AMERICAN ANNALS OF EDUCATION AND INSTRUCTION. FEBRUARY, 1833. ART. I. LECTURE ON THE BEST METHODS OF TEACHING THE LIVING LANGUAGES. Delivered before the American Institute of Instruction, August, 1832. By GEORGE TICK NOR, Smith Professor in Harvard University. MR PRESIDENT AND GENTLEMEN: the at THE most important characteristic of a living language, tribute in which resides its essential power and value, is, that it is a spoken one; that it serves for that constant and principal bond of union between the different individuals of a whole nation, without which, they could not, for a moment, be kept together as a community. This great and prevalent characteristic is, therefore, everywhere visible in its structure, arrangements and expression; hardly less so in books, than in conversation. The main object, indeed, to which every other is sacrificed, in the formation of a language is, to facilitate personal intercourse; to enable one human being, in the easiest and most direct manner, to communicate to another his thoughts and his wants, his feelings and his passions; and to this great object every living language is essentially, and, it may almost be said, is exclusively adapted in its vocabulary, its forms, its inflexions, idioms and pronunciation. The easiest and best method, therefore, for persons of all ages and all classes to learn a living language is undoubtedly to learn it as a spoken one; since this is not only its paramount characteristic, but is the only foundation on which the written language has been built or can rest. Persons, then, who have the opportunity, should learn the living language they wish to possess, as it is learnt by those to whom it is native. They should reside where it is constantly spoken, and use it, as it is used around them. It should be the minister to their hourly wants, and the medium of their constant intercourse. Even the books they read should be chosen with reference to the habits and peculiarities of the spoken idiom that produced them, and in studying the language itself, it should be pursued less as a foreign language than as one which they may claim among their birthrights. This is the natural method, and is, no doubt, the most effectual and the easiest. Only a few persons however are able or willing to avail themselves of it. If we wish to instruct our children in a foreign language, we find it inconvenient and unwise to send them among strangers, in a strange land to learn it: and, if we undertake to teach them at home, we shall hardly be disposed, like Montaigne's father, to surround them only with those who speak no other than the one we wish them to acquire. In the vast majority of cases, therefore, we must resort to means somewhat more artificial and indirect; and, while still endeavoring to teach it as a living and a spoken language, use the best method within our power at home. What, then, is this best method? For this is precisely the question you have done me the honor to propose to me; and as it is entirely plain and practical in its nature and objects, I shall not venture, in the reply I may endeavor to make to it, to go in any respect beyond the limits of my personal experience and observation, or wish to say anything which is not as perfectly plain and practical as the question itself. Before, however, we enter on the topics it involves, it may be necessary to premise, that there is no one mode of teaching languages, applicable to all classes and characters, or to persons of all the different ages and different degrees of preparation, who present themselves to be taught. Instruction in this branch of education, even more than in most others, cannot, without great violence and injustice to a large proportion of the pupils, be managed upon a Procrustes system of stretching all who have not the proper intellectual size, till they are brought to it, and of cutting down all who are grown beyond its proportions, till they are sufficiently reduced to fit its demands. On the contrary, it is, perhaps, the most important part of the duties of a teacher in the living languages, and the highest exercise of his skill, to select from the different systems and modes in use, what may be most appropriate to the whole class of pupils submitted to his care, and then to endeavor again to accommodate and arrange what he has thus selected for the whole of his pupils to the individual capacities, dispositions and wants of each. Thus it is plain, that a method adapted to children seven or eight years old, would be altogether unsuited to persons in the maturity of their faculties; and, even in the case of those of the same age, who might more naturally be thrown into the same class, it cannot be doubted, by persons accustomed to the business of instruction, that a mode entirely fitted to an individual already familiar with other languages and with philosophical grammar, would be no less entirely unfitted to one, who had gone through no such previous preparation, and who should come to his task without regular habits of study or acquisition. But, though no universal method can be pointed out, which will suit all the individuals, who might pursue it; and though even a general one, which might suit a particular class might need modifications in relation to some of its members; still there are, no doubt, principles which may be ascertained and settled principles, which rest on the nature and laws of the human faculties, and which it must, therefore, be important to understand rightly and to apply with judgment. Undoubtedly, too, experience and skill have long since discovered most of these principles, perhaps all of them; and established land-marks, which, pointing out the way others have trodden with safety or success, may prevent us, if we are wise, from making impossible experiments or falling into gross deviations. Bearing in mind, then, that something may be done by systems, though not so much, as is usually imagined or undertaken; and especially remembering, that nothing can be done wisely, which has not a constant reference to the different classes, ages, and characters of the pupils to be instructed, I shall divide what I have to say on the best methods of teaching, the Modern Languages according to the character and condition of the persons usually presenting themselves to be taught. I. And first, of little children. It seems to be settled, that little children can be taught living languages easier than they can be taught anything else. The reason is, that it is the very vocation of their young minds to learn words. They have, indeed, done little during the short period of their existence, except to acquire the power of distinguishing objects and qualities, and apply to them the names which their native language has affixed to them. This power however, is so easily transferred to the acquisition of other living languages, that in Europe, where it is sometimes thought important to educate children to the free use of several, they are without difficulty taught to speak, read and write three or four without confounding them, from early infancy, merely by giving them nurses and attendants, who are natives of different countries. This method, of course, would not be pursued here. We have neither the means nor the motives for it. But it proves in the strongest manner, what the experience and observation of many among ourselves has confirmed, that much time is now lost in childhood or misapplied in instructions unsuited to its tender years, which might be successfully and pleasantly given to the acquisition of at least one living language. The method of teaching however, should be no less skilfully and tenderly adapted to the age and circumstances of the pupil, than the pursuit itself. Of the Grammar, or the Dictionary, or any of the customary apparatus of formal instruction and recitation, there should be no thought. A child of six or seven years old can no more be made to comprehend the definition of an article or a verb, than he can be made to comprehend what is an abstract idea or a logarithm; but, if you will read several times over, to the same child, word by word, a clear translation of a very simple fable or story from the French or the Italian, or any other living language, making him follow you aloud step by step, and bringing the whole, by the simplicity of your explanations, fully down to the level of his comprehension, he will be able the next day so to translate it to you, in return, that he can not only give you the entire fable or story in its connexion, but the foreign word for every English one it contains, and the English for every foreign one, taken at random. We have a few books, and only a few, prepared to teach_quite young children on this system. Bolmar's Edition of the Fables commonly called Perrin's, is one of them, well suited to its purpose, and none but those who have made the experiment can fully understand how easy it is for childhood to read and learn this book, and how much can thus be accomplished towards the final acquisition of the French language. Indeed, when a hundred pages have been thoroughly learnt in this way, not a few of the difficulties of any modern language have been overcome; and yet this certainly can be accomplished and has been accomplished with children of six or seven years old, who yet did not feel, in any part of the process, that a task had been imposed on them. In selecting books, however, from which to teach according to this method, one rule must be carefully followed. Take only such as, in their subjects and ideas, their manner and their tone, are below the age of the child to be taught; so that if the child you wish to instruct be seven years old and the language you have chosen be French, the books to be used should be such as are given to French children of four or five years old for their amusement. The reason is, that the child should have no difficulty to encounter but the mere difficulty of the language itself, and this will be found quite sufficient to make up for the difference in years, while, at the same time, the interest that might otherwise be wanting, is sustained by the instinctive curiosity to learn the meaning of new words, which belongs to the age, and the instinctive pleasure of discovery and progress which always belongs to our nature, and is then fresh and eager. Of course, books of this kind are easily procured; for no country that has a literature is without books for its children. In French, which is the language where we should most need them, they are abundant; and many of them have been reprinted in England, and some in this country. Besides these, Berquin's Child's Friend, many of Lafontaine's Fables, and many of Madame Guizot's Tales, with other similar works, may be added, which, when explained and understood, are as interesting to our children as they are to those for whom they were written. How long this process should be continued, must depend on the judgment of the teacher; but as it is one that is both useful and amusing to the child, there is no reason, why it should not be carried very far. Certainly, it must not be given up, until the reading such books as are suited to his years, has become, without assistance from his instructor, as easy and pleasant as it had been with it. This, too, is the period, when vocabularies and dialogues, like the Abbé Bossut's and those of Mad. de Genlis, can be used with great effect, because the extreme facility with which they are committed to memory in early youth, especially after some little progress has been made in reading, renders the whole exercise a pleasure and not a toil. Above all, this is the period for acquiring a just pronunciation, since the organs are now flexible, and permit that to be done easily, which, later, it is often impossible to do at all. Nor is this an unimportant part of the needful instruction. It is, to a language, what a costume is to an age or his physiognomy to an individual; and not a few of the characterstic differences between different languages are lost to him, who has no perception of their several inflexions and no familiarity or sympathy with the effects of that peculiar accent and intonation, in which resides so much of the power of poetical rhythm and measure, as well as of the grace and harmony of all polished style in prose. When, however, the child has attained a reasonable facility in reading, we may venture to look for some assistance towards the Grammar and the Dictionary; not, indeed, to compel him to learn his lessons by turning over leaves, which his young hands have not yet even the mechanical aptitude to do with much effect, and still less to endeavor to carry him through the purgatory of definitions in the accidence, and of rules and constructions and exceptions in the syntax, as if this were the only or even the efficient mode of obtaining the promised rewards beyond. Far from it. The grammar, at this age, can be used, with practical benefit, only for the forms contained in its accidence; but here something can be done, which will prove of permanent advantage. A child of eight or nine |