10. Gradation
Gradation means passing from the known to the unknown by easy stages, each of which serves as a preparation for the next. If a course or a lesson is insufficiently graded, or graded on a wrong basis, the student’s work will be marked by an excessive degree of inaccuracy. If a course is well graded, the student’s rate of progress will increase in proportion as he advances.
In the ideally graded course the student is caused to assimilate perfectly a relatively small but exceedingly important vocabulary; when perfectly assimilated, this nucleus will develop and grow in the manner of a snowball.
Care should be taken to distinguish between false grading and sound grading. The following applications of this principle are psychologically sound:
(a) Ears before Eyes.—The student to be given ample opportunities, at appropriate intervals, of hearing a sound, a word, or a group of words before seeing them in their written form (phonetic or other).
(b) Reception before Reproduction.—The student to be given ample opportunities, with appropriate intervals, of hearing a sound or combination of sounds, a word, or a group of words before being called upon to imitate what he hears.
(c) Oral Repetition before Reading.—The student to be given ample opportunities of repeating matter after the teacher before being called upon to read the same matter.
(d) Immediate Memory before Prolonged Memory.—The student should not be required to reproduce matter heard a long time previously until he has become proficient in reproducing what he has just heard.
(e) Chorus-work before Individual Work.—In the case of classes, new material should be repeated by the whole of the students together before each student is called upon to repeat individually. This will tend to ensure confidence.