In language-study as in any other branch of activity we must observe a sense of proportion; we must pay due attention to the various aspects of the question in order to ensure a harmonious whole. It is possible to devote too much time and effort to a given aspect or branch; this is the case when such time and effort are spent at the expense of an aspect or branch of equal or of greater importance. It is necessary, for instance, to give much attention to the understanding of the language as spoken rapidly and idiomatically by natives; but if this occupies the whole of our time we shall be able to do nothing else, and shall neither learn to speak, nor to read, nor to write. This would be an obvious violation of the principle of proportion. It is necessary to know something of the grammar of the language, but if we devote every lesson of a three years’ course to the study of grammar we shall again be offending against this principle.

We tend to give too much attention to things which interest us, and too little to those things in which we are not particularly interested. Such inequality of treatment is more particularly apt to occur in these days of specialization; the intonation specialist thinks of little but intonation, and tends to think that everything else is of secondary importance; the phonetician is so keenly alive to the immense importance of ear-training and of correct articulation that he may tend to dismiss all other things as trivialities; the grammarian grinds away at declensions and conjugations regardless of the existence of such things as sounds and tones; the semantician is so intent on meanings that all has to be sacrificed to his special branch.

The most typical example of disproportionate treatment is, of course, that afforded by the orthographist of the old school; for him language is nothing but a set of spelling rules; pronunciation for him is the interpretation of spellings; grammar is a branch of orthography, and meanings themselves are largely dependent on the way a word is spelt. In the present-day reaction against the orthographist we may expect a swing to the other extreme, and we may find schoolmasters welcoming spelling mistakes as the signs of a healthy tendency towards phoneticism.

Already the reaction against the over-use and abuse of translation exercises has resulted in an almost equally grave over-use and abuse of the ‘direct’ method.

There are, however, times when a seemingly undue proportion of attention should be directed to certain things, notably when we have to react against a vicious tendency. If our student is too keenly interested in orthography and oblivious to the importance of phonetics, we may be justified in excluding orthography from his programme. If he is morbidly interested in grammar and analysis, we may find it necessary to give him overdoses of semantics and unconscious assimilation in order to re-establish some sort of equilibrium. With the student who refuses to learn a word until he sees it written we must for some time make an exclusive and seemingly disproportionate use of oral work and phonetic writing.

The principle of proportion, then, does not necessarily imply equality of treatment nor even a fixed standard of ratios; it simply means that all the items in the whole range of subjects and aspects must receive an appropriate degree of attention, so that the student’s knowledge of them may ultimately form a harmonious whole.

It is impossible to observe the principle of proportion without having in view the ultimate aim of the student. If his sole object is to become a master of colloquial expression, our sense of proportion will tell us to exclude in a very large measure the study of the conventional orthography.

The ultimate aim of most students is fourfold:

Each of these four aspects requires special methods of teaching. A method or device which will rapidly enable the student to understand the language when spoken will be inefficacious as a method for teaching him to produce a written composition. No amount of composition work, on the other hand, will teach him how to understand what is rapidly uttered by natives. If (as is freely admitted) a command of the spoken language is a great help towards acquiring command of the written, the converse is not the case; proficiency in written work does not imply progress in oral work. To pay too much or too little attention to any of these four aspects is a violation of the principle of proportion.

The principle may also be violated by paying too much or too little attention to any of the five chief branches of practical linguistics: phonetics, orthography, word-building, sentence-building, and semantics. Let us pass them in review in order to make quite sure that we understand the scope of each and have properly discriminated between them.

Phonetics teaches us how to recognize and how to make the sounds of which the language is composed; it teaches us the difference between two or more sounds which resemble each other, and between a given foreign sound and its nearest native equivalent.

Orthography (with which we may associate orthoepy) teaches us how to spell what we have already learnt by ear; it also teaches us how to pronounce what we have learnt by eye from an ordinary orthographic text.

Word-building (accidence and etymology) teaches us inflexions, prefixes, and suffixes, and how to use them, how to form plurals from singulars, accusatives from nominatives, finite tenses from infinitives; most of the mysteries of declension and conjugation are included under this heading; the collecting of word-families pertains to this branch.

Sentence-building (syntax and analysis) teaches us how to combine words into sentences, how to form compound tenses, phrases, and clauses; it teaches us the places of the various sentence-components, the nature and use of concord or agreement; it shows us the differences between regular and irregular sentences. When properly systematized (according to a special science to which the name of ‘ergonics’ has been given) this particular branch of linguistics shows us how to form the largest possible number of sentences with the fewest words.

Semantics teaches us the meaning of words, of inflexions, and of compounds; it shows us how to transform our thoughts into language, to select the most appropriate word or form, and to interpret correctly what we hear and read. It is more especially this branch which teaches us the differences in style and dialect, and enables us to distinguish the colloquial from the classical and to keep either from contaminating the other.

If we are to judge by the average teacher and the average language-course, the principle of proportion is usually violated by teaching:

The principle of proportion may also be observed or violated in the selection of vocabularies and of grammatical material. To include in early lessons words or forms which are comparatively rare, archaic, and useless, while excluding some of the commonest and most useful items of language-material, is an offence not only against the principle of gradation but also against the principle of proportion. Too little attention also is usually paid to ensuring a just proportion between the various parts of speech. There is a fairly well defined series of laws which determine the relative number of nouns, verbs, and adjectives occurring in a given vocabulary radius, and with the growing attention which is being given to this sort of statistical work these laws are standing out more clearly and are coming to be better understood. We have also to note a regrettable tendency to give preference in vocabularies to words of special utility (such as names of plants, animals, parts of the body, tools, implements, and such-like semi-technical words) and to neglect unduly words of general utility, words which may occur in any context and which are common to any subject. This is a particularly grave case of disproportion when we consider that the bulk of any given text (probably from 80 per cent. to 90 per cent. of it) is made up of these general words.

Proportion must be observed in determining the respective quantities of drill-work and free work, of translation-work and ‘direct work,’ of intensive reading and extensive reading, of chorus-work and individual work needed; throughout the whole range of the subject there are possibilities of good or of bad proportion. It is for the teacher or for the designer of language-courses to see that the principle is reasonably well observed.