Method and methods in the teaching of English

Preface

To affect the various motives that may prompt an author to add one more to the many books on methods of teaching that are now available, there seem to be two very good reasons why a new text on the teaching of English may be deemed unnecessary. In the first place, there are a number of excellent discussions of the general phases of the subject and of special branches, which are sound in principle and scholarly in analysis of the material. Secondly, in these days when so much is said in favor of allowing the initiative of the teacher to find full expression, any book which prescribes definite methods of teaching may be said to set itself against the trend of modern theory.

Despite these considerations, however, I have long felt that there is a definite need for the kind of treatment of the subjects connected with the teaching of Enghsh in the elementary schools that I have given in this book. There is a real need of specific suggestions as to a rational mode of approaching and developing the work in English. Teachers are everywhere asking for directions which will give them not so much a model for direct imitation as a basis for intelligent self-criticism. This book aims to present a consistent method of work in all the branches of elementary Enghsh. While drawing freely from the various accepted texts, and adopting without hesitation many valuable suggestions from teachers and writers in all grades of the work, it claims consideration for this original feature: It aims to separate the teaching of technique from the teaching for appreciation and self-expression, and it seeks to found its methods upon a definite psychology of the learning process.

No attempt has been made to exhaust every part of the subject or to be so definite as to make original thought on the part of the teacher unnecessary. The purpose of this book is to stimulate vi PREFACE

and to direct the effort of the teacher, and to lessen her work only by making unsuccessM experimentation unnecessary.

Thanks are due to Messrs. Houghton, Mifflin & Co., for permission to use extracts from the letters of OUver Wendell Holmes, and to Messrs. Harper & Brothers for the right to publish parts of letters by James Russell Lowell. Much of the compilation of devices in Chapters IH, and IV, and of the models used in Composition was done by Miss Rose A. McManus, formerly my assistant, whose help merits cordial appreciation. My thanks are also due to Dr. John H. Haaren, Associate City Superintendent of Schools, New York, for valuable suggestions.

To the hundreds of teachers whose work both in the class-room and in various texts has been the inspiration for all that is valuable in this book, I submit the result of a labor no less truly theirs than my own.

Contents

CHAPTER PAGE

I. Reading — General Considerations i

II. Primary Reading . 6

Chapter I Reading — General Considerations

Teachers welcome specific suggestions. But any attempt to establish, on the basis of detailed injunctions, a general mode of procedure in the teaching of a subject, usually results in confusion. Accordingly, it may be of value in our exposition of methods in the teaching of reading in the elementary schools, to lay down a few general principles.

Educationally, we are in a transitional stage. The sudden and bewildering changes effected in our course of study, the quick shifting from one system to another, the glad welcome given to all new schemes — all these are evidences of a state of unrest. This extends not only to questions of organization and problems of the curriculum, but to details of method as well. While such a condition is indicative of progress, it is fatal to the teacher who cannot see the goal toward which all these changes are tending.

In the teaching of reading, this is peculiarly true. Educational reform is usually the reflex of some larger movement in the world at large. In America, the problem of assimilating the varied nationalities entering in ever increasing numbers has shaped political, economic, and educational affairs for the last quarter century. In our large cities the teaching of English, for example, is no longer the teaching of the mother- tongue. It is often the teaching of a foreign language, and the problem is the difficult one of giving perfect familiarity with a language, practice in which is for the first few years at all events confined to the school.

While this factor has made the teaching of reading a matter of increasing difficulty in our urban schools, it does not account for the complete change that has taken place in our method of teaching. Hundreds of years ago, book knowledge was completely removed from every day life. Restricted, as it frequently was, to the members of the upper classes, it did not give to them any material which could be used in the larger life outside of the church or the university. This separation between real life and the knowledge to be gained from books has remained a characteristic of so-called education through the centuries. The distinctive mark of the learned man was not his ability to handle men and affairs, nor his power to judge of events, for the content of his learning was set utterly apart from the real Hfe of the times. The mere clerk was the educated man; the man who could read and write, and who knew the insides of books. Knowledge of the technique of reading and writing was sufficient to stamp the learned man. And this idea permeated so completely the thought of the man as to shape the methods of teaching.

