OF THE 



{ UNIVERSITY j 



INTRODUCTION 



TIME was in the history of our schools when a pupil was 

 given a certain subject concerning which he knew nothing and 

 cared less, and was expected to evolve from it a composition 

 that should contain both good ideas and good English. No 

 one seemed to realize that this was a double task that, like 

 Janus, faced in opposite directions. Either way by itself was 

 sufficiently difficult ; but for a pupil to follow both simultane- 

 ously was quite impossible. Even to-day an inexperienced 

 teacher too often regards English as the material for the manu- 

 facture of ideas rather than as a medium for expressing them. 

 Thus it often happens that, in our elementary schools, the lan- 

 guage lessons are a weary work and a strain on both teacher 

 and pupil. 



The seemingly natural plan of letting the child express his 

 own thoughts in language either spoken or written marks a 

 new era in the teaching of English. When we go a step 

 farther and confine the language work to those subjects which 

 must interest the child, we shall have ideal conditions. 



The correlation of nature study with language lessons is 

 almost inevitable. The child sees certain living creatures and 

 is interested in their life and habits and almost involuntarily 

 he tells what he sees ; if the teacher is in sympathy with him, 

 he likes quite as well to write about his observations as to tell 

 about them. And since he is trying to express only what he 

 knows and has experienced, his English is simple and straight- 

 forward ; and, even when it is faulty, it may be corrected better 

 by good example than by that ogre of school work in English, 

 the blue pencil. 



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