600 



SCIENCE 



[N. S. Vol. XXXVII. No. 955 



Whitall Hall, of Haverford College, which 

 houses the scientific departments, was dam- 

 aged by fire on April 8, with a loss estimated 

 at $20,000. 



The board of trustees has approyed plans 

 for an addition to the Women's School of the 

 Carnegie Institute of Technology. 



New buildings of the Sorbonne, Paris, have 

 been erected at a cost of Y82,000 francs. They 

 are the Curie laboratory, under the direction 

 of Mme. Curie; the radium laboratory, under 

 the direction of M. Debierne, and the Pas- 

 teur laboratory, under the direction of M. 

 Eegnaud. 



Professor Alexander Smith, administrative 

 head of the department of chemistry in Co- 

 lumbia University, has accepted the position 

 of professor of chemistry on the Wyman 

 Foundation in Princeton University, and the 

 headship of the department of chemistry. By 

 the desire of the authorities of Columbia 

 University, as well as his own, he will com- 

 plete three years of service with Columbia 

 University and will accept this call to take 

 effect at the end of the academic year 1913-14. 



De. William Trelease, director of the Mis- 

 souri Botanical Garden from 1889 to 1912, has 

 accepted the position of professor of botany 

 and head of the department of botany at the 

 University of Illinois. 



DISCUSSION AND COBBESPONDENCE 



ON METHODS OF TEACHING MODERN LANGUAGES 



The basis and warrant of all language 

 teaching must be psychological. But among 

 all the multitudinous articles and books on 

 the subject, there are only a very few which 

 take cognizance of the psychology of language 

 teaching, although, to be sure, the practical 

 application of the principles is practised in 

 part, consciously or unconsciously. 



The test of any method must be psycholog- 

 ical. Here mere practical results can not be 

 the criterion. The question should not be: 

 Has the learner acquired so and so much of a 

 vocabulary ? but rather it should be : Has the 

 learner been acquiring good mental habits 

 while he has been acquiring the vocabulary! 

 That is to say, the method must be based upon 



sound laws of the mind, to follow which means 

 to produce good habits of study. 



1. The newer school of linguists are agreed 

 that language is an activity of the mind; not 

 a thing thrust upon the individual, but rather 

 the outward manifestation of mental states. 



Speech without ideas is useless. Adults do 

 not naturally learn words for the sake of 

 learning them, but only for the purpose of ex- 

 pressing ideas. We find in normal adults first 

 the idea, then the expression of it, or possibly 

 the two simultaneously, but not the reverse. 



2. Physiological psychology teaches us that 

 four distinct centers of the brain are active 

 in the acquisition of language; namely: the 

 auditory, the visual, the motor writing, and 

 the motor speech centers, the first two sensory, 

 the latter two motor.^ The function of the 

 auditory center is to receive sensory impres- 

 sions through the nerves of the ear; that of 

 the visual center to receive impressions from 

 the nerves of the eye ; the motor-writing center 

 controls the muscles of the hand in writing, 

 while the motor speech center controls the 

 muscles of the speech organs. 



It has been established, also, by experimen- 

 tation that the strength of the sensory im- 

 pressions upon these centers varies with dif- 

 ferent individuals. There are those who get 

 stronger impressions by the auditory than by 

 the visual center, and more facile expression 

 by the motor-speech than by the motor-writing 

 center, and vice versa. 



Moreover, there are in the case of the four 

 brain centers under discussion not only nerve 

 currents from the end-organs to the centers 

 and from the motor centers to the muscles, 

 there are also the association areas of the 

 brain which serve communication between 

 these centers, thereby bringing about a lively 

 interaction between them. 



3. Without going into the old question 

 whether sensation is the sole principle of 

 knowledge, we are on safe ground psycholog- 



' Cf . Wundt, Wilbelm, ' ' Principles of Physiolog- 

 ical Psychology, ' ' English translation, London and 

 New York, 1904, pp. 302 fC.; Judd, C. H., "Psy- 

 chology, General Introduction," New York, 1907, 

 pp. 51 ff. 



