necessary to criticise the English expressions with pedantic exactitude. As soon as it is clear that the pupil understands perfectly, it is better for the teacher himself to give the correct English expression in passing, than to waste time in letting him find it out for himself.

A little turn of expression, a word-formation, or an order of words which is not quite English can very well be allowed to pass unnoticed; it is just when there is no attention paid to these things that they are less apt to be injurious to the pupil’s English than when the translation is treated as if it were the only thing. In case of any unusually awkward expression, the teacher can indulge in a hearty laugh together with the pupils and say: “Well, that is not the very best English you are giving us, but the meaning is clear enough, and all that we are concerned with here is if you understand the French, and that you do. Of course we know that you would never seriously say or write anything like that in your mother-tongue.” No more attention than this, it seems to me, ought to be paid to the English in these oral translations--the less we occupy ourselves with our native language during the French or German lessons, the less will it become contaminated; good English is not to be learned in _those_ lessons, and poor English the teacher must give both himself and his pupils as little occasion as possible to use.

It is a different matter when _advanced pupils_ can get both pleasure and benefit out of occasional exercises in translation. Then these must be chosen so that there are considerable deviations between the foreign language and English, which of course does not mean that the selected specimen of the foreign language itself need be difficult to understand. When the pupils are not daily occupied with translation, but move freely in the foreign language, it would just be great sport for them for a change to have a contest as to who could find the best and most exact English equivalents for foreign expressions. Thus there is no little difference between this kind of exercise and those now prevalent sight translations whose chief object seems to be to test the vocabulary of the pupils. The translation exercise that I have in mind should be conducted on about these lines: the selection should be read aloud to the class; if it contains any unfamiliar words, they should be explained in the manner described above, or, if they are translated instead, there should be given (as in a dictionary) perhaps five or six English equivalents to choose between; thereupon the pupils (in class under supervision) write their translations, which the teacher afterwards reads aloud and compares, so that the pupils themselves may judge as to whose translation has come nearest to the original and as to whether that rendering is to be preferred where every little element in the original has been taken into account but where the English has thus become a little bit long drawn out, or that rendering which in pith and euphony can stand comparison with the original, but where every detail has not been strictly included, etc. In short, the exercise is not to test the pupils’ knowledge in the foreign language, but to give them some idea of the difficulties which the _art_ of translation has to contend with; and for the same reason the pupils might also be asked sometimes to try their skill in a metrical translation of a piece of poetry, but perhaps only in such a way that all participation in the contest is quite voluntary. Such selections might be chosen where we have good poetical translations in our literature, which could then be compared with the efforts of the pupils.[15]

Some few exercises in artistic translation, which the teacher carefully goes through with them, will help to give the more advanced pupils a vivid perception of some of the most delicate shades of variation in the languages as means of expression for human thought--but as the daily bread of language instruction that kind of exercise is not to be recommended, especially not for beginners.

In the daily teaching of languages it is in a number of cases quite superfluous to let the pupils translate. If the reading selections are as easy as is desirable, there will be some sentences in each lesson where neither the vocabulary nor the construction presents the slightest difficulty. In other sentences, the difficulty is simply due to a new word, but if the teacher just devotes a few minutes right away to hearing the new words, it is not necessary to have those sentences translated either. There are, as we know, many sentences which can be understood without any difficulty at all, but which are still difficult to translate; if the pupil knows the meaning of _schwören_, he will readily understand “er hat hoch und teuer geschworen,” but it will not be so easy for him to find the best way of rendering the adverbs, and it is really purposeless to waste time over them. (See also above, p. 50).

Then finally there remains one or another really complicated sentence, which can be separated out from the rest and translated by the pupils--if the teacher in order to save time does not prefer to translate the whole of it himself. To test the pupil’s comprehension of single words by letting him explain them in the language is not very practical except to a limited extent; it might only be useful in dealing with clever advanced pupils where it would not necessarily degenerate into a mere committing of definitions to memory. It is therefore more properly in place in university instruction than in schools.

