(f) Drill-work before Free Work.—The student should not be given opportunities for free conversation, free composition, or free translation until he has acquired a reasonable proficiency in the corresponding forms of drill-work.
Each individual item in the teaching should be graded, and in addition the whole course may be graded by dividing it into appropriate stages or phases, which will succeed each other en échelon.
11. Proportion
The ultimate aim of most students is fourfold:
(a) To understand what is said in the foreign language when it is spoken rapidly by natives.
(b) To speak the foreign language in the manner of natives.
(c) To understand the language as written by natives.
(d) To write the language in the manner of natives.
We observe the principle of proportion when we pay the right amount of attention to each of these four aspects, without exaggerating the importance of any of them.
There are five chief branches of practical linguistics: