(8) Determine the gender of the noun Vorschlag.
(9) Determine the function of the same in this particular sentence.
(10) Determine the form of the possessive adjective of the third person masculine singular when modifying a masculine accusative singular noun.
(11) Determine the form of the adjective freundlich when preceded by a possessive adjective and when modifying a masculine accusative noun.
(12) Derive the past participle angenommen from the infinitive.
It will be noticed that most of these operations require, in addition to a perfect memory of the grammatical rules (including numbers of word-lists), a fine power of logical discrimination. Needless to say, no speaker of German actually does perform any of these operations (except perhaps on very special and rare occasions), and we dismiss as a patent absurdity the supposition that the young native child constructs his matter in any such way.
(b) Ergonic Construction
In this process we work from an entirely different sort of memorized matter; instead of being merely ‘dictionary words’ it consists of (a) more or less complete sentences, and (b) units of speech which we may term ‘ergons,’ i.e. ‘working units’ derived and inflected in advance by the teacher (or the author of the course), each ergon being thus quite ready for use.
The following is a typical example of the process: