THE SERIES METHOD. 539 



It is not necessary that it should be anything astonishing or un- 

 usual. Let us consider with the pupils how one opens the class- 

 room door. Let us ask the pupil in his mother tongue how he does 

 it, carefully drawing his attention to the number of actions necessary 

 to the accomplishment of our aim, such as walking, standing still, 

 extending the arm, grasping the knob, etc., together with the result- 

 ing actions on the part of the door, opening, swinging, etc. We will 

 then draw his attention to the words of activity, the verbs, and tell 

 him he is going to learn those words in the new language — say 

 German. We will now take the first verb necessary to the accom- 

 plishment of our aim, that of walking. We will say, while we walk, 

 such sentences as " This is gehe," " See how I gehe," " My feet move 

 when I gehe," etc. We do the same with each verb, always with its 

 accompanying action. We will take the first four verbs of our sub- 

 ject, repeat them the first time with many explanatory phrases, the 

 second time with fewer, the third and last time we shall simply repeat 

 the verbs " gehe," " stehe still," " strecke aus," " fasse an," always 

 with the actions. By this time the pupils will know these, they hav- 

 ing heard each one at least seven times. We can now allow them 

 to recite, we still giving the clew by the production of the appropriate 

 action. Having taught these first four verbs, we are now ready for 

 the full sentence "I walk toward the door," " I stand still by the door," 

 " I reach out my arm," " I take hold of the knob." We can teach 

 the subject " ich " without difficulty, as it remains the same in all the 

 sentences. Let us take the nouns and teach in this manner : " Ich 

 gehe " — pointing — " Thiir," then a repetition of " Thiir " contained 

 in sentences describing it, with at least three repetitions of the word. 

 Then come the words showing direction and relation. If you say 

 {i Ich gehe " — pointing — " Thiir," the pupil will know that there is 

 a word lacking, and he will be unsatisfied till he knows it. We 

 now have a sentence, " Ich gehe nach der Thiir." We will teach 

 the other sentences in the same way; we will repeat each sentence 

 at least three times in its entirety, and we will allow the pupils to 

 recite. Here it is of interest to show the pupil that the sentence has 

 sprung from the verb, that the verb is the germ of the sentence. 

 Whether we do this with the words " verb," " sentence," " germ," 

 must depend on the capacity of the class. It is not a question 

 of words, but of ideas. Let us present our subject as a living thing. 

 To supply the pupil with an old-fashioned grammar exercise is like 

 inviting him to make a dinner off papier-mache joints and steaks. 



All this time we have been considering the part of language 

 which deals with the outside world. It is now time to consider how 

 we shall present the part of language which deals with the inner 

 life. We must make the pupil capable of expressing his states of 



