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Reading in Modern Language Study
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 02 December 2020
Extract
It is with extreme diffidence that I offer to read a paper before this Association. My own teaching is done under conditions of such disadvantage—with students so poorly prepared, and with results so unsatisfactory—that I cannot but feel how presumptuous it would be in me to attempt here to teach those who themselves teach under so much happier conditions and to so much better purpose than I can do. My sole apology might be an experience which, covering now three decades of language teaching, has passed through many phases both of our professional activity at large and of my own individual work. But these phases, for myself personally, have been rather renewals of effort and of disappointment than landmarks of progress or of triumph; and this experience, if I could recount it, might serve rather as a warning than as an example. So that it is as a seeker rather than as a giver that I come, to share my counsel with my more favored brethren; in order that by the confession of my own shortcomings, and especially by the criticism and discussion which this paper may elicit, I may be helped —and so perchance may help others—to find “the better way.”
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- Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 1890
References
page 35 note ∗ Since reading the “Proposed Scheme of Requirements in French and German” for advanced admission to the Colleges of New England, as presented before this Association, I am almost disposed to add that my argument should apply rather to schools and the lower classes than to the advanced classes of colleges so highly favored. Yet I must be pardoned for the remark that that scheme is too abundant in quantity not to excite some suspicion (in the mind of an old examiner) on the score- of quality. The worst of all cases is that in which the college has to revise and correct the work of the school:—it is more difficult to unteach than to teach.
page 39 note ∗ Yet, strange to say, the “Scheme of Requirements,” etc., above referred to, included conversation. The manifest unwillingness, however, of the Committee to define, or even to fix the responsibility for, this particular requirement was the most amusing and to many, doubtless, the most gratifying feature of the discussion in the Association.
page 40 note ∗ I beg leave here to refer to the excellent essay of Professor Hals of Cornell on “The Art of Reading Latin” (Ginn & Co.), which, though intended for classical teachers only, may be almost equally helpful in the teaching of modern languages. I make this reference the more freely because I can not fully claim the weight of this high authority in favor of all the points of the present paragraph.
page 41 note ∗ It is certainly true, as urged by the Nation of January 9th in its review of President Lowell's address before this Association, that literature and language are equally worthy objects of study, and indeed, in their highest conception, are one. But this does not touch the argument of the present paper, which concerns only the relative weight that should be assigned to each In the (purely preparatory) work of the great body of our students. It is also true, as stated in another column of the same issue of the Nation, that the great mass of college graduates do not keep up the reading even of good English literature—as, indeed, they do not keep up any branch of college study. But this is because they do not choose to do so, not because they cannot: they at least use English books for all needed purposes of help or information. I contend that they do not as a rule, even to this extent, use French or German—and because they cannot—at least except as a difficult and disagreeable task. The question here is, moreover, something more than one of degree only.
page 42 note ∗ Since the above was written, I have seen an amusing description of an old-time teacher who in the lines of Horace, Epod. II. 31,
“Aut trudit acres tunc et hinc multa cane
Apros in obstantes plagas”
insisted that multa cane should be rendered (literally!) with muck dog. Some of my colleagues in the Association may be surprised to learn that this style is by no means yet confined to the “rural districts.”
page 42 note † Again I take the liberty of deferring to Professor Hale's ‘Essay oh the Art of Reading Latin,’ which I most gladly commend to all teachers of modern language.