special interest. The pupils should also be made to learn the most common and most productive roots in the English language, together with a well-chosen list of words derived from them, in order that the meanings of words shall not remain as isolated facts (which are always hard to remember) but shall show their connections and developments. They should then be required to point out what words in their lessons belong to these roots. III. A clear understanding of all allusions. IV. A knowledge of such illustrations as really throw light upon the text. Except when the illustrations are specially valuable it is best, in testing a pupil, to give him the illustration, and require him to give the passage in the text which it illustrates. Then as to method and routine. 1. The notices of the author and the poem, together with the poem itself, should be carefully read over by the pupils with the teacher before anything else is attempted. But the teacher should bear in mind that the "notices" are intended rather as helps to him than as lessons for his pupils. 2. A passage should be set as a lesson for next time, and the pupils required to learn the Notes on it, and to look out and learn the meanings of all but the very simplest words which it contains. It is perhaps hardly necessary to remind teachers how ignorant young learners as a rule are of the meanings of even very common words. Their vocabulary is very small, and their words have very arbitrary or misty meanings. 3. When the text has been thoroughly understood, the critical notices of the author and the poem should next be studied. 4. Lastly, when all the points above mentioned have been carefully attended to, the pupil should be made to read the poem through aloud two or three times, in order to get an idea of it as a whole, and to show that he has really mastered its meaning. JUNE 1879. H. COURTHOPE BOWEN. |