Chapter IV: Preface (4)

Finally, dictation may be used in connection with several of the exercises which I shall suggest later. A question is dictated, and the pupils are required to write both the question and the answer; a sentence is dictated in the first person, which is then to be inflected in all persons, etc. The advantages of dictation are, that it trains the pupils in rapid and sharp comprehension of spoken words, that it gives the teacher an effective means of testing what each pupil has comprehended, and that the pupils generally remember pretty well what they have once written down. But the disadvantage of dictation, as of all written class work, is that it consumes more time than oral exercises. Dictation with “catches” is of course beneath the dignity of a modern language teacher.

FOOTNOTES:

[15] As an introduction to these exercises, the teacher might compare several different translations of a part of Goethe, for instance, with each other, and with the original.

[16] Somewhat similar to “The House that Jack Built.” Biquette veut pas sortir des choux.

[17] The text-books may sometimes contain a whole piece in two versions; perhaps the teacher himself may occasionally undertake to re-write (on the blackboard) or re-tell a selection.

[18] And even for them only in small measure, since it must be remembered that nothing is learned thereby, but it is merely a test in what has been learned, and that the mistakes made by the pupils, as we know from experience, easily take root in their memory because they have written them, and are not effaced by the teacher’s corrections.

VII

I shall here deal with various kinds of exercises in which the pupils have to say something in the foreign language which they have not either seen in their books or heard from someone else just a moment before. Some of the first and easiest of these are _arithmetical exercises_. But here I must first stop to make a remark about the numerals in general. It is not so seldom that we find pupils in our schools who have studied French for several years without having become perfectly familiar with the French numerals; they have great difficulty with dates. What is the cause of this phenomenon? Of course the French numerals are difficult, more difficult than the German; but the French verbs are also more difficult than the German, so that alone is not the reason why this class of words troubles the pupils. No; the matter is quite simple. Only imagine a French reader so planned that there is not a single French adjective in the text, while English words like “good,” “ugly,” “dazzling,” “white” are mixed in among the French words. Would the pupils then be able to learn the French adjectives? But is not this exactly what is done in the case of the numerals? It makes no difference if the French text has 1888 or “eighteen hundred and eighty-eight,” in both cases the pupil has to translate from English to French when he is reading the passage aloud. There are scarcely any exercises at all in translating numerals from French or in understanding French numerals; as far as this class of words is concerned, the very poorest method of translation is used, the one by which the pupil is himself required to construct expressions in the foreign language according to certain rules, without having previously had sufficient opportunity to see and hear how the foreigners themselves go about it. In the home preparation we may be very sure that only the most conscientious pupils trouble themselves to think about how 1793 ought to be read.

Then here we have a point where reform is necessary and unusually easy to bring about. Let the Arabic numerals disappear from all text-books for beginners in a foreign language, and then if they contain enough of numerals written out in full--and especially if the teacher drills the pupils a good deal in simple arithmetical exercises in the foreign language in the manner now to be suggested--it will be found that when the pupils are so far advanced as to give up text-books and read literary works, they will have no difficulty in reading all the numerals which they happen to come across fluently and correctly.

Already, at a very early stage, after one or two months’ instruction, the teacher can begin with arithmetical exercises, because they do not require any great command of language; they not only give the pupils practice in the numerals themselves, but also in catching the foreign words and sounds. The question is directed, as suggested above, to the whole class, and then the teacher points out--by name or merely by a glance--the one who is to answer it; the answer must include the question. Thus the teacher: Deux fois six, combien, Henri?--Henry: Deux fois six font douze. (Répète, Jean). Trois et neuf font, Alfred? A.: Trois et neuf font onze. T.: C’est faux, n’est-ce pas, Louis?--Louis: Oui, trois et neuf font douze. (Or: Est-ce correct, Louis? or: Est-ce bien ça, Louis?) In addition to this, sums may be set containing concrete numbers, especially such as may familiarize the pupils with the foreign coins: deux francs, combien de sous valent-ils? trois sous, combien de centimes?...; or a little rule-of-three sum: si une poire coûte trois centimes, combien cinq poires? Or, for instance: deux œufs à deux sous et trois pommes à un sou, combien ça fait-il? The teacher must not be afraid of using several whole lessons for such exercises, and afterwards he can take a few minutes of a lesson now and then in order to keep the pupils in practice. Since of course it is not arithmetic that is being taught, it is best to stick to easy problems, mostly addition and multiplication. Of course, by way of a change, one pupil may be allowed to give a problem to another to solve.

The numerals may also fittingly be brought in when the vocabulary is to be reviewed, the boys being allowed to count with concrete numbers in a certain order, so that each boy in turn has to think of some word which has not previously been used during the lesson; it is often funny to see how eager they are to outdo each other. And it often happens that a pupil who has said Pass, suddenly recalls a whole series of words when one of his comrades mentions a word from a selection which has not been broached before; the one thought suggests another that is associated with it. In French, the pupils must also pay attention to the form of the numeral, which changes according as it precedes a vowel or a consonant.

It very seldom happens that a boy uses a word which is impossible after a numeral, as for instance, _venir_ or _bonsoir_ or _trot_, which indicates that he is ignorant of the word’s signification, but then the whole class laughs of its own accord. But it is the easiest thing in the world to hear from the manner in which the words are said if they are really understood; and, in case of doubt, the teacher can suddenly ask for a translation; this is, however, generally superfluous, for the pupils only mention words which they understand, but still of course it is good for them to review them.

One of the most important exercises is to transpose a selection which has been read into _questions_ and _answers_. The teacher can begin this rather early, but he must from the very beginning and always strictly require the _pupil’s answer to be given in the form of a complete sentence_. We have no use for such an undignified performance in which the pupil gets along bravely if only he is able to answer all his teacher’s questions with either Oui, monsieur, or Non, monsieur, or some other equally intelligent answer. As an illustration of the kind of exercise I mean, take for instance the following one based on one of the very first texts in my own French Reader, which runs:

Enfant gâté.
Veux-tu du pâté?
Non, maman, il est trop salé!
Veux-tu du rôti?
Non, maman, il est trop cuit!
Veux-tu du jambon?
Non, maman, il n’est pas bon!
Veux-tu du pain?
Non, maman, le pain ne vaut rien!
Enfant gâté, tu ne veux rien manger,
Enfant gâté, tu seras fouetté!

The following questions may be based on this piece. The pupils’ answers are given in [ ]:--Es-tu un enfant? [Oui, monsieur, je suis un enfant.] Es-tu un enfant gâté? [Non, monsieur, je ne suis pas un enfant gâté.] L’enfant gâté veut-il du pâté? [Non, monsieur, il ne veut pas du pâté; or: l’enfant gâté ne....] Veut-il du rôti? [Non, monsieur, il ne veut pas du rôti.] Veut-il du pain? [Non, monsieur, il ne veut pas du pain.] Veut-il du jambon? [Non, monsieur, il ne veut pas du jambon.] Pourquoi ne veut-il pas du pâté? [Parce que le pâté est trop salé.] Pourquoi ne veut-il pas du jambon? [Il ne veut pas du jambon parce qu’il n’est pas bon.] Pourquoi ne veut-il pas du rôti? [Parce qu’il est trop cuit.] Pourquoi ne veut-il pas du pain? [Parce que le pain ne vaut rien.] Qu’est-ce qui est trop salé? [C’est le pâté qui est trop salé.] Qu’est-ce qui ne vaut rien? [C’est le pain qui ne vaut rien.] Qu’est-ce qui est trop cuit? [Le jambon est trop cuit.] L’enfant gâté sera-t-il fouetté? [Oui, monsieur, il sera fouetté.] Pourquoi sera-t-il fouetté? [Parce qu’il ne veut rien manger.] Va-t-on chercher le bâton pour taper l’enfant gâté? [Oui, monsieur, on s’en va chercher le bâton pour venir taper l’enfant.]

Thus it will be seen that a simple little piece can suggest a large number of questions, and it is important, especially in the beginning, for the teachers to ask the pupils _as many questions as possible_ in order to accustom them to the exercise, so that they may take part intelligently and fluently. Anyone who sees all these questions in print may think that they occupy a long time in a monotonous way; but after a little practice, on the part of both the teacher and the pupils, the exercise really proceeds very rapidly. In dealing with beginners, it were best for the teacher in formulating his questions to _deviate as little as possible from the words of the text_, so that they can be used in the answers almost or entirely without any change. It is not assumed in this exercise that the pupils have committed the piece to memory, but of course the exercise itself tends to make them thoroughly familiar with it. In order to give the pupils confidence, and in order not to require too much of them immediately, the teacher can in the first few lessons allow them to keep their books open while the piece is gone through once in question form, so that they can look up their answers when they cannot remember them. Then they can be told to close their books and answer the same or almost the same questions without referring to the text. Of course, the first few times when such an exercise is used, it is also well for the teacher to direct the same question to several boys in succession; and the very first time he can also write a few questions with their corresponding answers on the blackboard, in order to show the class how the exercise is to proceed.

Even if the pupils learn the piece by heart in the course of the exercise, yet their answering the teacher’s questions does not become mechanical, since they have to consider the form of the question, and then reflect over what is to be included in the answer, and how it is to be worded and constructed. Of course, the teacher ought to feel gratified if the pupils of their own accord make slight alterations in the words of the book, substitute a pronoun for a substantive, etc., only it is best not to give too early encouragement to great deviations from the text. The last question of the above examples, which is based on a piece that has been read before in the same book, shows how the teacher already at a very early stage can vary a certain day’s exercise by bringing into connection with it something previously learned. The pupils will greet such a question with pleasure, partly the pleasure of recognition, and partly the pleasure of the opportunity thus afforded them to feel at home in the language. As time goes, the teacher may depart more and more from the material of the book. For instance, he may use its words in asking the pupils questions about their own personal affairs, or about things in which they are interested outside of their French lessons. If they are having a selection which contains the word _roi_ and the names of various countries, the teacher may say: Comment s’appelle le roi d’Angleterre? (or, notre roi?) Qui est roi d’Espagne? etc.; yes, why not also Comment s’appelle le roi de France?

