ciations in use makes it difficult for the pupil even to remember its meaning, to say nothing of using it in an original way to convey a meaning.

The synthetic process, using isolated words as the unit of advance, is not generally employed by trained teachers to-day except as an occasional device to make the meaning of a new term clear by objectifying it. The difference between building up a vocabulary for future use by the "this is,” “that is" process and teaching the meaning of a word by associating it with an object implies distinction between a method and a device. For service as a method-i.e., in building a vocabulary—it is useless; as a device for clarifying meanings it is valuable. The best way to teach the meaning of the word "ceiling" is to point to it and not to talk about it; but to continue the process by naming the objects in the classroom, the parts of the body, the occupations of the pupils, is a method for building a catalogue rather than a vocabulary.

III. The content of instruction in grammar has recently undergone shrinkage as a result of a clearer definition of its purpose and value in helping the pupil to speak, read, and write English. In teaching English to English-speaking pupils, grammar is taught for some of the following reasons: first, to facilitate understanding of difficult passages by determination of syntactical relationships; second, to establish principles for the resolution of a doubt when habits of expression fail to to settle it-e.g., whether to say, "I knew it to be she" or "I knew

it to be her"; third, to impart scientific knowledge of the tools of language; fourth, to furnish a medium for elementary logical training. No illusions are entertained that grammar helps toward an understanding of meanings which are not otherwise understandable, or that grammar helps the pupil except in rare instances to use English more effectively as a medium of communication. Teachers rely rather on habitforming exercises than on formal conjugations and declensions to impress correct English idiom on their pupils.

Educated non-English-speaking adults, however, frequently desire instruction in English grammar because they know that in other European languages correctness of expression depends largely on a knowledge of grammatical inflections. Teachers therefore have sought to satisfy this natural craving for correctness by organizing their instruction on a grammatical instead of on a psychological basis, without realizing that in comparison with other languages English is a grammarless tongue. This accounts for the dispute as to whether English instruction should begin with nouns or verbs; it results in teaching principal parts of verbs to pupils who cannot use any one part in sentences, and in the teaching method of exhausting the possibilities of a verb by conjugating it in all persons and numbers. The fundamental error in all such instruction is that the teacher is thinking of the subject matter and not of the pupil and of the latter's needs in expression. Certainly at the beginning

little is to be gained by spending time on conjugations. The knowledge so acquired is useless for some time to come; the pupils cannot go into the street or into a shop and say, "I see, thou seest, he sees," and when the time comes to use a pronoun he finds it embedded in a series into which he must dig before he can produce the correct one. However, after the learner has habituated himself to use correct forms, it is desirable to present a schematic outline of the difficulties which he has mastered. Except for such appreciation of grammatical relations, it is doubtful whether grammar functions in the familiarization of foreign-born pupils with English speech.

ANALYTIC METHODS SOUND

Analytic processes of teaching are based on the psychological principle that the mind works "from the undefined whole to the parts, back to the defined whole"; that our first perceptions take in vague entities which are later split up into elements as we find them of value. Modern methods of teaching children to read apply the principle by beginning with a story, then teaching the recognition of entire sentences, then of phrases, and finally of single words and phonograms. The letters of the alphabet are not usually taught until children are able to recognize at sight a great many whole sentences, single words, and phonograms.

The principle first received emphasis in the teaching of language through François Gouin's

psychological analysis of his efforts in mastering a modern language so as to be able to use it in talking. Gouin's labors led him to believe, first, that the ear, not the eye, is the instrument of learning to speak a language; second, that an understanding of isolated words, even of all the words in the dictionary, does not insure an understanding of, much less an ability to use, spoken words; third, that to insure such ability a larger unit than the word must be found, and that it may be found in connected series of sentences from which words are analyzed; fourth, that the meaning of an expression must be made clear to the learner by associating the sentence with the idea represented; and, hence, fifth, that understanding of oral symbols is the basis for reading or writing, and must precede them, both to insure direct association and to prevent confusion in pronunciation.

APPLICATION BY GOUIN

On the basis of these sound pedagogic principles Gouin elaborated a method in which the theme or topic is the unit of instruction and the meaning of single words is made clear inductively by the context and by a variety of uses to which the words are put in sentences. In Gouin's procedure, "a theme is a general end accomplished by a series of related acts." For example, the teacher conceives a general end, as: going to the door; getting up in the morning; taking a bath; eating breakfast; washing the dishes;

going to work; coming to school; looking for a job; taking money to the bank.

The teacher's first problem is to select a suitable theme. This selection is guided by two considerations: first, the content of the theme must be of value to the pupils; for example, to lumbermen the theme "sewing on a button’ will not be as useful as it will be to tailors; second, the English sentence structure and the vocabulary must be that of daily life and not of the classroom. This is perhaps of even greater importance than the information contained in the content, because the worth of the lesson must be judged by the knowledge of English imparted rather than by the information presented about objects and processes. Sentences, phrases, and words must therefore be such as the learner may put to use in communicating his ideas in the life beyond the school. As will appear later, the difficulty of constructing such sentences in the theme is a serious limitation to its use as a complete method.

The next problem for the teacher is to organize a series of sentences which shall describe the accomplishing of the general end conceived in the theme. Thus the teacher develops the theme "getting up in the morning":

I open my eyes at six o'clock.

I push back the covers.

I jump out of bed.

I stretch out my arms.

open

push

jump

stretch

wash

I dry myself with a towel.
I dress myself.

dry

dress

I wash myself.