indicated in the key words at the bottom of the page. The teacher should be very careful, however, that his own understanding and pronunciation of each sound is approximately correct; for otherwise he will initiate into the children bad habits that they may never outgrow. Let the teacher pronounce to himself very slowly and distinctly the eight common sounds of a, for instance. If he is not able to distinguish each from all the others, he probably needs help. Some vowel sounds that are very likely to be given incorrectly are å, staff, pȧss, command, sofà, messiah; ŏ, ŏrange, fog, offer, foreign; ou, south, house, mouth; ū, pūre, sūe, suit, lūte, assume, opportunity. Not a few people who pride themselves on speaking well will make mistakes in pronouncing these common words. If they do so, it should make them suspicious of their pronunciation of more difficult combinations. Syllabication Syllabication (or syllabification, the word having both forms) is a matter about which the amateur can not in many cases be at all certain without reference to the dictionary, there being so many and such complex rules and numerous exceptions. The pupil can be taught the broad rules, however, and, what is more important here, how to pronounce a word in syllables when they are indicated. This is a very much simpler matter. And, finally, he should be taught how to place the accent. An experienced and successful teacher says that even after children know what accent is and can pronounce with some facility, they are often helpless in placing the accent orally for themselves even when its place is indicated. Good training for overcoming this is to give for drill words that are spelled alike, but accented differently (gallant, gallant'; incense, incense; absent, absent;) and words, the accent of which is shifted by the addition of suffixes (history, historical; potent, potential, potentiality; inform, information; finite, infinite; serve, reserve, reservation). Pronunciation With this foundation, the children should be drilled for speed in pronunciation. At first they will need to go very slowly, valuing each sound and pronouncing each syllable by itself, and pronouncing the whole word again for smoothness and for the proper placing of the accent. This drill should be continued, however, until considerable speed and perfect accuracy are acquired. Finally the children may be tested in reading some matter in which the pronunciation of every word is indicated diacritically.* Being sure, then, that the children know these four *The G. & C. Merriam Company of Springfield, Massachusetts, issue as advertisements several booklets that will prove useful in work of this kind. In addition to these, they publish a "Chart of English Sounds With a Test in Pronunciation.' The Merriam Company will send copies of the booklets for teachers and sets of the chart and test folder for use of classes free upon request. things, the teacher may set them to work practically with the book. If each child does not own a dictionary-and this he should do very early-any book that has in it alphabetized lists of words may be used. First the children should understand why the words are arranged alphabetically. Then, with this principle in mind, they are set to find p, 1, t, i, m, etc. It should be insisted on that they think first before they turn a single page. With the book held between the two hands, back on the desk, and the child's thumbs on the edge, it can be opened easily and quickly one way or the other: One teacher remarked to the children in this drill: "I am interested in seeing how few leaves you turn." After the pupils gain some facility in finding the given letter, let them find short words, like dog, man, cat, cab, gun, having them use the first two letters as a guide. Then, probably, a drill in searching for words beginning with re, dis, trans, circum (receive, recall; disagree, disappoint; transmit, transit; circumference, circumflex) will best show them how the arrangement according to alphabetical order extends to the very end of the word. Finally, attention is called to the help that may be derived from the catch words at the top of each page. Is the one on the left-hand page selected from anywhere on the page? How? Is the one on the right-hand page selected in the same way? The spirit of contest entering into this drill often gives almost incredible speed. A splendid review of phonics may be had here by giving orally words for the children to find, espe cially when there are several ways of spelling the sound (fancy, phantasm; castle, keel; etc.) And here, too, spelling forms that are difficult to remember may be fixed in the mind by the child's searching for them and recalling where they are found in the dictionary. At first, for a brief time, children should be drilled only on finding words; then on pronunciation, too.* Give the children to look up lists of unusual and long words and words that are commonly broadly mispronounced in the community. These words are best in that they demand care and close attention and in that they interest all of the class by their novelty. In the upper grades gradually insist on the finer points of purity and correctness. Before proceeding to the definitions it will be necessary to teach what some of the abbreviations mean, especially those that indicate parts of speech. When the children know where the abbreviations are explained, they may of course be expected to help themselves thereafter. Definition In some dictionaries definitions are given in their historical order; in others, in the order of their frequency of use. To find the order of definition, either * It is becoming in a teacher, it may be here remarked, to sub mit with all grace when his accustomed pronunciation is proved wrong. Stubbornness and explanations that do not explain set a bad example, to say the least. No one, probably, pronounces ali words correctly. read the preface to the book, if the explanation is given there, or look up the order of definitions of some word the history of which you know. For instance, knave originally meant boy, then servant, then a rogue or villain, and finally a playing card also. It is helpful to know the order of definition that each dictionary uses, or one will sometimes be misled. Often several definitions are given for a word, and one is in doubt which one to choose and is puzzled to know why the dictionary maker did not confine himself to one meaning. If one has tried to use a small dictionary to any extent, he has found how unsatisfactory it is just on this account; the single definition given is often not at all the meaning that one wishes. Usually when a person consults a dictionary it is not for the common meaning of the word, which he as well as nearly everybody else knows; it is for the unusual shade of meaning with which he is largely unfamiliar. Why words have so many meanings is a long story, much of which is very interestingly told in Greenough and Kittredge's "Words and Their Ways in English Speech," especially in Chapters IV, VI, XVII, and XVIII. It would be foolish to send a child to the dictionary to look up a word like turn, which has fifteen meanings. Probably he would have no interest in the matter, and certainly he would be confused. should be sent to the dictionary to find what a word means when it occurs in a sentence that he can not He |
