The teachers' handbook to accompany Fundamental English

Front matter

THE

TO ACCOMPANY

BY

Preface

In presenting " Fundamental English/' and this its companion book, a full explanation is due the teacher.

It may be fairly said that the ordinary means employed for teaching English in the higher grades of our Grammar Schools, and sometimes even in the lower grades of our Academies and High Schools, are analysis of sentences and reproduction of compositions. Now teachers who use these means show, I believe, an appreciation of what these classes ought to be doing. These classes ought to be acquiring the ability to construct a sentence, and they ought to be developing some power of imagination. There is no doubt that analysis helps to the one, and that reproduction helps to the other, but the question is whether or not too much is not expected of analysis, and whether or not reproduction is used properly. Let us see.

For two or three years before the pupil enters the High School or Academy he is practised long and faithfully in the analysis of sentences. He frequently acquires a facility in this department of grammar that is simply amazing. Set a sentence before him, and he has it torn into its component parts almost before his eyes have scanned it. In drilling the pupil into this proficiency, the aim of the teacher has not been to make a grammarian of him, but to help him forward in composition. He has, nevertheless, been made a very respectable grammarian. Does he show as much ability in composition as two or three years of such work would seem iv PREFACE

to warrant? Can he write an English sentence? Other teachers may have had experience different from what has been my experience and the experience of a very considerable number of teachers whom I have been able to consult; but, as far as I have been able to learn, all this analysis does not teach pupils how to write English sentences — at least it does not give pupils such perfection and facility in the composition of a sentence as so much labor would seem to warrant us in expecting. The reason is not far to find,

A man may wreck buildings all his life, and never become a bricklayer. When we want a house built, we do not go to a wrecker. We know that he has never learnt how. He knows the art of destruction, but he does not know the art of construction. When we want a sentence written, we should not go to one who knows only how to wreck sentences, but to one who has been taught how to construct sentences. If we expect pupils to be sentence-builders, we must teach them how to build — we must exercise them in sentence-building.

Suggestions for exercises in sentence-building, and even whole exercises in it, are found in various books of grammar and rhetoric. The exercises we offer are not a great invention. The only thing novel about them is that they are more numerous than any we have seen; in fact, numerous enough to supply any average class with work for two years. One virtue, we believe, they can claim — they are systematic.

In offering them to teachers we do not wish to be considered revolutionary. We do not wish teachers to imagine that we believe analysis of sentences should be wholly abandoned. We believe as firmly as any teacher that pupils should be taught grammatical analysis, but we object to its becoming an end instead of remaining a means to an end. In order to assist the teacher in this matter of analysis we have prefaced our exercises in sentence-synthesis by a sec-

PREFACE V

tion containing lists of sentences for analysis, and we have further prefaced this section by a collection of such definitions and rules for analysis as we believe necessary and sufficient for pupils of the grades for which these exercises are intended.

When we first planned the exercises in sentence-building, it was not our intention to insert the definitions and rules, and the exercises in analysis. We were moved to insert the definitions and rules by the consideration that, since different grammarians use analytic terms in widely different meanings, we would facilitate matters for both teacher and pupils by telling just what we mean by our terms. The exercises in analysis were added at the suggestion of practical teachers, who find that the examples of the various kinds of sentences given in grammars do not seem to be sufficient to enable teachers to impress on pupils the nature of these various kinds of sentences. As a consequence teachers have to construct such examples for themselves, or to hunt them from book after book. We hope the collection of sentences which we have made will save teachers the time and labor spent in hunting or constructing such examples.

As thus proposed to the teacher and pupils, these three parts of "Fundamental English" are nothing more nor less than an application to these matters of the rules of the " Ratio Studiorum " of the Society of Jesus. Those rules insist that Jesuit professors teach languages by an orderly use of precepts, models, and practice. In the matter of sentences, this would mean that the professor must first explain to the class the principles of sentence structure; then show how these principles are applied in concrete examples; finally, exercise his pupils in the application of these laws to their own sentences. When, therefore, a Jesuit professor would be aiming at giving his class that power over a vi PREFACE

sentence sought after by the process of analysis mentioned above, he would proceed somewhat after this fashion: he would first define a certain kind of sentence (Precepts) ; next he would propose to his pupils examples of this kind of sentence, pointing out to them, and having them point out, the application of the definition (Models); then he would demand of his pupils either that they compose original sentences of the kind analyzed, or that they combine various simple sentences into a sentence of the kind analyzed (Practice). It will be apparent to anyone who glances through the First, Second and Third Parts of " Fundamental English" that it is this method exactly which is followed out in those parts.

Thus far, our apology for our attempt at sentence-building. A word, now, on the matter of reproduction.

Do we, as a rule, use reproduction properly? Do we get out of it all the imaginative training that it is able to offer? We believe we are fair in the following presentation of the case.

When the teacher of the lower grades in question assigns his class a subject for reproduction, he reads to them a description or narration, and tells them to write out the story or the description in their own words. How long a selection does the teacher read to the class? We think we are stating the ordinary occurrence, when we assert that the selection thus assigned usually contains at least fifteen hundred words. It is next to impossible for a teacher to find suitable selections that are shorter than this. The teacher can hardly expect and, except in the case of extraordinary pupils, hardly ever receives more than three hundred words from the pupils as their reproduction of all that has been read to them. Pupils in the grades in question easily remember about one-half of what is read to them, and they write about one-fifth of it. Now the effects of this sort of reproduction

PREFACE vii

are manifest. First and foremost, composition of this kind costs the pupils little or no effort. They simply dash off whatever comes to their mind of the passage which has been read to them. They never do any thinking while they are at the work of composition. It is hard to see, therefore, how work of this kind can in any sense be called original composition, or how it prepares for original composition in any way. The fact of the matter is that work of this kind impedes rather than helps original composition. Keep a pupil at this sort of reproduction for two or three years, and you will find that the teacher who has to teach him the art of original composition must not only instruct him in a new learning, but must unteach him old habits which make the new learning almost impossible. The pupil trained in this false method of reproduction must be taught that composition is not no work, and then, must be taught how to work; the pupil who has had absolutely no training in composition has this advantage over a pupil so trained — he has to be taught only how to work.

This is the evil. The cure that has suggested itself is nothing original. It consists merely in harking back to the first and essential meaning of reproduction. Reproduction should not mean the rewriting of some part of a selection, but of the whole of it. This sort of reproduction cannot help but be beneficial. The reason is evident.

If you demand from the pupils a composition as long as the selection read to them, they will have to do some thinking in writing their composition. Why? Well, they naturally forget a certain amount of what is read to them. To supply what they forget, they will have to cudgel their memory or their imagination. Just here is where they begin original composition. It is certainly a very modest beginning, but it is a beginning, and in the lower classes we have to make only a beginning. The principle involved is a very simple viii PREFACE

one. For a pupil to write as much as is read to him of any selection he must jog his memory. Start a pupil jogging his memory, and you will almost of necessity force him into the exercise of his imagination. There is no need of going into a psychological explanation of this fact. We know by experience that it is true.

There is an obstacle in the way of carrying out this idea of reproduction. In the lower grades a teacher can hardly expect from his class a composition of more than six hundred words, and selections as short as this are very hard to find. It is in answer to this difficulty that we have gathered together the two hundred selections found in this book. Almost all of the selections are of a length desirable for this sort of reproduction. In choosing them we have not, however, made length the only principle of selection. We have attempted to make a collection that, while varied by subjects of our own day and hour, will enable pupils to become acquainted with much of what is classical in myth, legend, history, and literature. " Fundamental English," Part Fourth, contains synopses of these selections, as well as lists of words to be used in the reproduction of each of them. The reason for giving these synopses and word catalogues to the pupils we will try to explain here; the method of using them we will give more in detail later.

We regard both the synopses and the word lists as stimulants to the imagination. When a pupil is given a synopsis, and told that out of every sentence in the synopsis he must construct a paragraph of composition, and that almost every word in the synoptic sentence is to be developed into a sentence in the composition, he will sit down to his work with a consciousness that a systematic effort is expected of him, and he will have some idea of how he will have to go about his work. The result will be a systematic attack on

PREFACE IX

his subject, insuring the active operation of the imagination. To this same imaginative energy the compulsory use of the words contained in the word lists helps, for to introduce those words into his sentences the pupil will have to rack his inventive powers, and that means to exercise his imagination.

From this lengthy plea for reproduction we do not wish anyone to conclude that we do not believe in any composition work which would be more original. Some teachers look upon reproduction as the only method of composition that can be employed in lower classes; others think it should not be employed at all, and that pupils should be trained from the very beginning on nothing but strictly original work. Now the pedagogic truth in this discussion lies probably in the mean between these two extreme opinions. Pupils in the lower grades should have something of both; something of reproduction, and something of purely original work. No art teaches merely by reproduction; still, there is no school of painting or sculpture where the pupils do not have their share of what is merely reproduction. We believe, therefore, that composition should be taught in our schools by both reproduction and original work. To this end the teacher will find at the end of this volume a short method or scheme for purely original composition which has been used with excellent results, and which we are free to praise unstintedly, because it is not our own. It has been written out under the direction, and from the notes, of a Jesuit Father, who has been unable to put it into form himself, and has permitted us to introduce it here. We recommend this method of original composition to the special consideration of the teacher. We believe it is largely a new idea, and we know that its use has been productive of the finest results. We think that original work, such as is suggested in this method, should in the lower x PREFACE

classes be mingled with exercises of reproduction in order to get the best possible results in composition.

Such, then, is our apology for and our explanation of the appearance of " Fundamental English/' and this its companion book.

John P. McNichols, SJ.