We have laid great stress on the necessity for drill-like work, for mechanical work, for exercises calculated to secure automatism, for habit-forming types of work. It has even seemed at times that we take a malicious pleasure in pillorying and condemning precisely those forms of work which are generally the most attractive to the average student. “The writer of this book,” some may say, “takes a savage delight in reproving teacher and student whenever they contemplate work of an interesting nature, heads them off whenever they approach anything resembling intellectual work, and turns them into channels of routine and repetition. He positively gloats over words like ‘automaticity,’ ‘passivity,’ ‘mechanism,’ or ‘unconscious assimilation,’ and apparently glories in the theory that language-learning like life itself should be ‘one demd horrid grind.’”

We readily plead guilty to a firm insistence on habit-forming exercises and drills, but continue to urge in mitigation that the practical study of language, the mastery of any form of actual speech, is a habit-forming process and little else. We must have the courage and honesty to face facts as we find them: a language cannot be mastered by learning interesting things about that language, but only by assimilating the material of which that language is made up.

But our attitude, far from being a pessimistic one, is positively optimistic. We are prepared to deny most emphatically that good drill-work is dull and uninteresting, and if some teachers make it so it is our duty to tell them not to. Those who have seen the sort of lessons that embody the forms of teaching which result from the rigid observance of these principles all testify that they are ‘live’ lessons (to use the term they most generally employ), that the students are keen and the teachers enthusiastic.

It is only too evident that every lesson must be made as interesting as is compatible with pedagogic soundness. Few people learn anything well unless they are interested in what they are learning. Hope of reward and fear of punishment are certainly stimuli to work, but very poor stimuli compared with that represented by interest. If the method is the machinery of language-study (or any other study for the matter of that), then interest is the motive power. Be the clock ever so well and ingeniously constructed, it will not go without some sort of mainspring; be the method ever so efficient as a method, it will not work unless the student is interested. All these statements are of course truisms and are accepted as axiomatic; the trouble comes when we discuss the means by which interest can be induced and maintained, for we are not all in agreement on this point.

There is, too, the question of intrinsic and extrinsic interest; the subject may be interesting in itself or it may derive an artificial sort of interest from some attendant circumstance, such as the hope of reward and fear of non-success and all that that may imply.

But a point arises at the outset which deserves our attention. A fallacy exists in connexion with interest, a fallacy which is the cause of much error and of much bad teaching. This fallacy when reduced to the absurd consists in saying, “We can make a subject of study interesting by changing the subject of study.” Now obviously it is absurd to say that we can make the study of French interesting by teaching geometry in its stead, or that we can make arithmetic interesting by replacing the arithmetic lesson by a history lesson. And yet this is the sort of thing that frequently does take place in some form or other.

It is necessary that the student shall learn how to understand spoken French, spoken English, or spoken Pekingese; it is assumed that the necessary phonetic and oral repetition work will be uninteresting, so we change the subject and teach the student to read French, English, or Mandarin Chinese, or to analyse these languages or to construct sentences in them by synthesis. Now reading and analysis and synthesis may to some people be more interesting than ear-training and oral memorizing, but whether this is the case or not it is certainly beyond the point. If we wish to learn to read, let us read; if we wish to do analytic and synthetic work, let us analyse and synthesize; but if the object of our study happens to be the command of the spoken language, it is no use to amuse ourselves by doing work which does not further our aim.

“Parrot-work is so monotonous, uninspiring, and uninteresting: let us rather translate the work of some author into our mother-tongue.” “I don’t find the study of the colloquial language elevating: I prefer to work at the classical.” Very well, we will not quarrel about tastes, but we will ask you to make it quite clear what you are setting out to learn and what your object really is; when we have ascertained that, we will see how we can make your path an easy and pleasant one. A journey to London may or may not be an interesting one, but if your object is to get to London it is no use taking a ticket to the Isle of Wight or to the Highlands of Scotland, however interesting such journeys may be.

The general tendency among educationalists to-day is towards interesting methods, methods involving the intelligent use of the intelligence, methods which develop the reasoning capacities, methods which form the judgment, which proceed from the trivial, familiar, and known towards the more profound, unfamiliar, and unknown. Geography is no longer a process of learning lists of place-names by heart, history is no longer represented as a catalogue of dates, arithmetic is taught by playing with cubes, chemistry is presented as a series of experiments in the laboratory, botany and geology are studied in the field. The old cramming process is being replaced by the method of discovery; the teacher furnishes the documents and the students discover the rules; the teacher suggests the problems and the pupils set their wits to work and find out the solutions. All of which is very interesting and, on the whole, very good.

There is, however, this danger: these interesting and mind-developing methods do not tend towards automatism and habit-formation; they are, indeed, not intended to foster any form of mechanical command.

Proficiency in shorthand cannot be gained by any method of discovery, and the capacity for doing good and rapid work on a typewriter is not attained by the heuristic method. Mathematics is a science, but the absolute mastery of the multiplication table is an art and cannot be gained by the exclusive practice of playing with cubes.

“The memorizing of the multiplication table is a wearisome grind; let us therefore make it interesting by teaching in its place the theory of numeration!” “Practising scales on the piano is monotonous and inartistic; let us therefore abolish such finger-gymnastics and replace all such work by the theory of harmony!” “Learning sentences by heart and performing these drills are so tedious; let us therefore reject these forms of work, and replace them by analysing a text or by trying our hand at literary composition!”

Now, as we have seen and proved to our satisfaction, language-learning is essentially a habit-forming process, is an art and not a science, and if we insist on considering as a science what is an art we are confusing the issues and creating a breeding-ground for all sorts of fallacies. Linguistics is a science, language-teaching is largely a science, but the practical study of languages is not; let us remember this primordial fact while we are endeavouring to make our subjects interesting.

What are the chief things making for interest? We suggest six rational and reasonable factors calculated to produce interest if not enthusiasm without any detriment to any of the eight other fundamental principles, viz.:

(1) The Elimination of Bewilderment.—“I can’t make out what it’s all about! What on earth is the teacher driving at? I don’t understand these new terms nor the use of them. What is it all for? What good is it going to do me? I do hate this lesson!”

Have you ever heard comments of this sort? Have you ever made them yourself? The attitude of one making such comments (either openly or inwardly) is not a hopeful one; it gives no promise of successful work; it shows that interest is entirely lacking. What is the cause of this attitude, and how can we change it? Is it because the subject is too difficult? No, surely not, for some of the most difficult subjects may be most fascinating, even for the average student; difficulty often adds to the attractiveness of work and may even induce interest. Difficulty is not necessarily an unfavourable factor. But bewilderment invariably is!

There is an immense difference between difficult work and bewildering work; of difficulties there must necessarily be many, but of bewilderment there should be none.

New methods often bewilder those who have become used to the old ones; unfamiliar grammatical systems are bewildering to those who think that one system of grammar is common to all the languages of the world. It is disconcerting to face the fact that languages have classical and colloquial grammars existing side by side, which grammars are mutually exclusive in many respects; it is more especially bewildering to those who have never made any study of colloquial language. Easy things and easy systems are more bewildering than difficult ones if one has already become more or less familiar with the difficult system. To those who have wrestled for years with difficult and tangled orthographies a phonetic system of writing, the acme of ease and simplicity, may appear bewilderingly difficult. A good deal of bewilderment may be ascribed to prejudice or to preconceived notions concerning the nature of language; this is why (other things being equal) children are generally less bewildered than adults when learning how to use the spoken form of language; they have fewer prejudices or even none at all.

There are two ways of eliminating bewilderment. One is to give in the clearest possible way certain fundamental explanations whenever there appears to be confusion in the mind of the student; the other is to see that the programme is properly graded. Once the student grasps the scope of the particular problem or series of problems, and once the programme is reasonably well graded, there will be no more bewilderment and there will be no more puzzled learners.

We might perhaps add here that there are times, strangely enough, when the teacher finds it necessary to induce a temporary bewilderment. Categoric and unconventional devices have occasionally to be adopted in order to break certain undesirable associations; ‘mystery words’ and ‘mystery sentences’ often play a useful part in destroying false associations and vicious linguistic habits. But these intentionally created mysteries, puzzling for the time being, are not of the same order as those hopeless and perpetual mysteries which are the cause of so much discouragement and discomfiture.

It is a subject of debate whether we ought to use explanations at all for the purpose of teaching anyone to use a language. Some maintain that we should no more explain a point of theory to a schoolchild or an adult than we should to a child of eighteen months. The young child, it is said, learns to speak the language which he hears around him by dint of sheer imitation; he learns no theory and would understand no explanations; why therefore should we explain at all?

We would suggest that the chief function of explanations is to prevent bewilderment. It may or may not be useful for a schoolchild or an adult to know why certain things are so, why French nouns are either masculine or feminine, why it is sometimes avoir and sometimes Être, why we do not say in English he comesn’t, why we do not say I had better to go, and why certain French conjunctions require the use of the subjunctive. Appropriate explanations may induce a more rapid rate of progress or they may not (probably in the long run generally not), but they certainly do have the effect of satisfying that instinctive curiosity which, if unappeased, will induce bewilderment and so cause the student to lose interest.

We might add (although this is not pertinent to the subject under discussion) that in the case of a ‘corrective course’ simple and rational explanations should form an essential part of the treatment.

