The Principles of Language-Study

by Harold E. Palmer

(e) Chorus-work before Individual Work.—Before we call on an individual pupil to articulate a sound or a succession of sounds, let the work be done in chorus on two or more different occasions. For an individual to have to submit his tentative efforts to the criticism and perhaps laughter of his fellow-pupils is not conducive to good results. Let the individual pupils test their articulation in company with others, and when by so doing they have gained a certain mastery of what they have to repeat and have thereby gained a certain degree of confidence, let them proceed to reproduce singly what they have previously phonated together.

(f) Drill-work before Free Work.—This is perhaps the most important of the precepts to be observed in connexion with gradation. The forms of exercise to which the general term drill-work may be applied are many and varied. Some of them are calculated to train the student in perceiving and discriminating the sounds of which the language is composed; others are articulation exercises; there are also special forms of drill-work which aim at securing fluency and accuracy in producing successions of syllables. The question-and-answer method may be embodied in many interesting forms of drill-work; there exist also many varieties of action drill, conversion drill, translation drill, and grammar drill. All these forms are characterized by common attributes: they are all systematic, highly organized, and susceptible of infinite gradation; the work is methodical and proceeds steadily and continuously without breaks or interruptions. Most forms of drill-work have been composed and are carried out in such a way as to preclude the possibility of the student’s forming bad habits. Indeed, if the work is carried out as designed the element of error should be almost entirely excluded.

Now free work in all its varied forms, such as free conversation, free translation, and free composition, differs greatly from drill-work, and we can all testify to the ludicrous results these forms of work yield when performed by one who has had no previous drilling. If the student has not been put through a proper course of drill-work, all his efforts at free work will be based on that most unnatural and vicious of processes—conventional translation from the mother-tongue. The undrilled French student will be speaking and writing not English as we understand the term, but anglicized French. Having formed no English language habits, he will cast all his thoughts in the French mould, and when the exact English equivalents to his French words and phrases are missing he will break down.

Free work without the essential preparation means faulty work, uncertain and erratic work; it means the formation of nearly all the bad habits which characterize the average student and which mar his work.

CHAPTER XI
PROPORTION

In language-study as in any other branch of activity we must observe a sense of proportion; we must pay due attention to the various aspects of the question in order to ensure a harmonious whole. It is possible to devote too much time and effort to a given aspect or branch; this is the case when such time and effort are spent at the expense of an aspect or branch of equal or of greater importance. It is necessary, for instance, to give much attention to the understanding of the language as spoken rapidly and idiomatically by natives; but if this occupies the whole of our time we shall be able to do nothing else, and shall neither learn to speak, nor to read, nor to write. This would be an obvious violation of the principle of proportion. It is necessary to know something of the grammar of the language, but if we devote every lesson of a three years’ course to the study of grammar we shall again be offending against this principle.

We tend to give too much attention to things which interest us, and too little to those things in which we are not particularly interested. Such inequality of treatment is more particularly apt to occur in these days of specialization; the intonation specialist thinks of little but intonation, and tends to think that everything else is of secondary importance; the phonetician is so keenly alive to the immense importance of ear-training and of correct articulation that he may tend to dismiss all other things as trivialities; the grammarian grinds away at declensions and conjugations regardless of the existence of such things as sounds and tones; the semantician is so intent on meanings that all has to be sacrificed to his special branch.

The most typical example of disproportionate treatment is, of course, that afforded by the orthographist of the old school; for him language is nothing but a set of spelling rules; pronunciation for him is the interpretation of spellings; grammar is a branch of orthography, and meanings themselves are largely dependent on the way a word is spelt. In the present-day reaction against the orthographist we may expect a swing to the other extreme, and we may find schoolmasters welcoming spelling mistakes as the signs of a healthy tendency towards phoneticism.

Already the reaction against the over-use and abuse of translation exercises has resulted in an almost equally grave over-use and abuse of the ‘direct’ method.