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such technicalities as may seem to dispense with the use of the understanding that they will naturally flee to the technical term first, and put off thinking about the reason till afterwards, that is to say, for

ever.

Let none, therefore, suppose that the system of giving reasons for Parts of Speech is the same as that of inferring the Parts of Speech from the functions of the word in the sentence.

A thorough drill in "stating functions" should be practiced before the names of any Parts of Speech are communicated to the pupil.

10. A great deal of time is often wasted and hand-writing spoiled by doing too many grammatical exercises on paper, especially where grammatical abbreviations are not allowed. Answers that can be given orally in a very short time occupy much space, and involve much weary and unprofitable repetition.

The written exercises should therefore be few, in comparison with the oral; and before a written exercise is allowed, the teacher should write out several model exercises, showing how to arrange the answers, how to economize space, and how to save needless repetitions.

11. In Elementary Grammar, although the book may call attention to anomalies early, for the sake of completeness and logical order, the teacher should omit them at first, recurring to them afterwards. For example, in introducing the pupil to Adjectives, the teacher should at first speak only of the class of words that tell us the kind of thing. Afterwards he may mention other Adjectives, such as Numeral, Demonstrative, etc.

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12. In order to impress upon the pupil that the Part of Speech always depends upon the Function of the word, i.e., upon what the word does, it will be useful to show him by instances that the same word may often belong to different Parts of Speech in different sentences. In illustration of this rule, the pupil should be taught to parse sentences containing "before" and "after," used now as Prepositions, now as Adverbs, now as Conjunctions.

13. In the higher Grammar, special attention should be given to sentences containing Relative Pronouns. In such a sentence as "The cat that killed my canary was black and white," a boy will naturally think the verb "killed" more important than the verb "was "; and so undoubtedly it is, so far as the canary and its owner are concerned. Hence, when the boy applies the familiar rule, "To find the Subject of a Verb, ask the question, Who? or What? before the Verb," he will naturally say, What killed my canary? The cat. Therefore "cat" is the subject of "killed."

To guard him against this error (which is extremely common) he must be warned that:

Rule. Whenever there is a Relative Pronoun in a sentence, two verbs should be parsed before the Subject of either is written down.

He will then ask not only, "Who killed?” but also, "What was black and white" The cat. Therefore "cat" is the subject of "was." Hence he will be led to rectify his error, and to see that the subject of "killed” is the Relative Pronoun "that.”

The omission of the Relative must also be noted on such sentences as, "Where is the book I lent you?"

14. The distinctions between the Participle and the Verbal Noun should be carefully taught (1) " Walking on the ice, I fell," and (2) “I like walking."

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15. The distinctions between different kinds of Infinitives, e.g. (1) "I like to walk;" (2) "I have come to Switzerland to walk; (3) "The physician advised me to walk;" "The general ordered him to be put to death;" ""She taught me to sing."

16. One negative caution may be given. In teaching Grammar, it ought not to be the teacher's object to enable the pupil to speak English, but to understand it.

To speak English, he will best learn by speaking and reading it, not by committing to memory lists of irregular words, mostly of foreign origin, such as "cherub," "cherubim," "appendix," "appendices," "locus," "loci," etc.

Such words as these, boys will either never use, or they will learn to use them by hearing others use them; and those who use them intelligently (by whom alone they should be used) for the most part use them correctly.

On the other hand, the confusion of the parts of the two verbs, lie and lay, is very common in some classes of boys; and the misuse of the Past Indicative and the Passive Participle of sing, drink, etc., is not much less common. Attention to real existing grammatical errors of this kind is by no means misplaced.

17. As to the Analysis of Sentences, the best and most obvious kind is that which shows how every sentence that is complete in itself can (however complicated) be reduced to three or four parts: (1) a Verb; (2) a Subject, with an adjective or adjectives; (3) one or more Adverbs; (4) an Object, with one or more adjectives.

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Thus:
Subject.
Adjective.
Adverb (Cause).2

Verb.

Adverb (of Cause or
Circumstance).

Adverb (of Purpose).

1 "In a certain part of England," writes Preceptor, "not far from the center of the national life, it is very common, at public dinners, to hear a speaker thank the guests for having so very cordially drank his health; and, in the same region, not only hens, but boys, and even men, are in the habit of laying upon the grass."

2 As it is often difficult to determine whether an Adverbial phrase represents circumstance, cause, instrumentality, agency, or purpose, it will probably be best to let the pupil omit distinctions of Adverbs.

49. THE IRREGULARITIES OF ENGLISH IDIOM.

(For advanced pupils.)

Into this subject the pupil would not enter until he had reached at least his twelfth or thirteenth year; and some may think that for those intending to learn Latin or Greek attention to the irregularities of the English Language may be unnecessary.

But there is one respect in which a pupil's native language far exceeds others in the mental training it affords through the elucidation of idiomatic difficulties. Every irregularity arises by deviation from some regularity. Having at command the regular construction from which the deviation has arisen, a native possesses some at least of the data for determining the causes of the irregularity. In Latin and Greek a boy may be unable to analyze an irregular idiom for want of this knowledge; in English, for an English boy, this obstacle will, at all events, be absent.

The following are the principles upon which the pupil should be taught to analyze idiomatic difficulties. Ascertain the regularity from which the irregularity is derived, whether it be:

(1) Desire of brevity.

(2) Confusion of two constructions.

(3) Desire to avoid harshness of sound or construction.

(1) "He loved her as his own daughter," i.e., “as (he would have loved) his own daughter" (Brevity).

(2) "All of us remonstrated." This is illogical. You can say 66 some, many, none, few, ten, one, of, i.e., out of or from us, remonstrated," but you cannot logically say "all of us"; you ought to say "all we," as in the Bible, "all we like sheep have gone astray."

But the much more common idiom with "of," as in "one, two, three, four, etc., of us" has been confused with "all we," and the result of the confusion is "all of us."

"Confusion" is the most common cause of irregularities of construction in the English Language, as in many others, and it may be illustrated by the common tendency to confuse together any names or titles that have any similarity. Thus, suppose there are two Dictionaries, one by "Liddell and Scott," the other by "Lewis and Short "; if a boy speaks, by a slip, of “Liddell and Short," or "Lewis and Scott," it is an error of confusion; and how very common such errors are we all know. But it is this same confusion applied to syntax which has produced most of the irregularities of language.

(3) "It is you that say so."

Here the regular construction would be "It that says so is you." 1 But first the desire (iii.) to avoid the harsh emphasis laid on "it" causes a transposition "it is you that says so."

Secondly, this sentence is (ii.) confused with the straightforward

1 Compare "Thou art it that hath cut Rahab."

statement, "you say so," and the result is the irregular idiom, "It is you that say so."

With these two keys of Syntax, viz., "Brevity" and "Confusion," occasionally adding the use of the key "Euphony," a student may open a multitude of idiomatic mysteries, in English as well as in other languages.

50. MEMORY.

The memory in some children appears to be much stronger than that of men, in others, it seems weaker, and a few seem to have scarcely any power of learning anything by heart.

The words "appears" and "seems" are used deliberately, because in many cases what appears to be a naturally defective memory is really a fair memory spoiled by defective training, and capable (if taken in hand not too late) of regaining some of its original power.

1. Memory may be cultivated by training a child from the first to do one thing at a time, or, in other words, by cultivating in him the habit of Attention (see § 4).

2. A memory may also be strengthened by cultivating the faculties of Imagination and Association, so that the child may readily call up images of the things which he hears described, and afterwards may recall thoughts by associating them with these mental pictures. For example, if a child is taught to associate the youth of Francis Bacon with the apt reply which he is said to have made to Queen Elizabeth's inquiry about his age, that striking association will readily enable the pupil to remember the date of Bacon's birth.

3. A serviceable memory will obviously be strengthened by judgment and the faculty of selection, which will enable the child, when reading or hearing about any facts that may be described as "central,” to eliminate many details of little importance and to select those circumstances which are essential or important, clustering them round their appropriate centres.

4. Every one knows that memory is strengthened by repetition.

5. Memory is probably not much affected by the will in any direct way. It is doubtful whether any one can remember the parts of a Greek or Latin verb by greatly desiring to remember them. All that the will can do seems to be of a preliminary and negative nature. A boy, while learning his Greek verb, can will not to listen to the jokes of his companions, or to an organ-grinder in the street; and in some boys the will is entirely, in others only partially, able so to exclude distractions as to let him concentrate all his attention on the matter in hand. The rest must be done by the process of repetition. Attention and repetition enable him so to associate the forms of the verb together that one calls up the other, and in the end amo readily suggests twenty or thirty other forms; so that indirectly the will helps the Memory, by fostering and protecting it.

But in a direct way the will appears to do nothing for the Memory;

and the boy who-instead of thinking about the similarities and dissimilarities of am-o,-as,-at, -amus,-atis, -ant,-is simply willing to learn his Latin Verb, in order that he may escape punishment or gain reward, is really taking his thoughts off that which should be the object of them, defeating himself, and harming, not helping, Memory. For this reason, teachers must not always treat children that cannot remember as though they did not "wish to remember." Any child, even the laziest, would wish to remember rather than to forget and be punished. The fault lies very often not in the will, but in the inter

est.

The truth is that we remember best by no means those things which we desire to remember, but those things which (1) present themselves to us from the first in the most interesting or incisive form, or (2) are impressed by constant repetition.

As for the power of repetition, one illustration is sufficient. No one finds any difficulty in repeating the Alphabet forwards, while very few could repeat it backwards. Logically, one order should be as easy as the other; but, in practice, one order is so common and the other so rare, that the former seems to come to us by second nature, while the latter always implies an effort.

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But few teachers understand the importance of "the first impression" in matters of Memory. A word that takes the ear and is clearly pronounced, such as Mesopotamia" will have a much better chance of being remembered than shorter and less euphonious words, inarticulately uttered.

"Above all things," writes Preceptor, "avoid blurred impressions. When Dr. Johnson (a man of singularly wide and retentive memory) heard a person's name for the first time, he would always repeat it, and generally spell it over to himself. If people of less powerful memories adopted the same habit, they would probably find it more easy to remember names. But it is often too late to do this when you have once formed a blurred impression. You hear a person, say, of the name of Robson called Mr. Robson' or 'Mr. Robinson,' you are not certain which, and you do not at once take the trouble to ascertain which; unless some striking inconvenience forces you to remember that it isRobson,' and not 'Robinson,' you may go on for years occasionally meeting the man, and not unfrequently talking about him, and yet always in doubt between the two names."

The following suggestions may therefore be useful for helping children in performing memory-tasks.

(1) Let the child learn them when he is at his freshest, and not too tired to be interested and receptive.

(2) Before the task is learned, go through it with him, reading it incisively, and explaining difficulties.

(3) Divide it into parts; and, if possible, point out a connection between the parts.

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