advanced stage will take care of itself.

6. The Principles of Language-teaching

The art of designing a language course appears to be in its infancy. Those arts which have achieved maturity have gradually evolved from a number of distinct primitive efforts which, by a process of gradual convergence towards each other, have resulted in the ideal type. So will it be in the art of composing language courses: the present diverse types will gradually be replaced by more general types, and in the end the ideal type will be evolved. This will come about as a result of a system of collaboration in which each worker will profit by that which has been done in the past and that which is being done by other workers in the present. Unsound methods will gradually be eliminated and will make room for methods which are being evolved slowly and experimentally and which will pass the tests of experience. By this time a series of essential principles will have been discovered, and these will be recognized as standard principles by all whose work is to design language courses.

The following list would seem to embody some of these, and probably represents principles on which there is general agreement among those who have made a study of the subject:

(1) The initial preparation of the student by the training of his spontaneous capacities for assimilating spoken language.

(2) The forming of new and appropriate habits and the utilization of previously formed habits.

(3) Accuracy in work in order to prevent the acquiring of bad habits.

(4) Gradation of the work in such a way as to ensure an ever-increasing rate of progress.

(5) Due proportion in the treatment of the various aspects and branches of the subject.

(6) The presentation of language-material in a concrete rather than in an abstract way.

(7) The securing and maintaining of the student’s interest in order to accelerate his progress.

(8) A logical order of progression in accordance with principles of speech-psychology.

(9) The approaching of the subject simultaneously from different sides by means of different and appropriate devices.

7. Initial Preparation

We must realize that language-learning is an art, not a science. We may acquire proficiency in an art in two ways: by learning the theory, or by a process of imitation. This latter process is often termed the method of trial and error, but as the term may be misinterpreted it is better to consider it as the method of practice. The method of practice is a natural one, the method of theory is not. We may acquire proficiency in two ways: by forming appropriate new habits, or by utilizing and adapting appropriate old habits (i.e. habits already acquired). The natural process is the former, the latter being more or less artificial. Language-study is essentially a habit-forming process, so we must learn to form habits. By the natural or spontaneous method we learn unconsciously; we must therefore train ourselves or our students to form habits unconsciously.

The adult whose natural capacities for unconscious habit-forming have been dormant may reawaken them by means of appropriate exercises. These are notably:

(a) Ear-training exercises, by means of which he may learn to perceive correctly what he hears.

(b) Articulation exercises, by means of which he may cause his vocal organs to make the right sort of muscular efforts.

(c) Exercises in mimicry, by means of which he will become able to imitate and reproduce successfully any word or string of words uttered by the native whose speech serves as model.

(The combination of the three foregoing types of exercise will result in the capacity for reproducing at first hearing a string of syllables, such as a sentence. The student will thereby become enabled to memorize unconsciously the form of speech.)

(d) Exercises in immediate comprehension, by means of which he will come to grasp without mental translation or analysis the general sense of what he hears.

(e) Exercises in forming the right associations between words and their meanings, by means of which he will become able to express his thoughts.

The combination of these five types of exercise will develop the student’s capacity to use spoken language.

8. Habit-forming and Habit-adapting

Language-study is essentially a habit-forming process. We speak and understand automatically as the result of perfectly formed habits. No foreign word or sentence is really ‘known’ until the student can produce it automatically (i.e. without hesitation or conscious calculation). No one can understand by any process of calculation (e.g. translation or analysis) the language as spoken normally by the native. Few people (if any) have ever succeeded in speaking the language by a series of mental gymnastics; our progress is to be measured only by the quantity of language-material which we can use automatically. Adult students generally dislike the work of acquiring new habits, and seek to replace it by forms of study dependent upon the intellect, striving to justify their abstention from mechanical work on educational grounds. This fear of tediousness is really groundless; automatism is certainly acquired by repetition, but this need not be of the monotonous, parrot-like type, for there exist many psychologically sound repetition devices and varied drills intended to ensure automatism and interest.

Most of the time spent by the teacher in demonstrating why a foreign sentence is constructed in a particular way is time wasted; it is generally enough for the student to learn to do things without learning why he must do them (due exception being made in special cases, notably that of corrective courses).

The student should not only be caused to form new habits; he should also be helped, when expedient, to utilize some of his existing habits; it is even part of the teacher’s duties to aid the student to select from his previously acquired habits those which are likely to be of service to him.

9. Accuracy

Accuracy means conformity with a given model or standard, whatever that model or standard may happen to be. If we choose to take colloquial French or colloquial English as our standard, the forms pertaining to classical French or English (i.e. traditionally correct forms) are to be rejected as inaccurate. There are two types of inaccuracy: that in which a colloquial form is replaced by a classical form and vice versa, and that in which a native form is replaced by a pidgin form. In both cases the teacher’s duty is to react against the tendency towards inaccuracy.

Appropriate drills and exercises exist which ensure accuracy in sounds, stress, intonation, fluency, spelling, sentence-building and -compounding, inflexions, and meanings.

The principle of accuracy requires that the student shall have no opportunities for making mistakes until he has arrived at the stage at which accurate work is reasonably to be expected.

If we compel a student to utter foreign words before he has learnt how to make the requisite foreign sounds, if we compel him to write a composition in a foreign language before he has become reasonably proficient in sentence-building, or if we compel him to talk to us in the foreign language before he has done the necessary drill-work, we are compelling him to use the pidgin form of the language.

In addition to specific exercises and devices which ensure accuracy in