In the beginning, it is only the teacher that asks questions, but it does not last very long before the teacher by way of a change can allow the _pupils themselves to ask each other questions_; thus they learn to construct sentences in the interrogative form, which, when they come to make practical use of the language, is just as important for them as to be able to answer. In German schools, they have a regular system of exercises on this plan in connection with grammatical categories; of a given sentence in the book the pupils are to construct first a subject-question, then a verb-question, then an object-question, etc. If, for instance, the sentence is _La mère de Gribouille a cassé sa marmite_, and the teacher wants a subject-question, pupil A asks B: Qui a cassé la marmite? (or Qui est-ce qui a cassé la marmite?); or a verb-question: Qu’est-ce qu’a fait la mère de Gr.?; or an object-question: Qu’est-ce que la mère de Gr. a cassé? In order to help beginners with the grammatical difficulties, several sentences may be written on the blackboard with their various parts differently underlined. Later on the teacher can tell one of the pupils to change all the sentences in a piece which has been read--of course only in so far as they lend themselves to such a change--into, for instance, object-questions. After each question, the teacher points out the one who is to answer. Then another pupil may change the same sentences (or those in the next paragraph) into subject-questions, etc. Of course the teacher must not put up with a mere mechanical alteration of the text, but must always require the pupils to exercise so much common sense that no questions are made which would not occur in a natural conversation.

When the pupils themselves ask questions, they naturally cannot do anything else but follow the text slavishly as it stands, so therefore it is not advisable always to let _them_ ask the question; the teacher must on the whole avoid getting into any rut. He himself must do the asking rather frequently; he may either pounce upon some little point or ask comprehensive questions, including the gist of several sentences. Only he must remember that sentences which are too comprehensive either require too much of the pupils, or are quite empty and meaningless; besides, the result may only be that the exercise shrinks into almost nothing, since then there can only be two or three questions to correspond to a whole page of the text, and thus the text cannot make as strong and detailed an impression as it should. And, above all, the questions must be asked as naturally as possible.

If this question-exercise is used and all its possibilities for variation exhausted in the right way--with liveliness, tact and constant consideration for the pupils’ standpoint--it gives ample and abundant opportunities for the teacher not only to talk to, but with, the pupils in the foreign language; and notice that it is not “talking to the pupil in a language which he does not yet understand”--this fear is often expressed by those who have misgivings as to the advisability of conversational exercises at an early stage--but from the very beginning nothing is said which the pupil cannot be required to understand and to answer intelligently in the same language.

Quite imperceptibly the teacher may pass from this exercise to _renarration_; the question has merely to be formulated in such a way that it cannot be answered in a single sentence but only by an account of the contents of at least a few lines or so. Thus longer and longer pieces may be required to be retold, although during the first years it should only be such pieces as have previously been learned and gone through in detail by means of questions and answers. Later on, the teacher can use pieces for renarration which have not been assigned to the class for preparation; the teacher reads aloud (or may possibly let one of the pupils do it), if necessary, several times, and thereupon requires as much as possible to be retold either orally or in writing, or first orally, then in writing. Or if there is a sufficient number of copies of the book used, the pupils may be given say ten or twenty minutes in which to read the piece through silently to themselves, and then they can use the rest of the hour to write down what they can remember of it. Such exercises are used to a large extent in teaching the mother-tongue, and it is agreed that they are highly beneficial, because they not only sharpen the powers of apprehension, especially the ability to distinguish between the essential and the unessential, but they also develop linguistic technique, that is the formal command of means of expression, since much of the language used in the original creeps into the renarration and thus becomes the possession of the reteller. Of course the pupils are earlier ripe for such exercises in their native language than in foreign languages, but that does not lessen their value in the two respects mentioned, of which the latter is the more important here, while there is perhaps too great a tendency to attach the chief importance to the former in the teaching of the native tongue. Even when the pupils are far advanced, it is highly beneficial for them to give (French, etc.) reports of something which they have read--not merely simple renarrations of bits of fiction or history, but also résumés of the trend of thought in some philosophical or critical essay, etc.

