120 UNIVERSITY OF COLORADO STUDIES 



an accurate visual transcription of each word or phrase to be uttered, 

 and his own utterance therefrom will be approximately perfect, if his 

 ear be correct. In some cases a student has been known to betray 

 something akin to color-blindness in his attempts to produce a certain 

 sound, and the result is that he pronounces off the key. The better 

 the musical ear, the better the tonal results will be in pronouncing 

 French. In the case of several of my best students, of whom I am 

 able to speak, I would note a well-developed taste for music. 



Having attained a high degree of proficiency in translation, prose 

 composition, and pronunciation, the student is at last justified in asking 

 whether he be not on the eve of speaking French. A student return- 

 ing home from the university with high grades in French is naturally 

 expected by his friends to be able to speak French, if occasion requires. 

 This expectation is especially cherished, if the student goes abroad to 

 a French-speaking country. What is the result ? Almost invariably a 

 disappointment for all concerned. The new language does not flow 

 from his lips. He stammers and makes mistakes of which he is pain- 

 fully conscious, but which, once uttered, it is too late to retrieve. But 

 in the course of a few days the solid work done in college asserts itself 

 and comes to the fore, and in a short time he speaks better in every 

 way than the person who has been vegetating for several years on 

 French soil without working at the language and without a final men- 

 tal quality — which remains to be spoken of. This final quality is one 

 which everyone must possess, if he would speak a foreign language well. 

 Without it even the most profound student, the most learned professor, 

 will not be able to speak so as to give pleasure to the native whose 

 language he essays. It is the dramatic instinct, the power to imitate 

 a native, the ready sympathy which would seem to project the speaker 

 into a new and foreign personality. Without the dramatic instinct the 

 spoken utterances in French of the average American, for example, are 

 not French. They are a phenomenon far removed from the ideal. 

 One has only to visit a class during the reading, whether in French 

 or English, of a modern French play to see how little able the majority 

 of the class are to enter into the dramatic situation. Some few will 

 show by their reading an appreciation of the emotional value of 



