In order to become proficient in most arts, we are assumed to study, i.e. to make conscious efforts persistently and perseveringly; we are assumed to use our intelligence. There is, however, one complex art in which all of us have become proficient without any such process and without using our intelligence consciously, viz. the art of speech, i.e. of using the spoken form of a language as actually used in everyday life. We are endowed by nature with capacities for assimilating speech. Each of us is a living testimony to this fact, for each of us has successfully acquired that form of our mother-tongue with which we have been in contact. These capacities are not limited to the acquiring of our mother-tongue, but are also available for one or more languages in addition. The young child possesses these capacities in an active state; consequently he picks up a second or a third language in the same manner as he does the first. The adult possesses these same capacities, but generally in a latent state; by disuse he has allowed them to lapse. If he wishes, he may re-educate these powers and raise them to the active state; he will then by this means become as capable as the child of assimilating foreign languages. Those adults who have maintained these powers in an active state are said to have a gift for languages.

2. Our Studial Capacities and how to use them

In addition to certain spontaneous capacities, we possess what we may term ‘studial’ capacities for language-acquisition. These must be utilized when we learn how to read and write a language, and also when we wish to learn forms of language not actually used in everyday speech (i.e. the literary, oratorical, or ceremonious forms). The methods by which we utilize these capacities are generally characterized by conscious work (such as analysis and synthesis) and by conversion, i.e. converting written into spoken (reading aloud), converting spoken into written (dictation), converting from one language into another (translation), or converting one grammatical form into another (conjugation, declension, etc.). All exercises requiring the use of the eyes and the hand are of the studial order, as are also those connected with accidence and derivation.

Most of those forms of work by which we utilize or adapt habits which we acquired previously while learning some other language (generally the mother-tongue) are more or less studial forms of work.

Most language-learners at the present day are found to make an almost exclusive use of their studial capacities, and in doing so use methods which are more or less unnatural.

3. Why we must use our Studial Capacities

We must not conclude from the foregoing that methods involving the use of our capacities for study are necessarily bad, nor that those based on our spontaneous capacities are necessarily always to be used. In certain cases and for certain purposes we shall be forced to use the former. Nature alone will not teach us how to read or write; for these purposes we must use our studial capacities. We shall, however, refrain from reading or writing any given material until we have learnt to use the spoken form. Nature will not teach us how to use forms of language which are not currently used in everyday speech; in order to acquire these we must have recourse to our powers of study; thus we shall use these powers when learning literary composition, the language of ceremony, etc. Moreover, the studial powers must be utilized for the purposes for which a corrective course is designed. What has been badly assimilated must be eliminated consciously; bad habits can only be replaced by good habits through processes unknown to the language-teaching forces of nature. Even those who have not been previously spoiled by defective study require a certain amount of corrective work in order that they may react against the tendency to import into the new language some of the characteristic features of the previously acquired language or languages.

Some students have no desire to use the foreign language, but merely wish to learn about it, to know something of its structure. In such cases no attempt whatever need be made to develop or to utilize their spontaneous language-learning capacities; they may work exclusively by the methods of study.

4. The Student and his Aim

We cannot design a language course until we know something about the students for whom the course is intended, for a programme of study depends on the aim or aims of the students. All we can say in advance is that we must endeavour to utilize the most appropriate means to attain the desired end. A course which is suitable in one case may prove unsuitable in another. Some students may require only a knowledge of the written language, others are concerned with the spoken language, others desire to become conversant with both aspects. Some students only require a superficial knowledge, while others aim at a perfect knowledge. Special categories of learners (e.g. clerks, hotel-keepers, tourists, grammarians) wish to specialize. The sole aim of some students is to pass a given examination; others wish to become proficient as translators or interpreters.

The length of the course or programme is a most important determining factor; a two months’ course will differ fundamentally from one which is designed to last two years; the former will be a preparatory course, the latter will be highly developed.

It will not be possible for us to design a special course for each individual, still less to write a special text-book for him; we can, however, broadly group our students into types, and recommend for each type the most appropriate forms of work. In any case, the teacher is bound to draw up some sort of programme in advance and to divide this into stages appropriately graded. This programme must not be of the rigid type, the same for all requirements; it should be designed on an elastic basis and should be in accordance with known pedagogical principles.