If any one now says that this method of procedure by which translation as a test of the pupils’ comprehension of what they have read is limited to the least possible, and in many lessons even the very last remnant of it is done away with, is far less satisfactory than the old-fashioned translating over and over again of the whole lesson, and that the teacher thus has no means of knowing what the pupils understand and what not, I answer that, in the first place, the pupils’ comprehension of a piece which they have even translated several times in the old way is often poor enough; the most incredible thoughtlessness can thrive under the shelter of rehearsed translations. In the second place (and this is more important) the new method, when applied in the right way, offers such an abundant variety of means by which to sound the pupils and test how deeply they are penetrating into both the language and contents of their reading, that the teacher can easily feel sure of all essentials. This will be made perfectly plain in the following description of the manner in which the lessons ought to be conducted.

The selection must be read aloud. This had best be done--at all events as a rule--by the teacher first; of course he read it yesterday when he went through it for the first time, but he did it more slowly, interrupting himself with explanations, etc., for it was new for the pupils, and it was necessary for them to comprehend the meaning. But now the teacher may read it quickly, fluently, with the proper “expression,” in short, in a lively and natural manner. Then the pupil (the pupils) reads the same. At the beginner-stage, the teacher must read each sentence by itself and then get the pupils to repeat it while they have the teacher’s pronunciation fresh in mind. Later on the teacher may take larger sections, which may be parceled out to the pupils in not too small portions. And one cannot be too particular with the way in which this reading is done; such stuttering, with pauses between words belonging closely together, and neglect of natural and necessary pauses, which used to be the rule, ought never to be tolerated, not even as an exception. Even the first beginners ought to be required to read each sentence connectedly with natural expression; the teacher will not regret any trouble taken on this account, even if it involves ever so much repetition. The more attention that is paid to this in the first few months, the easier will it be later to require the pupils to read well--that is, intelligibly and intelligently. This reading aloud, besides being an exercise in pronunciation, also has its other advantages for teaching purposes. Milton, already, said that it is easy to hear only from the way in which a piece is read, if the reader understands it or not. A really good reader can in the most delicate manner lay bare his appreciation, and vice versâ it is not difficult for a teacher quick of hearing to detect, through a pupil’s uncertainty, false emphasis, etc., what he has not understood (or learned) in the piece he is reading--and then he can pounce on him and get him to disclose the gap in his knowledge. When this is filled up, of course he must read the piece again better than the first time. The reading (or reciting) of dialogues, with the parts assigned to various members of the class, is always amusing, and can easily be used as a means of encouraging natural emphasis and expression.

_Reading in unison_ ought not to be neglected; it has the advantage of occupying the whole class at once, so that the pupils get more practice in producing the foreign sounds than when each one reads separately. Of course the teacher cannot exercise so sharp a control as when he hears one at a time, but yet he has by no means lost his control; by practice, he can learn to detect single mistakes through the whole chorus, and can even be tolerably certain as to where they come from, and then he can get the suspected pupil (or pupils) to read the difficult part alone. A help of a similar nature in language-instruction is _singing_. When a teacher knows how to get his pupils to learn to sing some of the verses in the reader, such class-singing will be found to be both beneficial and enlivening; the words are more easily remembered and the pronunciation is improved. Singing in a foreign language as a factor in teaching was already a number of years ago used by Paul Passy; it plays an important part in the well-known “Palmgrenske samskola” in Stockholm and in several German schools, and has now of late years also been put into practice by some Danish teachers in a very enjoyable manner; on several occasions, the pupils have even given up a part of their recess in order to sing foreign songs, when the teachers in adjoining classes have looked askance at the singing during the lesson-hours.

