1. Oral Lessons
Success in oral language lessons rests primarily upon interest. If you can secure interest, the children will talk freely; if you retain interest, you can criticize freely and with good effect.
Criticisms should not be too severe and should always be impersonal. It is not John and Mary who are being corrected, but the mistakes that John and Mary make. You have heard both parents and teachers say, “John, why will you persist in saying, ‘I done it’? Don’t you know that is wrong? You must correct yourself.” Such criticism is wholly bad. If John says “I done it,” it is because he has heard the expression and become habituated to its use. He cannot be taught differently by berating him. When he says, “I done it,” repeat after him in a kindly inquiring voice, “I done it?” or say in a kindly way, “I did it.” In either case John will give you the correct form willingly, and when he has done so times enough he will forget the wrong form and cease to use it.
Everyone must remember that children have heard slang and incorrect speech almost from infancy; that the playground, the street and the home have been steadily teaching, and that the minds of even primary children may be filled with not only loose forms of speech, but even with profane and indecent expressions. One of the natural correctives for such things is the reading and telling of attractive stories, full of dramatic power, calculated to stimulate right feeling, couched in clear and forcible English. Elsewhere in this volume under the title Telling Stories are suggestions and good models.
From the standpoint of the language lesson, children must reproduce the story, must “tell it back” to make it valuable to them. The instructor’s part in this reproduction may be summed up as follows:
1. Be an interested audience for the child.
2. Secure clearness. Do it by a gentle question or a remark now and then: “I am not sure that I understand you.” “Do you think I would know what you mean if I had never read the story?” “If you were telling the story to your playmate would she understand that?”
3. Encourage the child to use his own words, when he follows too closely the phraseology that was given him, yet remember that one of the objects of the exercise is to give the children the use of a wider vocabulary and to make them appreciate and use beautiful and forcible expressions.
4. Be reasonably content with freedom of expression at first, and do not expect too rapid improvement. You are moving against fixed habits.
5. Vary the character of the exercise. Sometimes permit one child to tell the whole story; at other times, call upon other children, or continue the story yourself.