IV

So much for the reading selections—now for the way in which they ought to be used in the classroom. I have a very vivid recollection of how most of the language lessons were conducted when I went to school, and I have a suspicion that this method of procedure has not yet quite died out, even if in many places it has more or less felt the influence of the law of change. First the " old lesson " is gone through, and that must take as little time as possible, therefore the pupil is required to be able to translate it fluently without reading it aloud first. Then we come to the " new lesson." A boy stands up and reads a little piece out of the reader—stuttering; the words are separated from each other by pauses and various unaesthetic hm-and er- sounds, and sometimes by the teacher's corrections, or " now hurry," "what a terrible pronunciation!" "how do you pronounce g before e? well, you know that just as well as I do, you blockhead," etc. All that the boy thinks about, whenever he gets an opportunity, is, what in the world can be the meaning of that word I am coming to. Then he translates, interrupted by the teacher's corrections, or "look out," "where is the verb," "but what case is it," etc. Then there are, perhaps, some grammatical questions, he is to give the principal parts of a verb or two, explain the use of a subjunctive, etc.; the questions are not asked in the foreign language and are not to be answered in that tongue. The next boy is called upon to recite in the same way, and so on until the lesson has been gone through; if there is time enough, perhaps we go through it once more, but that must be in a hurry, so we do not stop to read it first this time. The last five or six minutes are devoted to looking through the lesson for next time; the teacher translates it while the pupils follow it in their books, and perhaps exert themselves to write down the meaning of some difficult word in the margin of the reader or in a note-book.