5. The Supreme Importance of the Elementary Stage

The reader of this book may notice, perhaps with some surprise, how much we have to say concerning the work of the beginner, and how little we say about the more advanced work; he may be puzzled at the amount of attention we pay to (what he may consider) crude elementary work compared with the amount we give to (what he may consider) the more complex and interesting work connected with the higher stages. It will therefore be useful, at this point, to anticipate what will be more fully dealt with under the heading of gradation (Chapter X), and insist here already on the supreme importance of the elementary stage.

Language-study is essentially a habit-forming process, and the important stage in habit-forming is the elementary stage. If we do not secure habits of accurate observation, reproduction, and imitation during the first stage, it is doubtful whether we shall ever secure them subsequently. It is more difficult to unlearn a thing than to learn it. If the elementary stage is gone through without due regard to the principles of study, the student will be caused to do things which he must subsequently undo; he will acquire habits which will have to be eradicated. If his ear-training is neglected during the elementary stage, he will replace foreign sounds by native ones and insert intrusive sounds into the words of the language he is learning; he will become unable to receive any but eye-impressions, and so will become the dupe of unphonetic orthographies. If he has not been trained during the elementary stage to cultivate his powers of unconscious assimilation and reproduction, he will attempt the hopeless task of passing all the language-matter through the channel of full consciousness. If during the elementary stage he forms the ‘isolating habit,’ he will not be able to use or to build accurate sentences. An abuse of translation during the elementary stage will cause the student to translate mentally everything he hears, reads, says, or writes. Bad habits of articulation will cause him to use language of an artificialized type.

The function of the elementary stage is to inculcate good habits, and once this work is done there is little or no fear of the student going astray in his later work. If we take care of the elementary stage, the advanced stage will take care of itself.

6. The Principles of Language-teaching

The art of designing a language course appears to be in its infancy. Those arts which have achieved maturity have gradually evolved from a number of distinct primitive efforts which, by a process of gradual convergence towards each other, have resulted in the ideal type. So will it be in the art of composing language courses: the present diverse types will gradually be replaced by more general types, and in the end the ideal type will be evolved. This will come about as a result of a system of collaboration in which each worker will profit by that which has been done in the past and that which is being done by other workers in the present. Unsound methods will gradually be eliminated and will make room for methods which are being evolved slowly and experimentally and which will pass the tests of experience. By this time a series of essential principles will have been discovered, and these will be recognized as standard principles by all whose work is to design language courses.

The following list would seem to embody some of these, and probably represents principles on which there is general agreement among those who have made a study of the subject:

(1) The initial preparation of the student by the training of his spontaneous capacities for assimilating spoken language.

(2) The forming of new and appropriate habits and the utilization of previously formed habits.

(3) Accuracy in work in order to prevent the acquiring of bad habits.

(4) Gradation of the work in such a way as to ensure an ever-increasing rate of progress.

(5) Due proportion in the treatment of the various aspects and branches of the subject.

(6) The presentation of language-material in a concrete rather than in an abstract way.

(7) The securing and maintaining of the student’s interest in order to accelerate his progress.

(8) A logical order of progression in accordance with principles of speech-psychology.

(9) The approaching of the subject simultaneously from different sides by means of different and appropriate devices.

7. Initial Preparation

We must realize that language-learning is an art, not a science. We may acquire proficiency in an art in two ways: by learning the theory, or by a process of imitation. This latter process is often termed the method of trial and error, but as the term may be misinterpreted it is better to consider it as the method of practice. The method of practice is a natural one, the method of theory is not. We may acquire proficiency in two ways: by forming appropriate new habits, or by utilizing and adapting appropriate old habits (i.e. habits already acquired). The natural process is the former, the latter being more or less artificial. Language-study is essentially a habit-forming process, so we must learn to form habits. By the natural or spontaneous method we learn unconsciously; we must therefore train ourselves or our students to form habits unconsciously.

The adult whose natural capacities for unconscious habit-forming have been dormant may reawaken them by means of appropriate exercises. These are notably:

(a) Ear-training exercises, by means of which he may learn to perceive correctly what he hears.

(b) Articulation exercises, by means of which he may cause his vocal organs to make the right sort of muscular efforts.

(c) Exercises in mimicry, by means of which he will become able to imitate and reproduce successfully any word or string of words uttered by the native whose speech serves as model.

(The combination of the three foregoing types of exercise will result in the capacity for reproducing at first hearing a string of syllables, such as a sentence. The student will thereby become enabled to memorize unconsciously the form of speech.)

(d) Exercises in immediate comprehension, by means of which he will come to grasp without mental translation or analysis the general sense of what he hears.

(e) Exercises in forming the right associations between words and their meanings, by means of which he will become able to express his thoughts.

The combination of these five types of exercise will develop the student’s capacity to use spoken language.

8. Habit-forming and Habit-adapting

Language-study is essentially a habit-forming process. We speak and understand automatically as the result of perfectly formed habits. No foreign word or sentence is really ‘known’ until the student can produce it automatically (i.e. without hesitation or conscious calculation). No one can understand by any process of calculation (e.g. translation or analysis) the language as spoken normally by the native. Few people (if any) have ever succeeded in speaking the language by a series of mental gymnastics; our progress is to be measured only by the quantity of language-material which we can use automatically. Adult students generally dislike the work of acquiring new habits, and seek to replace it by forms of study dependent upon the intellect, striving to justify their abstention from mechanical work on educational grounds. This fear of tediousness is really groundless; automatism is certainly acquired by repetition, but this need not be of the monotonous, parrot-like type, for there exist many psychologically sound repetition devices and varied drills intended to ensure automatism and interest.

Most of the time spent by the teacher in demonstrating why a foreign sentence is constructed in a particular way is time wasted; it is generally enough for the student to learn to do things without learning why he must do them (due exception being made in special cases, notably that of corrective courses).

The student should not only be caused to form new habits; he should also be helped, when expedient, to utilize some of his existing habits; it is even part of the teacher’s duties to aid the student to select from his previously acquired habits those which are likely to be of service to him.

9. Accuracy

Accuracy means conformity with a given model or standard, whatever that model or standard may happen to be. If we choose to take colloquial French or colloquial English as our standard, the forms pertaining to classical French or English (i.e. traditionally correct forms) are to be rejected as inaccurate. There are two types of inaccuracy: that in which a colloquial form is replaced by a classical form and vice versa, and that in which a native form is replaced by a pidgin form. In both cases the teacher’s duty is to react against the tendency towards inaccuracy.

Appropriate drills and exercises exist which ensure accuracy in sounds, stress, intonation, fluency, spelling, sentence-building and -compounding, inflexions, and meanings.

The principle of accuracy requires that the student shall have no opportunities for making mistakes until he has arrived at the stage at which accurate work is reasonably to be expected.

If we compel a student to utter foreign words before he has learnt how to make the requisite foreign sounds, if we compel him to write a composition in a foreign language before he has become reasonably proficient in sentence-building, or if we compel him to talk to us in the foreign language before he has done the necessary drill-work, we are compelling him to use the pidgin form of the language.

In addition to specific exercises and devices which ensure accuracy in special points, we should observe certain general rules which will be described and treated under the heading of gradation.

10. Gradation

Gradation means passing from the known to the unknown by easy stages, each of which serves as a preparation for the next. If a course or a lesson is insufficiently graded, or graded on a wrong basis, the student’s work will be marked by an excessive degree of inaccuracy. If a course is well graded, the student’s rate of progress will increase in proportion as he advances.

In the ideally graded course the student is caused to assimilate perfectly a relatively small but exceedingly important vocabulary; when perfectly assimilated, this nucleus will develop and grow in the manner of a snowball.

Care should be taken to distinguish between false grading and sound grading. The following applications of this principle are psychologically sound:

(a) Ears before Eyes.—The student to be given ample opportunities, at appropriate intervals, of hearing a sound, a word, or a group of words before seeing them in their written form (phonetic or other).

(b) Reception before Reproduction.—The student to be given ample opportunities, with appropriate intervals, of hearing a sound or combination of sounds, a word, or a group of words before being called upon to imitate what he hears.

(c) Oral Repetition before Reading.—The student to be given ample opportunities of repeating matter after the teacher before being called upon to read the same matter.

(d) Immediate Memory before Prolonged Memory.—The student should not be required to reproduce matter heard a long time previously until he has become proficient in reproducing what he has just heard.

(e) Chorus-work before Individual Work.—In the case of classes, new material should be repeated by the whole of the students together before each student is called upon to repeat individually. This will tend to ensure confidence.

(f) Drill-work before Free Work.—The student should not be given opportunities for free conversation, free composition, or free translation until he has acquired a reasonable proficiency in the corresponding forms of drill-work.

Each individual item in the teaching should be graded, and in addition the whole course may be graded by dividing it into appropriate stages or phases, which will succeed each other en Échelon.

11. Proportion

The ultimate aim of most students is fourfold:

(a) To understand what is said in the foreign language when it is spoken rapidly by natives.