Many pieces also lend themselves to _reshaping_ in various ways, whereby grammatical relations may be practised at the same time as the words and sentences of the selection once more pass in review through the minds of the pupils. All the singulars may be changed to plurals, as far as the plurals make sense in the connection. After the piece has been gone through in its printed form, the pupil reads it aloud, remembering in the case of each word to consider whether or not it has to be changed to the plural and what it would be in the plural. Thus, according to circumstances, there are either nouns, adjectives, pronouns or verbs to be changed. Or what is told about a boy may be said about a girl. Changes in time from “now” to “yesterday,” from “to-day” to “in a week,” occasion many alterations in the forms of the verbs, fewer in the adverbs. The person may also be changed, especially in such a way that the pupil puts himself in the place of that Peter about whom something is told, and thus substitutes _I_ for _he_, etc.; if desirable, those further alterations may be made which make a letter out of the narrative. A change from the first to the third person can easily be combined with the shifting of tense which gives us indirect instead of direct discourse. Thus the following sentence: “Eh bien, Pierre, dit Jean, qu’est-ce que tu vas faire demain? Je ne sais pas, dit Pierre,” may be changed to: “Jean a demandé à Pierre ce qu’il allait faire le lendemain, et Pierre a répondu qu’il ne savait pas (qu’il n’en savait rien).” In German, this kind of transposition involves such complicated changes (person, mood, order of words) that they cannot be required until at a later stage than in French; but transposition from indirect to direct discourse is not very difficult. Changes from the active to the passive must be undertaken with a good deal of care, since there are comparatively few sentences which can be thus transposed without undergoing a shifting of meaning, which it is not always easy to explain or understand the cause of, and many sentences do not lend themselves to such transposition at all. Likewise there are relatively few connected passages where negative sentences can be made affirmative and vice versâ without giving us sheer nonsense. So these last two kinds of transposition can, as a rule, only be applied to single sentences, which the teacher has to pick out of their connection; but when carefully selected in this way they will be found to be very useful, especially in French, where the correct placing of _ne_ and _pas_ is so important; they are less useful in German.

Now and then, too, dependent clauses (for instance relative, adverbial clauses, etc.) may be changed to independent clauses and vice versâ, and still more complicated changes may be undertaken by which one may try the different ways in which the thoughts of a passage may be linked together.

Of course it is also possible to have mixed exercises of this kind. For instance, pupil A reads aloud; the teacher interrupts him at the end of a sentence, mentions what kind of change it is to undergo, and thereupon points out one of the other pupils (whose books are closed) who is to make the change. But the teacher must never allow any of these exercises to become something merely mechanical which is turned out according to a certain fixed formula; the pupils must always be trained to consider whether a newly constructed sentence makes sense or not; thereby both their linguistic intuition and their powers of logic are sharpened at the same time.

VIII

By this time we have fairly encroached upon the question as to the method to be used in training pupils in the _grammar_ of a foreign language. I want to introduce my discussion of this subject with the following quotation from N. M. Petersen (_Sprogkundskab i Norden_, Collected Works, Copenhagen, 1870, ii. 297-8):

“With respect to method, the artificial one must be given up and a more natural one must take its place. According to the artificial method, the first thing done is to hand the boy a grammar and cram it into him piece by piece, for everything is in pieces; he is filled with paradigms which have no connection with each other or with anything else in the world ... he is filled with words, only half of which occur occasionally, and some never at all in what he reads. How old are not the complaints over this perverted method! how many sighs it has occasioned, how much deformity it has produced! On the other hand, the natural method of learning languages is by practice. That is the way one’s native language is acquired. The pupil becomes acquainted with the elements and absorbs them, as it were, into his soul in their entirety before he is consciously able to separate and account for the single parts and their special relations; he forms whole complete sentences without knowing which is the subject and which the object; he gradually finds out that he has to give each part of the sentence its correct endings without knowing anything about tense or case.... The logical consequence of this, then, is that as a rule one cannot begin with grammar in teaching languages to a child of ten or twelve. His first years at school ought to give him merely materials; he ought to collect experiences (that is a child’s greatest delight), but not speculate over them.”

It is now half a century ago since N. M. Petersen uttered these golden words, and still the old grammar-instruction lives and flourishes with its rigmaroles and rules and exceptions, _that intensely stupid custom, the teaching of grammar to children_, as Herbert Spencer calls it. Only few of the boys in our schools who have studied German for several years, are able to connect for instance _um_ with the proper case without hesitation; but there are certainly still fewer who cannot run through _durch_ _für_ _gegen_ _ohne_ _um_ and _wider_ like parrots. But strangely enough this ever present phenomenon does not yet seem to have led to a general acknowledgment of the fact that these grammatical rigmaroles as a rule are scarcely worth as much as the counting-out rigmaroles of the children: eeny meeny miny mo.[19]

And, of course, paradigms which are learned by rote also belong to the category of rigmaroles. “Paradigms ought by all means to be given, but should never be learned by heart in rigmarole-fashion.” (N. M. Petersen.) Thoughtlessness and stupidity thrive excellently on this continual repetition of words as words, that is words without any mutual association, without connection in sentences. Just think of the many thousands of boys and girls who time and again recite: _mourir_, _mourant_, _mort_, _je meurs_, _je mourus_, and then ask how many of them, yes even of their teachers, ever happen to think that the last form in reality is impossible (at all events in conversations in this life).[20] The percentage is scarcely very large. And when conscientious philologists like Ayer and Sachs give imperative forms like _nais_, _naissons_, _naissez_--be born! let us be born!! be ye born!!! it cannot be denied that we are tempted to use the exclamation: “die gelehrten, die verkehrten!” Of course it is not our aim to get rid of such forms as _je mourus_;[21] what is wrong is the system. I condemn _vivre_, _vivant_, _vécu_, _je vis_, _je vécus_ just as strongly as _mourir_, etc., even if none of these forms is really meaningless. And the reason why I reject this method of teaching languages is because it does not and cannot bring us to our desired goal. The chief absurdity, the one which it is our business to quarrel with, is that use of disconnected words for grammatical purposes, which flourishes in all our text-books.

