ON THE LEARNING OF A MODERN LANGUAGE 1 



By Charles C. Ayer 



This country leads the world in popular education. In no other 

 country does the layman have so great a voice in the policy pursued. 

 He is to be found on the board of trustees from the primary grades 

 to the state university. He often boasts no special training for the 

 position he occupies, excepting that of common-sense and the business 

 qualifications for deciding how much the community can afford to pay 

 for in the way of education. At the same time, being a practical person, 

 he deems himself fitted, in a general way, to judge of the practical results 

 of the study of the various subjects put down in the curriculum. It 

 is to his attitude toward the study of a foreign modern language that 

 the following pages are to be devoted. And to be entirely fair, it is not 

 for the layman alone that they are written, but for a rather large pro- 

 portion of college-bred people, whose work has been along other lines, 

 and who have, therefore, not advanced much beyond the average prac- 

 tical outsider, as far as their real understanding of modern-language 

 study is concerned. To limit the question still further, we will consider 

 only the study of French, that being the language concerning which 

 the writer, after nearly ten years' experience with college classes, feels 

 best fitted to speak. The results, however, would, in his opinion, 

 remain the same with German, Spanish, Italian, or any other modern 

 language which is taught in our colleges. 



To the average uninitiated person the ability to speak the modern 

 language in question is regarded as paramount. Not a few of our 

 average citizens are disappointed, and not a little puzzled, when a student 

 leaves college unable to speak the French or German he has been taking 

 courses in. To him it seems that something must be radically wrong. 

 And it is not only the every-day outsider who is puzzled. Not long ago 

 a student of mature years, deficient by nature in all the various qualities 

 of mind which make for ultimate success in French, asked the writer 



1 Read at the Modern Language Conference, Colorado College, February 20, 1004. 



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