With regard to the second manner of eliminating the factor of bewilderment, viz. the proper grading of the course, we would refer the reader to the chapter dealing specifically with this subject.

(2) The Sense of Progress Achieved.—All work becomes more interesting when we are conscious that we have made and are making progress in that work. That sense of discouragement which is so inimical to interest arises when, in spite of our efforts, we seem to be no nearer to our goal. Statistics compiled by those who have made a special study of the psychology of learning show us that periods frequently occur in which there is no apparent progress and during which, as a necessary consequence, the interest of the student diminishes. It is generally during such periods (technically called plateaux) that the adult student gives up his study as a bad job and retires from the contest.

The cause of such plateaux would appear to be a defective system of gradation; the student has overreached himself and has temporarily absorbed more material than he can retain permanently; he has worked too fast for his habit-forming capacities and has to mark time until the previously acquired material has been properly assimilated.

Novelty always gives a certain amount of interest to a new subject, and during the first period students often gain the idea that they are making more progress than is warranted by the facts; when the novelty wears off the reaction occurs, and a period of depression follows.

In order, therefore, to make it possible for the student always to feel he is making progress, and thus to maintain interest and zest, it is necessary to see that the course is properly graded, that the repetitions are kept up regularly and systematically, and that the rate of progression is consistently increased.

(3) Competition.—The spirit of emulation gives zest to a study. The fear of being outdistanced by one’s fellow-students or rivals, the satisfaction of gaining ground on them, and the hope of becoming or remaining the best student in the class is a stimulus not to be despised. This is really one of the chief raisons d’Être for examinations, tests, and registers of progress.

(4) Game-like Exercises.—In the case of young students a considerable amount of interest can be induced by making certain forms of exercise so resemble games that the pupils do not quite know whether they are playing or working. Games of skill such as chess are almost indistinguishable from many subjects of scholastic study, and many types of puzzles and problem-games are practically identical with mathematical problems. The only danger here is that language-games may not further the student sufficiently in the habit-forming process; some types certainly will not; indeed, we can imagine types of exercise-games which would tend to inhibit it. If, however, the necessity for habit-forming is constantly present to the teacher’s mind, it is permissible to introduce at appropriate moments forms of exercise such as ‘action drill,’ ‘living grammar,’ or ‘sorting exercises,’ possessing real educative value and an interest-giving value at the same time.

(5) The Relation between Teacher and Student.—“No, I don’t take French lessons now. M. Untel used to be my teacher, but he went away, and I didn’t much like the man who took his place, and so I lost interest and stopped. The new man was all right in his way, but it wasn’t at all the same thing as with M. Untel; he didn’t have the same way of giving the lessons, and somehow or other I didn’t seem to get on with him.”

“I like the French lesson; M. Untel makes it so interesting; he’s got a nice way of explaining things, and we are never afraid of asking him questions. He doesn’t laugh at you if you say something that sounds silly; he understands what you’re trying to drive at, and always knows what the trouble is. I didn’t use to like French lessons at all. We had another master then; he always seemed to be telling you things that you didn’t feel you wanted to know, and yet when you did want to know something he never understood what it was you wanted to know.”

These expressions of opinion (written in colloquial English) give us a good idea of why two students (one an adult and the other a schoolchild) are interested in learning French when M. Untel gives the lesson.

(6) Variety.—A monotonous type of drill-work is performed during an entire lesson. In the next lesson a second and different type of monotonous drill-work is performed. The third lesson is devoted to a third type of drill-work. A fourth lesson consists of sixty minutes of another sort of grind. A fifth and a sixth lesson are similarly devoted to two other sorts of mechanical work. The net result is six dull and monotonous lessons.

Another case. Six lessons are given. Each lesson is divided into six periods of ten minutes. Each period is devoted to a different type of mechanical work or drill-work. The net result is six moderately interesting lessons.

Not that any lesson should consist exclusively of drill-work or mechanical work; there is a place in every lesson for listening to the living language in actual use; there is a place in every lesson for interesting explanations and for the factor of human interest, for the use of devices which usually engage the keenest attention of the students. If, however, there are forms of work which generally appear less popular or less vivacious, if the repeating of word-lists and the reciting of groups of sentences do tend towards dullness, then we can compensate for this temporary lack of vivacity by introducing an extra dose of variety.

A change of work is in itself a factor of interest even if the work should not be particularly interesting; variety will relieve any tedium which may possibly be associated with mechanical work. Let us suppose that on one or more occasions we do find it necessary for some particular purpose to introduce an unpopular form of exercise; we can sandwich that exercise between two popular forms of work, and the evil ten minutes will pass unnoticed.

This point will be treated incidentally when we come to examine principle 9 (the multiple line of approach); we shall see what bearing this theory has on the question of variety and the interest engendered thereby.