The processes of reading and writing may be reduced to a series of associations repeated so frequently as to become marginated and relegated to the lower centers, through which they are performed as habits of technique. With Quintilian, and later, during the period of the Schoolmen and the types of education dominated by the narrow humanism, we find that reading and writing were taught purely along the lines of the mastery of a technique. In reading, the letters and shapes and their sounds were first taught. Then these were combined into syllables, syllables into words, words into phrases, and, finally, sentences were formed and read. Constant repetition led to the formation of habits.

The content value of the words and phrases was a matter of no consequence since the end that was sought was the ability to form instantaneous associations between the written or

READING 3

printed symbol and the articulated correlative. So in writing, the letters were first learned individually by mechanical process, such as the tracing of Quintilian, and when the pupil became familiar with their form, the same synthetic process was gone through which characterized the manner of learning to read.

Nor are we to think that this ruKng principle of method ceased to control when the period of the Schoolmen and of the Humanists came to an end. Wherever, in any system of education, the mere ability to read is considered the desirable end, a synthetic, formal method of teaching is a logical result. The Ward method, at one time so popular in New York schools, the a-h-ah method of the primers of twenty and thirty years ago, the Word method, the "Look and Say" method, in fact, any method which starts with words chosen solely because of their value as furnishing phonic elements that can be used in forming compounds, is but a relic of the educational ideal which sought to attain power in the technique of reading.

With the Renascence came a different conception of the meaning of a liberal education. Books came to be looked upon, not as examples of formal excellence, but, rather, as the repository of the pictures of life, of discussions of men and events, valued for their influence upon life and character. Although the impetus to this newer idea of the value of books came from the Renascence of the 14th and 15th centuries, it did not exert its full force until several centuries later. In fact, Montaigne and Milton were looked upon as innovators when they merely revived the Renascence ideal. This broader conception of the value of books was beginning to spread through the 17th and i8th centuries, but it was only in the 19th century, when a new aim was set up for the entire educational process, that the idea came to affect methods of teaching.

The Herbartian aim of character with its accompanying doctrine of concentration, placing history and literature at the center of the course of study, is probably the direct cause of the new methods followed in the teaching of reading. By itself, it must be acknowledged, the Herbartian aim is not enough; but when it was joined to the better insight into child psychology afforded by the teaching of Froebel, it gave rise to sane, rational, psychological method. Education is no longer to be measured by ability to read or to write. Books are no longer the whetstones on which to sharpen one's instruments of technique. We now feel that the educated man is he who understands the life around him, reacts upon it in a live way, thus securing his own highest development through the fullest cooperation with his fellow-men. And books are of value because they give us the record of earlier attempts made by men to secure this development, and because they widen our experiences vicariously. Moreover, a better knowledge of the psychology of the child has brought us to realize that interest is the key which opens the floodgates of activity, and gives a maximum return for energy expended. Not the ability to read and write, but the power to get from the content of books an experience which will enable man effectively to meet the conditions of his environment, is now considered the end of intellectual education. In our methods of teaching we are seeking to crystalHze this broader idea. The first task in teaching is to become assured of the interest of the child. The first avenue of approach is through an interesting content. The goal toward which all our efforts are directed is the power to render automatic or to reduce to" the margin of consciousness all the adjustments and coordinations implied in the acts of reading and writing, so that the higher consciousness may be left free to bring itself into completer and fuller relations with the life that is hidden in the printed page.

Summary. — To rationalize our methods, we must lay down certain general principles. Methods without such principles constitute not a method but merely a collection of devices. In the teaching of EngHsh, we must shape our procedure in conformity with existing conditions, (i) In our large cities, English is to-day a foreign

READING 5

tongue. (2) Reading is no longer valued, (a) as the power to call ofif words or (b) as the abihty to explain isolated meanings, but rather (c) as the broadening of experience by means of the thought communicated through the printed page. This change has come from the newer conception of a hberal education. Our knowledge of the processes of learning, moreover, shows us (i) how we can make an interesting content afford a motive for acquiring mastery over the form; (2) how we can reduce technique in reading to the plane of habit; and (3) how we can free the higher consciousness so that the reading self may become identified with the self that is expressed through the printed page.

