The Principles of Language-Study

by Harold E. Palmer

Two or more opposing principles, ideas, likes, operations, interests, in short any two or more conflicting tendencies, may be combined, and this combination can be effected by other means than the expedient of compromising. Lobster salad and fruit salad may be attractive to the gourmet, but no compromise between the two would be palatable.

It is not always the height of wisdom and expediency to kill too many birds with one stone.

This attitude towards life in general does indeed solve many problems and vexed questions. It constitutes a method of conciliating inconsistencies, both real and apparent. It explains how it is that one can appreciate both classical and popular music, classical and light literature, how idealism may exist side by side with a keen interest in material things. The real and the ideal, scientific precision and unscientific emotion, patriotism and internationalism, are not incompatible with each other in the ‘philosophy of the complete life.’

And what has all this to do with language-study? What bearing have these fanciful or fantastical philosophical considerations on the problem of teaching or learning a language rapidly and well? The connexion is clearer than one might imagine at first sight, for each of the aphorisms quoted above may serve, if not as a definition of the ninth principle, at least as a strong suggestion of what the principle implies.

Those who have followed us, point by point, in our enumeration and analysis of the eight preceding principles may be in perfect agreement with our conclusions, but may, nevertheless, be sorely troubled as to how they are to be carried out in practice. On many points there appear to be conflicts and inconsistencies; in many cases it would appear to be exceedingly difficult, if not impossible, to observe two or more of these principles simultaneously. How is habit-forming consistent with interest? How can we combine a study of phonetics with a study of orthography? How can we combine the development of our spontaneous capacities with that of our studial capacities? How can we observe the principle of accuracy and combine it with other principles which are seemingly in conflict with it—such as the inhibition of our powers of analysis and synthesis? How are we to foster a keen appreciation of the classical or literary style of composition, and yet concentrate on the colloquial and trivial? The principles of gradation and of order of progression seem to reveal inconsistencies when they are compared with each other; there is more than a seeming inconsistency between the process of unconscious assimilation and the principle of concreteness. Translation is destructive, or is often considered so, of the power of ‘thinking in the foreign language,’ and yet it is suggested that the student should do translation work and at the same time train himself to think in the foreign language.

These and many other problems or difficulties suggested by the careful study of the foregoing eight principles can only be solved by the thorough understanding of the spirit of eclecticism underlying this ninth principle. We have alluded to the philosophy of the complete life in order that we may better realize the significance of what we may term the complete method.

This complete method, mark you, is not a compromise between two or more antagonistic schools; it boldly incorporates what is valuable in any system or method of teaching and refuses to recognize any conflict, except the conflict between the good and the inherently bad. The complete method will embody every type of teaching except bad teaching, and every process of learning except defective learning.

The complete method (of which the multiple line of approach is the expression) is the antithesis of the special or patent method. Patent or proprietary methods very often, but not always, resemble patent medicines. We know what they are. A patent language method, like a patent medicine, claims to prevent or to cure all possible ills (linguistic or physical, as the case may be) by repeated applications of one special device or drug; both of them claim to kill innumerable birds with one stone. One is always inclined to doubt the efficiency of an instrument which is designed to perform too many distinct functions; a tool designed to serve both as a hairbrush and as a hammer is not likely either to brush or to hammer very efficiently, and our imagination refuses to picture what one vehicle could possibly afford us all the advantages of a bicycle, a motor-car, a wheelbarrow, and an express train, not to mention those of a boat or balloon. One dish, however nutritive, succulent, and satisfying, will not constitute a complete banquet.