The Principles of Language-Study

by Harold E. Palmer

The student’s progress may in the initial stage be slow; after ten or twenty lessons he may not seem to have advanced very far; but if he has been laying a good foundation he has been doing good work, for it will mean that the next stage of his work will be accomplished more easily and more rapidly. During the first lessons he is not so much learning the language as learning how to learn it. During the second period his progress will be more rapid and he will assimilate more of the actual language-material, and he will then be learning in such a way that the third stage will be still more rapid, and so on through the subsequent stages; his rate of progress will increase in proportion as he advances.

In the ideal course, this principle will be observed in the fullest possible measure; the course itself will be divided into appropriate stages, each of which will be marked by an increased capacity on the part of the student for assimilating and using language-material.

The vocabulary in a well-graded language-course will be arranged in such a manner that the more useful words will be learnt before the less useful. (Let us remember that there are two sorts of ‘useful words’: those which are useful in themselves on account of their intrinsic meaning, and words which are useful as sentence-formers.) The rate of progress on the part of the student will depend very largely on the manner in which the vocabulary is graded. Twenty-five well-chosen words will form more useful sentences than many people believe; with five hundred well-chosen words an incredibly large number of valuable sentences can be formed. For detailed information on this point we would refer the reader to the statistics which have been compiled by those who have made a special study of this particular subject. In the ideally graded course the student first assimilates a relatively small but exceedingly important vocabulary; he learns to use it, he learns the more important peculiarities of each word, he learns how to combine these words in sentences, he learns the exact range of meanings covered by each word either singly or in combination with its fellows. This small vocabulary then constitutes a sound nucleus, and this nucleus is of twofold utility; it not only provides the student with useful words, with language-material which he can actually use, but it serves at the same time as a sort of centre of attraction for new language-material. The most apt illustration of this form of gradation is the snowball, the huge mass of snow which accumulates rapidly and easily once we have provided the nucleus represented by the first compact and well-rounded handful.

The grammatical material must also be graded. Certain moods and tenses are more useful than others; let us therefore concentrate on the useful ones first. In a language possessing a number of cases, we will not learn off the whole set of prepositions, their uses and requirements, but we will select them in accordance with their degree of importance. As for lists of rules and exceptions, if we learn them at all we will learn them in strict order of necessity. In most languages we shall probably find certain fundamental laws of grammar and syntax upon which the whole structure of the language depends; if our course is to comprise the conscious study of the mechanism of a given language, then, in accordance with the principle of gradation, let us first learn these essentials and leave the details to a later stage.

Gradation can and must also be observed in the study of the semantic aspect of a language. If a given word has several meanings, let us first associate the word with its more usual or useful meanings. If a foreigner is to learn the English verb to afford, let him begin by using it in such sentences as I can’t afford it, and not in such examples as It affords me the necessary opportunity. If we are teaching French, let us first use ciel in the sense of sky and leave the idea of heaven to a later stage. I may go has more than one meaning, but let us first teach it in the sense of Perhaps I shall go; the other varieties are not of pressing importance. When we introduce but, let us associate it with its usual meaning and forget for the moment that semantic variety which is equivalent to except.

It is not sufficient for us to adopt the general principle of gradation; we must adopt the right sort of gradation; for we can easily imagine all sorts of false grading. We can imagine a teacher refusing, on the score of gradation, to teach irregular forms before regular ones, and justifying his procedure by the assertion that the regular is easy and the irregular difficult. This kind of gradation, however, is obviously unsound, seeing that some of the most useful words in most languages are very irregular. As a matter of fact, in a sound course of study based on the principle of automatism the irregular forms are learnt as easily as (and sometimes more easily than) regular forms.

We can also imagine some teachers maintaining (on grounds of gradation) that the word should be treated before the sentence. They would say that it is easier to assimilate a word than a sentence, that what is easier should come first. Others might say, “Teach easy words first and difficult ones later.” But this cannot be right, for if we observed this rule we should teach a Spaniard or a Frenchman the English verb to comprehend before the verb to understand. Gradation does not necessarily imply passing from the easy to the difficult, but it always does imply passing from the more important, useful, or fundamental to the less important, useful, or fundamental. Now, whatever the true unit of speech may be, our leading semanticians and speech-psychologists are all agreed that this unit is rarely the word, but generally the word-group or sentence. Consequently, to start from the word is not only bad gradation but bad semantics.

We have heard it asserted on grounds of gradation that the written form of a language should be studied before its spoken form. Here again we find the same misinterpretation of the term gradation and the same fallacy of ‘facility.’ If relative facility is to be the basis of gradation, then we should teach the geography of Portugal before teaching the geography of the British Empire, and we should postpone our study of chess until we have become expert in the easier game of noughts and crosses. To learn how to read and to write a language may possibly be easier than to learn how to speak it and to understand it when spoken, but this has no bearing on the subject of gradation.

Another false interpretation of the principle is to assume that the student will begin by using incorrect or pidgin-French (or whatever the language may be) and will gradually become more perfect ‘with practice’ as he goes on. Now if this is gradation, it is a particularly vicious form, and in flat contradiction to the principles of habit-forming and accuracy.