Chapter II Primary Reading

The limited experience of the children is the most discouraging condition confronting the teacher of primary reading. Here and there, with an exceptional teacher, or where the physical conditions are favorable, it is possible to supply an experience which later can be utilized as the content in the first steps of reading; but it is unsafe to base a method completely on the personaUty of the teacher or the accident of a favorable physical environment. Any method, though it be never so perfect, is but the carefully adjusted machinery, the motive power for which is the gifted teacher. Many methods are rightly condemned as impracticable because, in order to assure success, they require unusual ability on the part of the teacher. The first problem, therefore, must be to give to the children an interesting content which may be used as the motive for the mastery of form.

If we are to avoid waste, it is necessary at this point to refer to some fundamental laws of mental action. It is a characteristic of our educational movements that most changes take the form of an extreme reaction from that which has gone before. The intense and narrow formaUsm which was characteristic of earlier methods in reading, has given way to an emphasis upon content which in many cases has neglected entirely the necessity of a large amount of formal drill. It has been held that if we will but present a subject matter of deep and abiding interest to the children, it will make formal drill unnecessary. Probably the most consistent exposition of this theory is the so-called

PRIMARY READING 7

"Newark" method, or as we may call it, "the method of cumulative repetition."

No habit can be economically formed unless its component parts have at some time been focalized in consciousness; and, furthermore, no habit can be rendered truly automatic unless there has been a large amount of repetition, and, with this, drill. If we are to teach reading, and if we are to make the power to read an automatic coordination and adjustment, we must, at some time or other, make the formal side of reading occupy the focus of consciousness, and we must give due attention to pure drill and mere repetition. But our method must differ from the senseless drill of earlier generations in one important particular. The motive must come from a desire within the child aroused by a strong interest in some content which he judges, more or less consciously, to be of value to him in his attempt at self-realization and self-expression. If the ordinary environment of the child were the world of Nature, if classes were held in the fields so that the children could gain approximately the same kind of experiences, the desire to give expression to these experiences could be made the starting point of a vital method. Unfortunately, these ideal surroundings cannot be reaHzed in the classroom. True, the conditions for them may be created by a live teacher — a small brood of chickens may be kept in the classroom, observed by the children for a week or more; a pet canary or a tame rabbit may be fed and tended by the children; beans or peas may be planted in the window boxes; — and on the basis of these experiences children may be led into conversation which will form the ground work for the first work in reading. Such a method has been followed with success by teachers in many schools.

But while such experiences may be furnished to the children, there is still an element of doubt as to whether we are interesting all. And, moreover, a practical difi&culty arises in that the words which may be natural as the expression of the life the children are observing are not the words most desirable as furnishing the elements from which the study of phonics is to proceed. Here, as in every other subject of the course of study, our difficulty arises in the difference between the logical and the psychological factors entering into our teaching. From the psychological point of view, we should aim to use only such words and sentences and ideas as grow out of the ordinary, interesting experiences of the child. From the logical point of view, we should be careful that those elements upon which the attention is first concentrated should be simple, and should contain within themselves parts of greatest value for the later orderly and systematic development of the subject.

It cannot be claimed that the stories which form the basis of the cumulative-repetition method are such as are naturally expressive of the experiences of children. As a matter of fact, no story presented in a completed form can ever be totally expressive of such experiences. English work, to represent the daily life of the pupils, should be based upon the objects they see, the things they do, and the little adventures they meet with when they are together as a class.

It was, probably, a realization of the difficulty of affording a varied experience to the children under the limitations of urban conditions, that led the originator of the "Newark" method to substitute, for the concrete happenings of life and a content based upon them, rather the common child interests, and stories expressive of them. Possibly because there is a pleasure afforded by the recognition of the familiar, children seem to yearn for a retelling of old stories. That which is entirely new requires greater expenditure of nerve energy, and is, therefore, accompanied with a feeling of strained effort; while to listen to stories already familiar in a general way is easy and calls forth spontaneous attention. This is pleasurable since the self-activity is directed entirely toward the object which occupies the focus of consciousness.

PRIMARY READING 9

Moreover, an instinctive liking for regular rhythm is characteristic of the child-mind. The crooning which lulls a child to sleep soon becomes a regularly measured cadence. The child's street cries are repeated in a regular rhythmic accent. It is even probable that the first steps in the use of number genetically were determined by the rhymthic sense.

These two characteristics of the child-mind may, for our present purposes, be considered practically universal — that is, the tendency to reduce all repeated expressions to a rhythmic cadence, and, secondly, the feeling of pleasure derived from listening to the repetition of famiUar stories. It is upon these two common tendencies of child-nature that the method of cumulative repetition is based.

