If, on the other hand, we know that we have a clear period of two or more years before us, our task will be much easier. Instead of proceeding at a breathless rate to produce immediate concrete results, we may go to work in a more leisurely and more natural way. We may sow, and be assured that the harvest will be reaped in due time; the natural powers of language-study work surely but not rapidly; nature takes her time but yields a generous interest. With a long period in front of us, we may afford adequate intervals for ‘incubation’; it will not be necessary for us to accelerate the normal process of assimilation, but merely to let it develop in a gradual but ever-increasing and cumulative ratio. At the end of, let us say, the first year, our student will easily outstrip those whose initial progress seemed more satisfactory.
Evidently it will not be possible to draw up a programme of study which will be suitable for all the diverse requirements we have set forth. Nor will it be possible for every teacher to consider the individual requirements of each one of his pupils. We cannot have a specially printed course, nor even a manuscript one, for every student; but in the case of private lessons or of self-instruction we may certainly give a large amount of consideration to individual needs. The bad pronouncer will concentrate on phonetic work, the bad speller on orthographic work, the bad listener on devices leading towards immediate comprehension; the clerk will work with texts of a commercial nature, the tourist will specialize on hotel colloquial, etc. No student will ever be expected to work with one book only; each will gradually acquire a miniature library, and this library need not be the same for everybody.
In the case of collective courses and class teaching, individual requirements will be less observed, but in drawing up the programme the teacher will aim at the average result desired by or considered desirable for the average member of the class. As we shall see later, it is quite feasible to design lessons suitable for a class containing pupils of different capacities; we can arrange that some shall take an active part while others are assimilating more or less passively.
We see, in short, that when starting a new course under new conditions the teacher must draw up a programme. This programme will be divided into so many periods or stages, and for each period certain forms of work will be specified, these being designed to lead in the most efficient way to whatever the aim may happen to be. Without such a programme the teacher will never know exactly where his class stands, the work will be too much of a hand-to-mouth nature, and there will be loose ends. This programme may of course be more or less experimental or tentative; it may be modified in accordance with the teacher’s experience and with the results he has so far obtained. The idea of a hard-and-fast programme does not commend itself; it should, on the contrary, be more or less elastic in order that it may be expanded or contracted according to circumstances. Anything in the nature of a ‘patent method’ (guaranteed to work within so many lessons) suggests quackery. Our programme should be something other than a rigid procedure based on any one particular principle, however logical that principle may seem to be. There are many logical principles, and we must strive to incorporate all of them into whatever programme we design. We shall treat of these in the next chapters.
CHAPTER V
THE SUPREME IMPORTANCE OF THE ELEMENTARY STAGE
Before examining and reviewing the principles of language-study, it will be well for us to note one important point. The reader ere long may protest that we pay no attention to anything except beginner’s work, that we examine no evidence bearing on the more advanced stages, that we give no advice nor offer any suggestions concerning the work of the second and subsequent years. “We are not interested in elementary work,” some may say; “what we require is a series of counsels as to how to conduct the subsequent (and more difficult) work.”
And yet we shall have little to say concerning the more advanced course; on the contrary, we shall constantly lay stress and insist on the supreme importance of the elementary stage.
It is the first lessons that count; it is the early lessons which are going to determine the eventual success or failure of the course. As the bending of the twig determines the form of the tree, as on the foundations depends the stability of the building, so also will the elementary training of the student determine his subsequent success or failure.
It is during the first stage that we can secure habits of accuracy, that we can train the student to use his ears, that we can develop his capacities of natural and rapid assimilation, that we can foster his powers of observation. Good habits are easily formed (as also are bad habits); at the outset of his studies the learner, whoever he may be, educated or illiterate, child or adult, enjoys the advantage of a plastic mind; it can be shaped according to our will; we can train it to form good and sound habits of language-study. At no other period shall we find such plasticity. Difficult, almost impossible, is the task of undoing what has already been done, of removing faulty habits of perception and of replacing them by sound ones. The student who has passed through an unsound elementary course finds his road to progress barred; the twig has been badly bent, the foundations have been badly laid. All we can then do is to endeavour by means of a corrective course to undo the mischief which has been done, and a thankless task it is. No amount of advanced work can fully compensate or make good the harm which has been wrought by the untrained or unwise teacher. It is too late. Certain habits have been formed, and we all realize what it means to eradicate a bad habit and to replace it by a good one.