It has often amused me to examine grown-up persons (non-philologists) in what they could remember of the instruction they had received in school in foreign languages. It seems to be extremely common that they have not the slightest idea as to what case for instance a preposition governs, but the rigmarole in which it occurs they generally know by heart. They also know ever so many scraps like _der buchstabe_, _der friede_, _der funke_ ... or _das amt_, _das ass_, _das bad_, _das bild_, _das blatt_ ... but why they have learned these things, and what they were supposed to be good for, to these questions there is generally no answer forthcoming. So those rigmaroles are really of no practical use whatever.

Now, of course, rigmaroles could easily be so arranged--though no one seems to have put it into practice--as to contain an indication of the object in grouping together just those words, for instance by saying _durch das zimmer_, _für_, _gegen_ ... or _durch für ... um wider mich_, or _das amt_, _die ämter_, _das ass_ ... or _das amt_, _ämter_, _bäder_, _bilder_....

But even in this improved form it seems to me that grammatical rigmaroles are of little value just because they accustom the pupils to learn and say things by rote without _thinking_; they are remnants of the old-fashioned would-be pedagogy where a teacher in any subject was satisfied if the pupil only “knew his lesson,” that is, could recite the words of the book, and where no one ever thought about understanding or other such-like modern inventions.

The expressions “living” and “dead” are so often used about languages and words, but those who use them do not always take the trouble to consider in what sense these expressions really have any meaning. A language only lives, and can only live, in a person’s mind, and that it lives there means that its component parts are for him associated with certain ideas, which are recalled when he hears the words, and which in turn summon up the corresponding words when he wants to express them, or when he simply wants to make them clear for himself. But ideas do not and cannot exist except in combinations; an absolutely isolated thought is the same as nothing. It is the same with words; if they are taken out of their natural surroundings, they suffer atrophy and at last cease to perform the usual function of words, namely to produce ideas. So isolated words, such as are given in rigmaroles and paradigms, are only ghosts or corpses of words. Try to run through the words “jewel, stone, cabbage, knee, owl, toys, louse,” and see if a single complete picture has been produced in your mind--but you are no better off when you say the French rigmarole _bijou_, _caillou_, _chou_, _genou_, _hibou_, _joujou_, _pou_. That, as well as _amo_, _amas_, _amat_, _amamus_, _amatis_, _amant_ and all the others, must by virtue of the fundamental psychical law of the life of language become merely empty jingle and nothing else. Now we see the psychological reason why sensible persons can write such sentences in their books as _je mourus_ or the entirely parallel “Wir sind nicht hier.” When the mind is occupied with a word as a grammatical phenomenon, the word’s normal power of calling forth ideas is of course lessened in a considerable degree.

Furthermore the isolation of words for grammatical purposes may even lead us to make positive mistakes. The pupils are first carefully taught in the grammar that “nobody” in French is _ne personne_ and “never” _ne jamais_,[22] and later on it is corrected as a serious mistake when they write _ne personne parlait_ or _il ne jamais parle_, mistakes which would never have occurred if the pupils had not been allowed to learn the false formulation. In modern French “nobody” is _personne_ and “never” _jamais_, just as “not” is _pas_, etc. _Ne_ only exists in connection with a verb, and ought never to be seen or learned by the pupils except in its natural surroundings; out of connection it is no more a word than _un_ (in _unfriendly_, _ungracious_, etc.). The rule for its employment can be thus stated in short, that it is placed in front of the verb, always, if the sentence is wholly negative, also often if it is only half negative (by which I mean the well-known cases after _empêcher_, _craindre_, comparatives, etc., where _ne_ is well on the way to slip out of the living French language, and where we now, after the last ministerial decrees, may allow ourselves a little laxity in teaching these points).[23] Likewise it is only injurious to teach the children that “I” is _je_, “thou” _tu_--a matter of fact it is _moi_, _toi_, while of course “I go, thou goest,” is _je vais_, _tu vas_; what usage has joined together, let no grammar put asunder.

But words, when in their natural connections, show their vitality in other ways besides in summing up the correct ideas; they have another power, which they also lose when they are isolated, namely the power of breeding new connections in the image of the old ones. If I have often reproduced a certain type of word-formation or sentence-construction, then this becomes a part of my mental mechanism in such a way that I unconsciously make something new (coin a new word, construct a new sentence) after the same pattern, after the “analogy” of what I know, whenever I need it, just as the English boy who has often heard superlatives like _hardest_, _cleanest_, _highest_, etc., does not need any rule to be able to construct forms like _purest_, _ugliest_, _dirtiest_, of his own accord, and who, at the moment when he says them, would not be able even by means of the most scrupulous analysis to decide if he has heard the form often before and is merely reproducing it, or if he himself is creating it without having previously heard it--and, if the latter is the case, if he is creating something which others also have created, or if it is the very first time that the word is used in the language--this is what takes place every minute wherever human languages are spoken.[24] An Englishman has so often heard (and repeated) sentences like “give the man your hand,” “I gave the boy a whipping,” “he gave his sister an apple,” that he unconsciously forms his sentences according to a scheme where the indirect object always precedes the direct object, and which even without this grammatical terminology and without any rule would lead him quite naturally to say, for instance, “Will you give your father the money?” A Frenchman would just as instinctively say, “Veux-tu donner cet argent à ton père?” because in all the sentences which he has experienced he has heard the “dative” expressed by _à_ after the direct object.

But since this takes place by virtue of inviolable psychical laws, it applies not only to the mother-tongue, but also to the foreign languages which we learn later. We simply cannot avoid thus unconsciously forming types or patterns to go by, in using a foreign language, as soon as the conditions for these typical formations are at hand. If, on learning English, a Dane has frequently heard (read) and (especially) used combinations like _up here_, _in here_, _in there_, _out there_, then he will quite naturally say _down there_ when he wants to express this thought; it is not at all necessary for him previously to have learned a rule to the effect that “_here_ and _there_ in connection with other adverbs of place stand last.” As a matter of fact, when we speak or write a foreign language, we employ a number of such rules which we have never seen formulated, and, what is more, also rules which have never at any time been consciously formulated by any grammarian. The reason why we cannot attain the same confidence in all departments of the foreign language that we feel in our native language is of course partly because the conditions are not so favourable, and partly because our mother-tongue acts as a hindrance on account of the tendency it has to intrude on all occasions and mislead us to construct sentences after _its_ pattern.

But the conditions become the more favourable for this unconscious mental activity in our pupils the more we know how to make each sentence in the foreign language have its full effect upon them and become their possession, and the more we can keep the mother-tongue in the background. And although we can never bring it about that our pupils come across the forms in the foreign language even approximately as often as that child does who is learning his native language, yet we can to a large extent make amends for this by bringing a better system into our teaching, so that the acquiring of the language will not depend so much upon chance as is the case when babies learn to talk, just as it is also an advantage that our pupils are older and more developed, and that we can get some help from the written and printed language.

Many of the transposition exercises mentioned in the last section are essentially grammatical, but we can easily hit upon still more exercises by which we may in a systematic way encourage the natural tendency toward type- and series-formations. To conjugate a verb all the way through by itself is the sheerest drudgery, but the exercise immediately becomes both more interesting and more beneficial when it is a whole sentence that is to be tackled. For instance, the teacher can write on the blackboard a sentence like “Je donne un sou à Alfred” and get the pupils to conjugate it through all the persons. In the beginning he might also write down all the forms of the verb, one under the other; they are not to be committed to memory, but merely furnish a scheme, which the pupils are to fill out by inserting the correct pronouns before, and _un sou à Alfred_ after the verb. Then the next step is to let the pupils use other words instead of _un sou_ and _Alfred_, so that pupil A says, for instance, _Je donne un centime à Paul_. B: _tu donnes un franc à Jean_. C: _il donne un livre à papa_. D: _nous donnons des poires à l’épicier_, etc. Then in reality the task which the boys have before them is to hit upon new words to insert (they must make sense!); consequently it becomes a kind of game in which the vocabulary is reviewed like the one mentioned above (p. 99), but at the same time the forms of the verb are practised. If a pupil should happen to say, for instance, _ils donnent deux cerises à le maître_, the teacher must only say the sentence himself with the correct _au_ and make him repeat it in this form without scolding him,--yes, even without stopping to give a long explanation of why it should be _au_ and not _à le_ in this case. This kind of exercise can of course be varied in different ways; such a sentence as _mon père me donne de l’argent_ is written down, and the pupils are told to inflect it in all the persons, which of course only involves an alteration of _mon_ and _me_; or the sentence is to be reconstructed with other tenses, etc. More complicated sentences, too, may be conjugated all the way through, either without changing anything but the pronouns and the forms of the verbs, as for instance, _Je suis allé me promener avec mon père_; _Das habe ich ihm gestern versprochen, und ich werde es ihm morgen geben_--or in such a way that other things are changed too: _je m’appelle_ ... where the pupil is to insert real names (his own, a comrade’s ... in case it is _vous_, the teacher’s); _Ich habe meinen vater um etwas brot gebeten._ _Du hast deinen vater um etwas geld gebeten._ _Er hat seinen vater um ein stück papier gebeten._ _Sie hat ihren vater um einen kuchen gebeten_, etc. Of course one can also assign written exercises of a similar kind, as for instance: construct five sentences like _Le père_ de _Jean_ est allé à la maison de _sa sœur_, using different words in each sentence in place of those here italicized, etc., etc.; but it were best if these sentences were suggested by, or in some way associated with, sentences in the text-book.

