Excessive devotion to committing facts to memory actively discourages dynamic creative thought. Teachers themselves who teach by this method easily sink into a rut of teaching from habit, out of the depths of which they may view only with resentment any attempt to dislodge them. The very examples teachers often use in their instruction offer little challenge to the imagination. We were discussing the teaching of languages. The art of learning languages is to a great extent a matter of tuning in to the general consciousness of the people who speak it.
Every language has a peculiar melody, or lilt.
This melody is, in my opinion, as important in its own way as the words and grammar of the language, for it contains its inner feeling, without which no language is living, and from which the words themselves evolve. Without that inner feeling of a language, mere words and grammar are like Esperanto interesting, but essentially an abstraction. One hears the advice, Learn to think in the language you are studying. Actually, much more is involved. Be a Frenchman, in attitude, if you want to learn French.