Of course, it would be an altogether ideal condition if it were possible to combine with these a content closely related to the experiences of children. Such a combination is not impossible, but it would call for too great power of original creation on the part of the teacher. The manuals for teachers and the primers published in connection with these methods, give a complete exposition of all the steps that are to be taken. It may be well, however, to sound a note of warning. If the story, e.g., "The Little Red Hen," is presented without adequate preparation, the work may become just as formal as the most objectionable of the S3mthetic methods. The teacher should first make every possible effort to awaken the keen interest of the children. Pictures should be shown, and stories of the animals, independent of the stories to be used in the English work, should be told. Again it must be remembered that while it is necessary for the purposes of the method to have the children famiHar with the exact words of the story, memorizing should not be made a set exercise. Because of the interest of the children in the repetition of a story with which they are already famiHar, they may feel encouraged to tell and retell the story. In this way, the exact language lo THE TEACHING OF ENGLISH

becomes fixed as a by-product of their interest in the telling of the story itself.

One of the most valuable features of the method is the demand it creates for group work. The division of a class into sections, and the practical disregard of two sections while instruction is carried on with the third, makes it necessary for the teacher to provide exercises which will be educative, and yet not too taxing, which will call for accurate work and yet will not require direct and continual supervision. To take a class immediately upon entering a school, to carry on this story work, and then to throw two-thirds of the class upon its resources, invariably leads to disorder, dissipated attention, or wasted energy on the part of the teacher. It will be foimd of great value to spend the first two or even three weeks of the term on exercises later to be used by the children in their unsupervised seat work. These will include matching of colors, splint work in number, arrangement of squares, simple freecutting, interlacing, etc. When the class has become reasonably proficient, the teacher will find that while she is devoting her attention directly to one group, she will be able to leave the other two groups to themselves, assured that they will know what to do, and that there will be a minimum of waste.

In the presentation of the sight words drawn from the text of the story, every device which will secure concentration upon the form, and which will tend to give ready recall and rapid association between the recognition of the visual S3anbol and the right utterance and articulation of the word, should be employed. It is not our purpose to go into this method in detail. A full exposition may be foimd in the manuals and primers of the various systems.

The most important points are the presentation of the story as a unit, the analysis of the story into its parts, and the sjoithesis of these parts by the children. Accordingly, when the teacher has exhausted the stories which contain the element of

PRIMARY READING ii

cumulative repetition and rhythmic sense-appeal, it is still necessary to select complete stories. These must be short, interesting, adapted to the powers of the children, and capable of division into unit incidents or episodes. The method to be followed in the first presentation of these stories will vary. Frequently, it is good to take, in a lower grade, as a story told by the teacher and retold by the children, one that in a later grade will be presented to the children in printed form for their reading. Their familiarity with the idea of the story will tend to give them the interest in it, and, furthermore, will help to keep the story a unit though the reading of it may be scattered over a number of lessons. Again, the story may be presented orally in the two or three lessons preceding that in which it is taken up in the class. In the higher grades, it may be found possible to have it read by the children at home, and then to have discussion in the classroom, clearing up difl&culties. If the choice has been good, this presentation will insure the interest that is necessary for the fullest exercise of the self-activity of the pupils.

The children must give expression to the ideas which have been aroused by the first presentation of the story, and must, by their method of reading, show their appreciation of the thought. Accordingly, it is indispensable that the teacher, after having presented the words, taught their pronunciation, and explained or developed their meaning, return to the content of the story so that the children have their attention directed to that which should be the fountainhead of all their activity — an interest in the content of the story itself. How this process works out in the reading lesson of the higher grades will be shown later.

Summary. — An interesting content must be secured to supply motive for the mastery of form, but the habits involved in the reading process must be specifically focused upon. We cannot get varied personal experiences in the ordinary environment of the child.

Therefore, we use stories relying upon two interests: (i) Interest in the famiUar. The stories are presented orally before they are taken up in the book. (2) The love of rhythmic cadence. Stories involving cmnulative repetition have been found most suitable.

The sequence of the episodes of the stories must be made familiar to the child. The parts are taken up singly and are read practically from memory. Words are isolated, recombined into new settings, and later made the basis for phonetic study.

Chapter III Primary Reading — Phonics

Up to the present point, we have been treating the subject as if the children were continually to be under direction in the process of reading, and as if the only aim of reading were to arrive at an appreciation of the content of stories, themselves of vital interest to the children. After all, however, an equally important aim of the teaching of reading is to make the children independent in their attack upon the difficulties of the printed page, and eflScient in extracting the pith of the thought from the contents of a book. And it is to this training toward independence in reading that we must now direct our attention.

It is unnecessary to enter into any discussion of the difficulties presented in English reading. The number of symbols which go to form the words in the language is much less than the total number of sounds found in our words. Moreover, certain combinations of letters instead of having a fixed pronimciation, correspond to as many as four and even five different sounds. The form of a word, therefore, is not the key to the pronunciation. If it were, it would be an extremely easy matter to make the child entirely independent in his reading. Still, while there are all these difficulties, they serve only to make more serious the problem of the teacher, for, in any event, the result must be the same. The children must be given power to approach a new text and to read it with confidence, fluency, and correctness. This power cannot be developed from the inner consciousness of the child. It is an automatic reaction which will follow upon much practice initiated by imitation.

In many methods, it seems to be felt that independence stands unalterably opposed to assistance from the teacher, and that every device may legitimately be resorted to if only the direct setting of a model for pronunciation, by the teacher, be avoided. To this end, devices of many sorts have been adopted. Elaborate systems of diacritical marks are used and learned by the pupils so that new words need only be presented in this arbitrary system of markings to enable the children to pronoimce the words. As a matter of fact, however, this is not independence in reading. In the beginning, the teacher was compelled to present these marks, explain their meaning, give the sound of the vowel or the consonant indicated by the mark in question, have the children imitate this sound and associate it with the particular mark taught, and then make this association automatic by almost endless drill. When, finally, the pupil has mastered the system of marking, he applies this automatic association in the pronunciation of new words. In reality, he is not independent, for he is relying at every turn upon an artificial system of symbols, the interpretation of which was made clear to him only after much drill. Even when the pupil is reading a word diacritically marked, the teacher, though actually silent, is really dictating the pronunciation of that word to him, and giving him a direct model for imitation. For the diacritical marks are just as much a dictation to the child, on the basis of his past experience with their interpretation and meaning, as would be the utterance of the word by the teacher. If our books were so printed as to retain the diacritical marks, if every word appeared with the symbols necessary to indicate its right sound, then the use of such symbols might be defensible; but the confessed purpose even of the ardent supporters of this method is to do away with the marking as soon as may be practicable. May it not, therefore, rightly be asked, "If the purpose is to dispense with the marks eventually, why should they be taught at all, especially if the same results can be achieved without the use of markings? "

What substitute have we then to offer for the teaching of diacritical marks? In the so-called " content- to-form " methods, a mode of procedure like the following is adopted. From the unit of the story and the smaller unit of an independent episode or incident, the teacher selects a number of sight words. These are associated with the object they represent, and with their significance in the story already known to the children. The children see the symbol, hear the sound, know the object, and feel its place in the story. The fixing of the word and the rendering automatic of its recognition by the child, call for the greatest ingenuity on the part of the teacher. In general, we may say that the principle of multiple-sense teaching will be found most helpful, and that with greater emphasis on motor and articulatory expression, the desired end will more readily be achieved. A large picture of a horse may be mounted on a chart under which might be written these sentences:

See my horse.

It is a large horse.

My horse has four feet.

The children could then be given envelopes containing cut-out words. They spread the cards on the desk and rearrange the cards so as to reproduce the three sentences on the chart. Other exercises of a similar sort could be used.

When fifty or more words are completely known at sight, these methods call for the work in phonics which is the first step toward making the children independent. All phonic elements are studied analytically from sight words previously learned. In the selection of the first word, the teacher is asked to bear in mind that the sounds first taught are to be "those most easily formed, those most readily prolonged, and, finally, those most useful in the formation of new words." At this point, one of two methods is usually followed. The teacher may take up a single word and analyze its sounds; then, in another period, take up another word, similarly analyzing, and, finally, proceed to a combination, where possible, of the parts learned from the two words. This method is explained in the following excerpt from "OutHnes of Phonic Lessons" by Miss McClosky: