A year spent in considering the progress of English-teaching in this country leads to discontent. We who are charged with instruction in the use and enjoyment of our mother-tongue are filled with zeal for our cause. We show a commendable fertility in devices for improving the product of our daily efforts. Many of our number with admirable patience investigate problems arising from what we teach and how we teach. Yet one who ponders over the present state of our subject is filled with discontent.

This feeling of dissatisfaction may be traced to two facts: first, as practitioners in the classroom we are not agreed upon the goals it is most desirable for us to attain; second, although we peruse our professional periodicals, we do not know what is really established about the teaching of English.

Let us dwell for a moment on the first item. What is our judgment about the goals of English teaching? Anyone who has served on an English committee knows that we are not agreed on the purposes of English instruction. From rules for the use of the comma to objectives in character-training through literature, there is hardly any proposition that is offered for approval that does not become a subject for sharp debate. A member of the National Council once made an exhaustive research into this lack of agreement. He found a thousand different aims, each of which is considered essential by a quarter of our profession. Eighty-eight per cent of the judgments he secured did concur on one aim, thus giving it first place among all the aims that English teachers should achieve. And what was that aim? Was it skill in communicating one's

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thoughts clearly by means of language? No! Was it power to gain enriching experiences from literature? No! It was "the ability to spell correctly without hesitation all the ordinary words of one's writing vocabulary."

Another investigator tried to find out what elements in student themes are considered most important by able teachers of composition. He discovered that such teachers were most diverse in rating the actual themes handed in by the boys and girls. They disagreed also about the importance of unity in composition or the worth of a story written in short, choppy sentences. They were in pretty close accord on style. Take a simple idea, such as "The pony quieted down." There seems little opportunity in such a thought for a flight of Fourth-of-July oratory. Yet if the phraseology were "stepped up" so that the idea was expressed in this ornate fashion, "Our charger eventually regained his composure," these experienced raters of student writing united in putting that version second or third in a scale of thirteen levels of merit.

Remember that these reports of divergence of opinion are not taken from the unconsidered remarks of novices. They are found in scientific studies, which were based on the deliberate judgments of experienced, skilful, professionally minded teachers. Is it not safe to conclude that as a body we teachers in the classroom do not know the true purposes of our endeavors?

A similar state of confusion has been found among the leaders. In fact, one of the high officials of our Council has tabulated the essentials prescribed in the progressive courses of study over the country. She hoped to discover thereby the minima set down for mastery. What are the results? She learns that these committees, composed of the most prominent teachers in their respective communities, who have deliberated long and thoughtfully in framing the curricula, differ widely on the minima that should be prescribed. No item except business letter forms and the punctuation of quotations appears in even half of these courses. Obviously the leaders in English in this nation do not agree on so important a matter as the bare essentials in our field. We must conclude that English teachers by and large do not know the specific purposes that should be our indispensable guides.

The second reason for discontent with our progress is that we do not know the established facts about the teaching of English. Take as illustration a common situation. You read the English Journal diligently.. You fall eagerly upon the Journal of Educational Research the moment it arrives. You pass sleepless nights until the yearbooks of the National Society for the Study of Education are off the press. In short, you peruse professional publications with avidity. One day you meet a fellow-teacher and talk over some problem of high-school reading. At first you feel proud of yourself, for you mention some study which you think important but which he hasn't read. The next moment you are dashed, astonished, bowled over. He tells you of a professor in the New Atlantis University whose experiments for eight years have attracted the attention of experts. You have not read a single one of his contributions. This common situation has its comic aspect, doubtless, but fundamentally it is a serious state of affairs, for our ignorance of established fact gives rise to confusion of opinionconfusion of opinion in those very matters in which it is vital that we have harmony in practice and point of view. Unity cannot arise in a group like ours, composed as it is of zealous and independent practitioners, from the imposition of any dominant authority. If it ever comes, it will arise from a comprehension of research into the interests and powers of students and the usefulness of the materials of study. This comprehension is not easily acquired. It involves not merely acquaintance with research but a just estimate of the significance of particular contributions of research. Men who try to keep abreast of developments, men who have in their files most of the studies that seem to them significant, tell me that it has become well-nigh impossible for any one person to evaluate the various researches into so complex an endeavor as teaching English. Even to gather them together requires industry. To comprehend their meaning, to see their exact bearing on the diversified phases of our daily exercises in the classroom, is becoming progressively more difficult.

This brings me to one of my deepest convictions: We English teachers need to know research. We ought to have at our disposal the significant results of scientific investigations. In fact, we can

not find our way along the path of progress without stumbling into the ditch or wandering into bypaths, unless we have an evaluation of these studies.

Let me explain what I mean by the necessity of evaluation. One impression that I gain from perusing sundry researches is that anything can be taught if one concentrates on that element. For example, two investigators read in the report of our classical friends that pupils who studied Latin acquired a wider English vocabulary than those who did not study Latin. Thereupon they felt very much like a rookie fireman in our town. During his course of training he took part in extinguishing a fire. He had to climb a long ladder with the flames leaping out of the windows and licking at his feet. Then he had to make his way along a series of window ledges several stories above the pavement. After some singeing he escaped with his life. As he turned away from the scene he was heard to exclaim, "There must be some easier way of earning a living!" Like him, these English teachers wondered whether there were not an easier way of learning English words than to spend four years on a dead language. They accordingly subjected some of their students who were in Latin classes anyway to an intensive study of English words for four months. At the end of that time they discovered that the experimental group had increased their vocabulary by 6.9 words for every hundred they already knew, while another similar Latin group increased their vocabulary by only 2.2 words per hundred. Evidently if pupils study words they will learn words.

Perhaps you think we need no ghost come from the grave to tell us that. Let us therefore take a second case. This second investigator attacked the problem of comprehension in silent reading in high school. He used a test which measured depth of comprehension in the same manner that parts of an intelligence test do. It was therefore assumed, even by experts in measurement, that the gains made by the pupils during the twelve weeks of intensive training would be very moderate. Methods in educational measurement are not refined enough to reveal much growth in intellectual stature in twelve weeks. The results showed, indeed, that in some classes the pupils actually registered losses in comprehension.