The oftener a piece is recited by a pupil, the more firmly are the single words and especially the word-combinations rooted in his memory; indeed it has even been attempted to base a whole system of instruction on this experience, as for instance in v. Pfeil’s highly interesting pamphlet: “Wie lernt man eine sprache am leichtesten und besten?” (Breslau, 1884), and in several other works by the same author, especially his “Eins, Beiträge zur erziehung im hause” (3rd ed. Leipzig, 1879), which is also valuable for other pedagogical suggestions. His method of procedure is simple: no grammar; no translation from the mother-tongue; only one language at a time, which then is pursued at full speed (as a rule, six or more hours a week) in the following manner. From the very beginning, an author is taken up; the same piece (a couple of lines to begin with) is first read aloud by the teacher, then by the pupil (if necessary, several times), is thereupon translated word by word by the teacher (“to the complete neglect of German sentence-construction; I would not tolerate having turns of expression rendered into good German”) and afterwards in the same way by the pupil, is then read aloud by the pupil twice more in the course of the same lesson and once again in the beginning of the next; finally every Monday, the pupil reads aloud all that has been gone through in the preceding week, and, not stopping at that, whole books or large sections of books may be read through connectedly after they have in this manner been studied in instalments. Translation is omitted as soon as there is no danger of miscomprehension, and can soon be quite dispensed with in dealing with easy sentences, which then are only _read_ through the stated number of times. During this repeated recitation of the foreign sentences--at least four times after the pupil has understood their meaning--the mother-tongue steps into the background of its own accord, as it were, and the idioms of the foreign language take firm hold upon the memory. So far v. Pfeil, who, as he himself asserts--and why should we not believe the man?--has had good results in the course of a short time, both in taking and giving instruction according to this method, which, to be sure, he has only employed in private instruction, never having tried it in a class. The impulse to make independent use of the language-material thus learned makes its appearance very early. Thus v. Pfeil tells about a pupil thirty-two years old, who was brought up in a country school and who had never before learned any foreign language, but who after ten lessons wrote him an Italian letter filling four octavo pages, which, if not quite correct, was still quite intelligible.

But the method is terribly spiritless and mechanical, perhaps you will say. Oh, yes--but is it really more spiritless to read something aloud many times in which there is some meaning--and some meaning which you understand--than to translate something just as many times in which there is no meaning at all, to say nothing of all the other inane things which our old methods bring in their train, such as grammatical rigmaroles, etc. However, it is by no means my intention to give the v. Pfeil method an unqualified recommendation, at all events not for school purposes; it is too monotonous, and a more varied method of instruction may surely have the same or greater advantages. Already, in the preceding suggestions, it will have been noticed that there were several deviations from v. Pfeil’s method of procedure; here I shall merely call attention to some things which we can learn from it: first, that we must as soon as possible dispense with translation where it is decidedly superfluous; and secondly, that our most important object, namely, that the foreign turns of expression shall make such an impression upon our pupils that they themselves can use them on occasion, cannot be attained without much repetition.

During the first lessons, it is of so much importance for the pupils to catch and reproduce the sounds that the repetitions which are necessary for practice in pronunciation also serve to impress the sentences on their memory; the teacher must only make sure that the pupils know the meaning of each sentence before they begin to practise pronouncing it, and that they do not forget it, so that the words become merely meaningless sounds. Such a selection as the one introducing my French primer (La chèvre)[16] lends itself well to this purpose; it occasions many repetitions of the same sentences, still without becoming tiresome, and the rhythm encourages natural, fluent and non-stuttering recitation.

Later on, of course, there is no necessity for so much repetition merely for the sake of the pronunciation. Then one might require the texts to be committed to memory; but this involves the danger that they might be learned and remembered as lifeless series of words without any regard for their meaning, especially if the teacher makes a routine of it. But it might be quite useful every half-year, for instance, or perhaps a little oftener, for the pupils to be assigned each a piece to commit to memory; they may themselves choose one of the pieces which have been read, and then they must be expected to recite it with a very good pronunciation and correct expression; no parrot-performance! But otherwise the main point is for the pupils to be occupied with the text repeatedly in such a way that they do not lose sight of the meaning, so that they may thus become so familiar with it that at last they know it almost or entirely by heart without having been directly required to commit it to memory. And this can at the same time be done in such a way that the pupils are led to say a number of things without following them in the printed text, so that imperceptibly they are being prepared to be able to say something in the language quite of their own accord.

The teacher can divide the day’s lesson into sentences, which he pronounces and the pupils repeat after him. They have all closed their books, and when the teacher says a sentence, no one knows who is to repeat it. By this manner of teaching, which is also practicable in connection with the exercises which I shall suggest later, the teacher makes sure that a pupil’s attention cannot wander in the confidence that it is some one else’s turn; it is every one’s turn all the time. Thus the teacher says, for instance: Les abeilles ressemblent aux mouches; Pierre, répète.--Peter: L. a. r. a. m.--Teacher: Jean, répète ça encore.--John: L. a. r. a. m.--Teacher: Mais elles ont un aiguillon; répète, Charles.--Charles: m. e. o. u. ai.--Teacher: Et elles piquent très fort quand elles sont en colère; répète tout ça, Adolphe, etc. Or, by way of a change, the teacher can let the first one who repeats the sentence mention one of his comrades, who is to repeat it again.