(b) To speak the foreign language in the manner of natives.

(c) To understand the language as written by natives.

(d) To write the language in the manner of natives.

We observe the principle of proportion when we pay the right amount of attention to each of these four aspects, without exaggerating the importance of any of them.

There are five chief branches of practical linguistics:

(a) Phonetics, which teaches us to recognize and to reproduce sounds and tones.

(b) Orthography, which teaches us to spell what we have already learnt by ear.

(c) Accidence and etymology, which teaches us the nature of inflected forms and derivatives, and also how to use them.

(d) Syntax and analysis, which teaches us how to build up sentences from their components.

(e) Semantics, which teaches us the meanings of words and forms.

We observe the principle of proportion when we pay the right amount of attention to each of these five branches, without exaggerating the importance of any of them.

In choosing the units of our vocabulary we may be guided by several considerations, such as intrinsic utility, sentence-forming utility, grammatical function, regularity, facility, concreteness, or completeness. We observe the principle of proportion when we select the material of our vocabularies in such a way that due attention is paid to all such desiderata, and without exaggerating the importance of any of them.

We also observe the principle of proportion when we give the right amount of drill-work or free work, of translation-work or ‘direct’ work, of intensive reading or extensive reading. A well-proportioned course, like a well-graded course, ensures a steady and ever-increasing rate of progress.

12. Concreteness

We are enjoined by the principle of concreteness to teach more by example than by precept. When we give explanations we should illustrate these by striking and vivid examples embodying the point of theory which is the subject of our explanation. One example is generally not enough; it is by furnishing several examples bearing on the same point that we cause the student to grasp that which is common to them all.

But this is not enough: the examples themselves may vary in concreteness; therefore we should select for our purpose those which demonstrate in the clearest possible way the point we are teaching and which tend to form the closest semantic associations. We should utilize as far as possible the actual environment of the student: the grammar of the noun is best understood when we talk of books, pencils, and chairs; the grammar of the verb is best grasped when we choose as examples verbs which can be ‘acted’; black, white, round, square are more concrete adjectives than rich, poor, idle, diligent.

There are four ways of teaching the meanings of words or forms:

(1) By immediate association, as when we point to the object represented by a noun.

(2) By translation, as when we give the student the nearest native equivalent.

(3) By definition, as when we describe the unit by means of a synonymous expression.

(4) By context, as when we embody the word or expression in a sentence which will make its meaning clear.

These four manners are given here in what is generally their order of concreteness; it is interesting to note in this connexion that translation is not nearly so ‘indirect’ or ‘unconcrete’ as the extreme ‘direct methodists’ have led us to suppose.

It is for the teacher to judge under what conditions each of these four manners of teaching meanings may be appropriately used.

13. Interest

No work is likely to be successfully accomplished if the student is not interested in what he is doing, but in our efforts to interest the pupil we must take care that the quality of the teaching does not suffer. Habit-forming work has the reputation of being dull and tedious. The remedy, however, would not be to abandon it in favour of work which in itself is or seems more interesting (such as reading, composition, and translation exercises), for by so doing we should merely be leaving undone work which must be done. The true remedy is to devise a number of varied and appropriate exercises in order to make the habit-forming work itself interesting.

The most ingenious and interesting arithmetical problems alone will not assist the student in memorizing the multiplication table, and the most ingenious and interesting sentence-building devices alone will not cause the student to obtain the necessary automatic command of the fundamental material of the language.

There are notably six factors making for interest (and the observing of these will not in any appreciable degree violate the eight other principles involved), viz.:

(1) The Elimination of Bewilderment.—Difficulty is one thing: bewilderment is another. The student must, in the ordinary course of events, be confronted with difficulties, but he should never be faced with hopeless puzzles. Rational explanations and good grading will eliminate bewilderment and, in so doing, will tend to make the course interesting.

(2) The Sense of Progress achieved.—When the student feels that he is making progress, he will rarely fail to be interested in his work.

(3) Competition.—The spirit of emulation adds zest to all study.

(4) Game-like Exercises.—Many forms of exercise so resemble games of skill that they are often considered as interesting as chess and similar pastimes.

(5) The Relation between Teacher and Student.—The right attitude of the teacher towards his pupils will contribute largely towards the interest taken in the work.

(6) Variety.—Change of work generally adds interest: an alternation of different sorts of monotonous work makes the whole work less monotonous. Spells of drill-work, however, should be relieved by intervals devoted to work of a less monotonous character.

