[Note:—The English language presents a far simpler situation than the Italian as regards the agreement of article and adjectives. Gender itself being, in the case of English nouns, more a matter of logical theory than of word-ending, adjectival agreement in the formal sense in practically unknown to English grammar. Likewise the formation of the plural is much simpler in English than in Italian, where the singular and plural word-endings are closely associated with gender. It is a question, in fact, whether the whole subject of the gender of English nouns should not be taken up somewhat later in connection with the pronouns, where English shows three singular forms masculine, feminine, neuter (him, her, it) as against the Italian two, masculine and feminine (lo, la, plural li, le, etc.). Signora Montessori's discussion of the situation in Italian still remains instructive to the teacher of English as an illustration of method. We retain her text, accordingly, in its entirety.—Tr.]

As we have already said, the words chosen for grammatical study are all printed on small rectangular pieces of cardboard. The little cards are held together in packages by an elastic band and are kept in their respective boxes. The first box which we present has two compartments. In the holders at the back of each compartment are placed the cards which show the part of speech to be studied, in this case article and noun. The article cards are placed in the article compartment and the nouns in the noun compartment. When the children have finished their exercise they replace the cards—the nouns in the place for the nouns and the articles in the place for the articles. If the words article and noun are not a sufficient guide for the child, the color at least will make the task easy. In fact the child will place the black cards for the noun in the compartment indicated by the black guide-card (marked noun); the tan cards for the article with the tan guide-card (marked article). This exercise recalls the child's experience with the alphabet boxes, where one copy of each letter is pasted to the bottom of the box as a guide for the child in replacing the other letters. The child begins to speak of the article-section, the noun-section, and the article-cards and noun-cards. In so doing he begins to distinguish between the parts of speech. The material must be prepared very accurately and in a definitely determined quantity. For the first exercise, the children are given boxes with the articles and nouns shuffled together in their respective compartments. But there must be just enough articles of each gender to go with the respective nouns. The child's task is to put the right article in front of the right noun—a long and patient research, which, however, is singularly fascinating to him.

We have prepared the following words. We should recall, however, that the cards are not found in the boxes in this order, but are mixed together—the articles shuffled in their box-section and the nouns in theirs.

(We suggest as a corresponding English exercise the introduction of the indefinite article. This substitution involves four processes against the eight of the Italian exercise. The use of an before a vowel is quite analogous to the problem of the Italian l' and gl'. However the theoretical distinction between the definite and indefinite article, as regards meaning, is reserved by Signora Montessori to a much later period, though the practical distinction appear in the earliest Lessons and Commands.—Tr.)

The child tries to combine article and noun and puts them side by side on his little table. In this exercise he is guided by sound just as he was in building words with the movable alphabet. There the child's first step was to find relationships between real objects and the linguistic sounds corresponding to them. Now he sees suddenly revealed to him hitherto unsuspected relationships between these sounds, these words. To have an empirical way of demonstrating and testing these relationships, to practise very thoroughly on two kinds of words, suddenly brought forth into systematic distinctness from the chaos of words in his mind, offers the child not only a necessary exercise but the sensation of relief which comes from satisfying an inner spiritual need. With the most intense attention he persists to the very end of the exercise and takes great pride in his success. The teacher as she passes may glance about to see if all the cards are properly placed, but the child, doubtless, will call her to admire or verify the work that he has done, before he begins to gather together, first, all the articles, then, all the nouns, to return them to their boxes.

This is the first step; but he proceeds with increasing enthusiasm to set the words in his mind "in order," thereby enriching his vocabulary by placing new acquisitions in an already determined place. Thus he continues to construct, with respect to exterior objects, an inner spiritual system, which had already been begun by his sensory exercises.

Singular and Plural

The exercises on the number and gender of nouns are done without the help of the boxes. The child already knows that those words are articles and nouns, so we give him now small groups of forty cards (nouns and articles) held together by an elastic band. In each one, the group (tied separately) of the ten singular nouns serves as the guide for the exercise. These nouns are arranged in a column on the table, one beneath the other, and the other cards, which are shuffled, must be placed around this first group in the right order. There are two more cards of different colors on which the words singular and plural respectively are written; and these are placed at the top of the respective columns. We have prepared four series of ten nouns in alphabetical order. In this way four children may do the exercise at the same time and by exchanging material they come in contact with a very considerable number of words.

This is the way the cards should finally be arranged in the four different exercises:

Like material has been prepared for the masculine and feminine forms: The masculine group is kept by itself, while the feminines are shuffled.

Finally there are three series of nouns in four forms: Singular and Plural, Masculine and Feminine. Each group has eighty cards counting both nouns and articles, and the ten singular masculines in the guiding group are kept together, apart from the others. The title cards (twelve in number) are singular and plural and for each of them is a card marked masculine and a card marked feminine. The following is the order of the material when properly arranged by the child:

Occasionally class exercises are used in our schools for the four forms of the Italian noun, masculine and feminine, singular and plural. They take the form almost of a game, which the children find amusing. A child for instance distributes around the class all the plural nouns. Then he reads aloud a noun in the singular. The child who holds the corresponding plural answers immediately. The same thing is next done for masculine and feminine, and, finally, for all four forms at once.

When these exercises have become familiar to the child, others somewhat more difficult may be presented. These new ones comprise: nouns which change form completely as they change gender and of which, so far, only the most familiar examples (babbo, "father," mamma, "mother," etc.) have been given (Series A); nouns in which the form is the same in the singular of both genders (Series B); those in which both genders have a common form in the singular and a common form in the plural (Series C); nouns which have only one form for both singular and plural (Series D); nouns where the same form appears in both genders but with a different meaning (Series E); finally, nouns which change gender as they pass from the singular to the plural (Series F).

The Singular and Plural in English

Translator's Note:—While the formation of the English plural does not present the complications of gender that appear in Italian, the phonetic adaptations required by the plural ending -s along with certain orthographical caprices and historical survivals of the language, result in a situation somewhat more complex than treated by Signora Montessori. In fact, her analysis of the Italian plural requires eight word-lists, while English requires at least fourteen, not including the question of foreign nouns. The special stress on the article is hardly necessary in English. An analogous treatment for English would be somewhat as follows:

All these groups of words in their order are reproduced in special booklets which the children may take home and read. In actual practise such books have proved both convenient and necessary. The children generally spend much time on them and delight in reading the words over and over in the order in which they themselves have discovered them in the card exercise. This recalls and fixes their own ideas, inducing a sort of inner maturation which is often followed by the spontaneous discovery of grammatical laws on the relations of nouns, or by a lively interest which throws the children into exclamations or laughter as they observe what great differences of meaning are sometimes caused by a very slight change in the word. At the same time these simple exercises, so fruitful in results, may be used for work at home and well meet the demands for something to do with which children are continually assailing their parents. For homework we have prepared alphabets where the letters are printed in type-writing order. With them the child can compose words, or later, sentences, at the same time becoming familiar with the alphabet arrangement of standard typewriters.