Let me remark in passing that I have always given my pupils French names immediately in one of the first lessons; they are written on the blackboard (in phonetical transcription of course, see below), and are very quickly learned; as a rule, they are simply translations of their first names, occasionally of a nickname, etc. It amuses the pupils, and the teacher has the advantage of being able to use their names in the middle of a French sentence without marring the run of the language.

Other similar methods: pupil A reads aloud; after every sentence, either the teacher or he himself appoints someone to repeat.--Or: the teacher reads a sentence aloud, then says: traduis, Jules; and after Julius’ translation: répète ça en français, Paul. This is better than to let the same pupil first translate and then say it in French, for thus neither one has to make a sudden change from one basis of articulation to another.--Or: when a piece has been read aloud as a whole, the teacher may render it into English, a sentence at a time, and get the pupils to express the same thought in French. This is, of course, the most difficult of these methods and ought to be employed with caution, for the pupils may easily be tempted to _translate_ from English (that is, to construct their French after the English) instead of reproducing the French which has been given, so that we thus risk all the dangers which are commonly associated with the old-fashioned method of translation from the native to the foreign language (cf. below). Therefore it were best that this kind of exercise merely be used occasionally, and only when the selection employed is otherwise so familiar to the pupils that they almost have it by heart in its French form. A variation of all these exercises is, instead of a single pupil, to let the whole class repeat the sentence in unison.

If the pupils should begin to lag, it indicates that the class is not yet sufficiently familiar with the text, and then the best thing to do is to say: Well, now you read the piece through three times in chorus and then we shall begin from the beginning in the same way as before with repetition without the book. It does not take long before the teacher can to advantage enter upon little deviations from what the pupils know from the book; thus he secures himself against thoughtless pattering out of what has been committed to memory at home--which of course the attentive teacher easily can detect through the manner in which the pupil reads. But too great deviations are scarcely advisable; they easily lead to confusion and to the danger of wandering too far from the matter in hand, which is of course to make the pupils thoroughly familiar with the text. As examples of permissible changes of the sentences which have just been employed, I shall mention: Une abeille ressemble à une mouche (L’abeille ressemble à la mouche) mais elle a un aiguillon | et elle pique très fort quand elle est en colère--or: Les abeilles ressemblent beaucoup aux mouches, | mais elles ont un petit aiguillon, et elles piquent fort.... Or one may interpolate: les mouches ressemblent aux abeilles, | mais elles n’ont pas d’aiguillon, | et elles ne piquent pas comme les abeilles. It is best not to enter upon greater deviations, because then it will too frequently be necessary to let a pupil translate the sentence constructed by the teacher, since otherwise it is not certain whether the whole class has understood it or not[17]. The most important thing in these exercises, as also in the exercises with questions (see below), is not to let the pupil get beyond his depth so that he will become frightened and lose confidence, for then he will never learn to swim.

We have hitherto assumed that the pupils repeat what has been said orally; if the repetition is written, we have _dictation_--an exercise which must not be neglected and which can be conducted in different ways, partly parallel with those just mentioned. The teacher can either say a sentence or one of the boys can read it aloud; once may be enough, but the teacher may also say it twice, or else say it himself first and then let one of the pupils repeat it before it is written down; it may be a sentence taken from the reader (first stage), a sentence taken from the reader but slightly changed (second stage), or an entirely new piece (only for advanced students);[18] the dictation may be written on the blackboard or in copy-books (on slates); one pupil may be occupied in the first way while the rest of the class is occupied in the second way; sometimes the class itself may correct the mistakes; if there is blackboard space enough, several pupils can be writing the same or different things at the same time. The dictation may be required to be written with phonetical transcription (see below) or orthographically, or one pupil may write in one way, another in the other way, the two being afterwards compared.