14. A Rational Order of Progression

Apart from all questions of grading, we may observe in most of the branches of language-work different orders of progression. We may proceed from the spoken to the written or from the written to the spoken: we may start with ear-training and articulation exercises or leave them to a later stage: we may treat intonation as a fundamental or leave it to the final stage: we may proceed from the sentence to the word or vice versa: irregularities may be included or excluded during the first part of the course: we may proceed from rapid and fluent to slow utterance or vice versa.

Modern pedagogy tends to favour the former of each of these alternatives: whereas the teachers of the past generations generally pronounced in favour of the latter. The ancient school said: First learn how to form words, then learn how to form sentences, then pay attention to the ‘idiomatic’ phenomena, and lastly learn how to pronounce and to speak. The modern school says: First learn to form sounds, then memorize sentences, then learn systematically how to form sentences, and lastly learn how to form words.

The two orders of progression, it will be seen, are almost directly opposite to each other. We who have carefully examined and analysed the arguments on either side are forced to conclude that the modern order is the rational order, and psychologists will confirm our conclusion. The old order stands for cramming and for an erratic and weak curve of progress: the modern order stands for results which are both immediate and of a permanent nature. The old order teaches us much about the language and its theory: the modern order teaches us how to use a language.

15. The Multiple Line of Approach

This ninth and last of the essential principles of language-study welds the eight others into a consistent whole; it harmonizes any seeming contradictions and enables us to observe in a perfectly rational manner all of the precepts set forth under their respective headings; it answers once for all most of those perplexing questions which have engaged the attention of so many language-teachers and controversialists for such a long time.

If this principle is in contradiction to the spirit of partisanship, it is equally opposed to the spirit of compromise; it suggests a third and better course, that of accepting any two or more rival expedients and of embodying them boldly as separate items in the programme, in order that each may fulfil its function in a well-proportioned and well-organized whole.

The term ‘multiple line of approach’ implies that we are to proceed simultaneously from many different starting-points towards one and the same end; we use each and every method, process, exercise, drill, or device which may further us in our immediate purpose and bring us nearer to our ultimate goal; we adopt every good idea and leave the door open for all future developments; we reject nothing except useless and harmful forms of work. The multiple line of approach embodies the eclectic principle (using the term in its general and favourable sense), for it enjoins us to select judiciously and without prejudice all that is likely to help us in our work. Whether our purpose is the complete mastery of the language in all its aspects and branches, or whether our purpose is a more special one, the principle holds good: we adopt the best and most appropriate means towards the required end.

16. ‘Memorized Matter’ and ‘Constructed Matter’

When more is known about speech-psychology and the ultimate processes of language-study, it will be possible to embody as one of the fundamental principles the following considerations:

The whole of our speech-material is possessed by us either as ‘memorized matter’ or as ‘constructed matter.’

Memorized matter includes everything which we have memorized integrally, whether syllables, words, word-groups, sentences, or whole passages.

Constructed matter includes everything not so memorized, i.e. matter which we compose as we go on, matter which we build up unit by unit from our stock of memorized matter while we are speaking or writing.

There are three manners of producing constructed matter from memorized matter; we may term these respectively grammatical construction, ergonic construction, and conversion.

Grammatical Construction.—In this process, our memorized matter consists of ‘dictionary words’ (i.e. uninflected and unmodified root-like words). By learning the theories of accidence, syntax, derivation, and composition we become (or hope to become) able to produce constructed matter at will.

Ergonic Construction.—In this process, our memorized matter consists of two elements: more or less complete sentences and ‘working words’ (units of speech ready inflected, ready modified, ready derived, or ready compounded), which units may be termed ‘ergons.’ By means of appropriate tables and drill-like forms of work, from this memorized matter we produce more or less spontaneously the requisite constructed matter.

Conversion.—In this process, our memorized matter consists of classified series of sentences which are to be converted into other forms by means of appropriate exercises of various kinds.

In the opinion of many, the greatest evil in present-day methods lies in the fact that an almost exclusive use is made of the first of these processes as a method of producing constructed matter. Instead of concentrating their efforts on condemning this process as a vicious and unnatural one, the reformers of thirty years ago merely advocated what has been termed the ‘direct method,’ the chief features of which are the abolition of translation exercises and of the use of the mother-tongue as a vehicle of instruction.

THE PRINCIPLES OF LANGUAGE-STUDY