The Republican. [volume] (Oakland, Md.) 1877-current, 1917-05-17
Some Essentials In English By o ei: @"s91'

To ind cut what the child needs in
order TO speak correctly, it is necessary
to f q out what mistakes he make,
what rules Of grammar he violates;
then dwell. upon these. In teaching him
the rules that he breaks it becomes
necessary, sgso, to teach him those
other rules that he needs 10 order 70
understand the rules that he breaEs.
II, for instance, he says, He don t, "
h must be taught the rule Of the
agreement Of subject and verb in mum
Der and person. This will necessitate
knowing hat subject is, what a verb
is, what number and person are, ard
what the forms of the verb do" are.
To find cut the child's actual errors,
Prof Charters had collected all spon-
taneous written work from ali grades
above the second, for a period of four
weeks. AT the same time he asked all
teachers to record, for one week, sll
errors heard in the classroom, in the
hall, or on the play ground. Of the
oral errors: Subject of verb not in
nominative case per cent. Elk. us
girls went" Failure of verb 10 agree
with its subject in number and person
IA per cent. Elk. There is six" Con-
fusion of past tense and past participle
"a per cent. Elk. Il SEEM" Il have
saw" Use of the wrong verb II per
cent. Elk. "Lav for lie"; "sit for set. D."
Ii the written work; wrong forms of
the noun or pronoun 10 per cent. Fail
ure of verb to agree with its subject in
number and person 10 per cent. Con
fusion of past and present lenses ~
per cent. Elk. "She give US four. q"
"He ask me-"
Lillian Lincoln in her Everyday
Pedagogy" says, The first few years
of school life furnishes an excellent op-
portunity to get the child we'll started
toward mastery of correct oral
English; that this is always of greater
importance than written language.
since all the world talks, while the
greater part of it writes only occasional
ly. There are at least five excellent
methods of improving a child's spoken
English outside the regular lesson; ~
The use of correct English in the hear
ing of the child. Imitation is a power.
full counterforce; ~ Present as many
good models as possible in the shape of
literature (3) Make the child talk az
Correct the English he employees; (5)
Try to get him into the habit of watch
ing his own language, as we'll as that of
other people.
Again comes the criticism that few
teachers give the attention they ought to
their own forms of expression. Early
association, hearing too much incorrect
language, and carelessness cause the
teacher to present to the children
models that should be stunned rather
than copied.
Lincoln says, 1--WE shall never great
ly improve the language of our people
till the teachers furnish better models. "
1t is claimed that children in the
third and fourth grades may be taught
to watch eagerly to substitute very"
tor awful; to use may" and
"can" correctly, and to weed out such
/ expressions as I'VE was, "have got, "
etc. 1t appeals to them as a sort of
game, and this is the time to establish
the right form and habit.
Mr.. Gammons accomplished excel
lent work by requiring pupils to use a
simple sentence or a sentence of
not more than two clauses. Only
these two kinds of sentences were
permitted, and day after day he
| drilled them in the discriminate
use of these forms. He insist
ed, also, that the pupils should
read their compositions aloud, by them
selves, at home and notice if word
groups beginning with capital and
ending with period were at all sensible.
By listening to the natural divisions of
the sentence into clauses, they were
trained to place commas at such pauses.
But few rules of punctuation we're
taught. Words and phrases out of
their natural order were referred to in
class as requiring commas before and
after.
A certain amount of time, however,
should be spent in teaching pupils some
what formally the simple essentials of
grammatical construction. The an
alysis of sentence is the basis of dis.
eliminate study IN the selection of
topic thought or in the summarizing OF
paragraph.
Neither of these functions of study
ing can be performed adequately I'M
less the pupil understands the meaning
of each sentence. And this meaning
rests upon knowledge of how subject,
verb, attribute and modifiers are inter
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