Now some people will say that this is only another way of employing those grammatical isolated sentences which I have declaimed against--and they are right in so far as I admit that the more the exercises are made to resemble the old-fashioned ones, the poorer they are for the purpose, and if they are employed to too great an extent they may easily degenerate into tiresome mechanical routine-work. But if used to moderation they will only be beneficial, and then, besides, they differ from the single sentences of the old method in being associated with a text which has been read, so they are not thus quite isolated from a sensible connection; they also differ because translation is not used and is not needed (except when the teacher at long intervals has to make sure that pupil A has understood a sentence given by pupil C, who has used an unusual word); they differ because, translation being omitted, the whole exercise can proceed at a rapid pace; they differ because the sentences are constructed by the pupils themselves, who are thus compelled all the time to pay attention both to their form and contents; and finally they differ because, as a result of all this, they are more interesting and amusing to the pupils. Furthermore such exercises incite the pupils to want to say something of their own accord, and thus they get a desire to extend their knowledge; they will frequently ask what this or that word which they need in a sentence is in French or German--and in that case the teacher must always answer, but then he must always require, too, that they _learn_ the word which has been given them (to prevent them from getting into the habit of asking superficially and carelessly just “for the fun of it”). Finally the pupils will thus be brought to appreciate the benefit of learning grammar; their grammatical knowledge is not sheer theory for them, but is continually converted into effective power and thus becomes easier to remember, for there is no doubt that Goethe is right when he says: “Still all that we can remember of our studies in the end is only what we have been able to find practical use for.”

Of course, the sentences constructed by the pupils in the course of any one of the exercises recommended in this book may contain mistakes, and the most serious mistakes must be corrected, yet with as little particularity as possible, if they have nothing to do with the phenomenon which is being or just has been carefully considered and practised, and with as few theoretical reasons as possible. Many exercises can be so arranged that it is scarcely possible for the pupils to make any mistake, and this without becoming less valuable; on the contrary, they will often be the best, for every sentence which a pupil constructs or says correctly confirms good habits of language. But no matter how much one may favour the theory that “Prevention is better than cure,” it is not well to be too anxious to prevent mistakes. One of the ablest advocates of the reform in Germany, Wendt, says: “It is of more importance for the pupil to talk at all than to talk correctly,” and although I know what criticism I have to expect from unsympathetic opponents about my encouraging superficiality and not caring a bit about correctness, yet I cannot deny myself the pleasure of quoting with approbation a Slavic proverb, _Tko zeli dobro govoriti mora natucati_ (whoever wants to speak well must murder the language), which Schuchardt has chosen as a motto for his stimulating work about mixed languages,[25] and which he interprets: “Wer aus irgend einem grunde sich scheut eine fremde sprache zu misshandeln, der werd sie nie beherrschen.”

In order to reassure people who cannot help feeling anxious, I shall add here three statements from the report of the ninth German “Neuphilologentag” (1901). Klinghardt (p. 100) confesses that he has been converted to the reform, because, in spite of years of vigorous efforts, he had not succeeded by means of the translation method[26] in training the majority of his pupils to grammatical correctness. Headmasters of schools where the old method was employed had also told him that there were still serious grammatical mistakes of form in the written exercises which were handed in at the final examinations. But, after he had given up the translation procedure, all of his pupils, even the backward ones, had attained to grammatical correctness. Wendt (p. 101) emphatically denied that anything could be gained in grammatical sureness by translation exercises. And Walter (p. 102) repudiated the accusation which is always on the tongue of many of the opponents of reform, that the reformers entirely do away with grammar, by referring to many of these very gentlemen, who, on visiting his school, had expressed surprise at the grammatical sureness displayed by his pupils.

And since I now seem to be in the mood for quotations, I can also refer to Goethe’s words: “Thus I had learned Latin, just like German, French, English, only through practice, without rule and without system. Anyone who knows what the state of school instruction was at that time will not find it strange that I neglected the grammar as well as the rhetoric; everything seemed to come naturally to me. I retained the words, their formations and transformations in my ear and in my mind, and I employed the language with ease for writing and talking.”[27]

In giving the pupil English sentences to translate into the foreign language, we are only artificially creating difficulties. If it is difficult for the pupil to translate into his mother-tongue where at least confirmed habit ought to prevent him from falling into the worst pitfalls, then it must be much more difficult, indeed impossible, to translate into a foreign language where he is not yet quite at home. We ourselves lead the pupil to make mistakes, and then we have to do all we can to prevent his confronting us with a too overwhelming number of them. To this end we limit each exercise to illustrating one, or two, or three, paragraphs in the grammar; we make theoretical rules to serve as a guide in translating, without always remembering how difficult it is to make practical use of such rules; we bracket the words which are not to be translated; we try to be helpful by placing alongside of, or underneath, the correct English, some very strange English indeed, which, however, has the advantage that it can be translated literally, etc., etc. And the result of all this exertion? Well, it is a well known fact that they are not always things of beauty that we meet with in the French exercises which are handed in after many years of toil, according to this method. Experience is sure to teach us that this is not the means to our end. Joh. Storm is right when he says (_Franske taleövelser_, Preface): “The worst and most unfruitful torment in the school instruction of the present time is the excessive use of written exercises in foreign languages.” As a bright contrast to this “constructive” method of procedure, we have the “imitative” method, which may be so called partly because it is an imitation of the way in which a child learns his native language, partly because it depends upon that invaluable faculty, the natural imitative instinct of the pupils, to give them the proper linguistic feeling, if it only has ample opportunity to come into play. As a motto for this method, we might perhaps say: Away with lists and rules. Practise what is right again and again!

FOOTNOTES:

[19] The only thing in the grammar which it might be reasonable to learn by rote is the numerals.

[20] The story goes that a Swedish dialectologist who was on a tour to investigate how extensively the strong form _dog_ (died) was in use, asked a peasant: do you people here say “jag dog” or “jag döde”? The peasant was not a grammarian; he answered sensibly: well, when we are dead we generally do not say anything.

[21] Kr. Nyrop informs me that he has found “Mais je mourus hier” in Mairet, La Silvanire, v. 2, 175, and I myself have come across it in a short story by Zola about the sensations felt by a person who has been buried alive after his apparent death--but that does not make the form more “living.”

[22] The dots which are given in the printed book between the two words disappear in oral recitation; so they play no part in the minds of the pupils.

[23] The former “redundant” words are now the most important ones, indeed in reality the only important ones, since _Pas du tout_ etc., where there is no verb, is fully recognized, and sentences like _Je veux pas_ are becoming more and more common in colloquial language.

[24] Cf. my remarks on “schaffende und erhaltende analogiebildung,” in Techmer’s _Internat. Zeitschr. f. allgem. Sprachwissensch._, iii. (1887), p. 191 ff.

[25] _Slawo-deutsches und Slawo-italienisches_, Graz, 1885.

[26] i.e. Translations from the mother-tongue, beginning with single sentences of the usual kind.

[27] _Aus meinem leben_, II. vi. Goethes werke, Cotta’sche bibl. d. weltlitteratur, 20. 218.

IX

“But our pupils must not only know their foreign languages unconsciously and mechanically; they must not only learn how to express themselves, but they must also know why.” When I think of the instruction in grammar that has been usual hitherto, I am tempted to say as if in echo, “Why?”

In a school in Copenhagen, the story goes that a certain teacher after having asked about the gender of the French substantive _mort_ and then “Why?” got the answer, “Because it comes from Latin _mors_, which is feminine”; he was not satisfied with that, however, but made the correction: “No, it is because it is an exception.” When we feel scandalized at this teacher’s stupidity, we ought conscientiously to ask ourselves if many of the answers given to the question “Why?” in grammar teaching are in reality much more valuable than this one; the object in most cases is merely to classify the sentences or words under certain given rubrics and to give their names and the respective rules which have been committed to memory, something which can in large part be done with very little real grammatical understanding of the language in question.

The usual superstition that theoretical instruction in grammar is the best way to teach pupils how to express themselves grammatically is of a piece with the severity with which grammatical mistakes are criticized in comparison with the mildness with which mistakes of vocabulary, etc., are treated.

That grammatical propositions are abstractions, which are often difficult even for experts to understand, and which must therefore be far beyond the horizon of our pupils, we see from the way in which most philologists, on coming across a rule which is the least bit involved, immediately have to resort to the examples to see what the point is; we also see it from the difficulty which grammarians often find in expressing their rules in such a way as to be really clear. Therefore there is even among persons who have to any extent studied languages theoretically (and perhaps most among them) a great tendency to avoid as much as possible the traditional, grammatical, theoretical method when they want to take up a new language; this feeling has been clearly expressed by the renowned Romance scholar H. Schuchardt.[28] It is true, as has been said, that one really cannot begin to learn the grammar of a language until one knows the language itself.

In contrast to our school-days, when in all subjects a ready-made system was pounded into us, and it was only through the system that we caught sight of some of the facts upon which it was built, so that we indulged in only extremely little of anything like independent observation or classification of observations, in contrast to all this, another method of procedure is coming to the front in all teaching, a method which starts out from the things which the child itself can see in its surroundings, a method which trains the child to observe, to classify its observations, to draw its own conclusions, so that finally, when the time is ripe, the scientific system will raise itself, as it were, in a natural way on the foundation of the observations made. The golden rule is: “Never tell the children anything that they can find out for themselves.”

Theoretical grammar ought not to be taken up too early, and when it is taken up it is not well to do it in such a way that the pupil is given ready-made paradigms and rules. After the manner of Spencer’s “Inventional Geometry,” where the pupil is all the way through led to find out the propositions and proofs for himself, we ought to get an _Inventional Grammar_. When a selection in the reader has been read, the pupils may be asked to go through it again (read it aloud), and pay special attention, for instance, to the personal pronouns; every time one occurs, it is to be written down on the blackboard; there the forms are finally classified (by the pupils!) according to the natural associations between them, and thus the paradigms are constructed quite naturally; then, if desired, the pupils can copy them down in special note-books for future reference. For instance, if the French possessive pronoun is found in the two forms _son_ and _sa_, in the combinations _sa main_, _son gant_, _son épée_, _son ennemi_, _sa figure_, _sa blessure_, _son opinion_, the object of the pupils must be to discover the principle of usage. It will not be found difficult to formulate a rule in these cases; but, if necessary, the teacher can help the pupils not a little by means of the emphasis with which he reads the sentences in which the forms are found. Then the rule once formulated may be tested on other forms to see if the same principle of usage should happen to apply there too, etc.