How does a pupil learn?
A pupil learns a thing far better if, in his soul, he can apply it in different directions. You will be able to say to him: “Look, there you have made an English sentence and a Romanian sentence; in the English sentence, if the first person is referred to, we can hardly ever miss out the ‘I;’ in a Romanian sentence the ‘I’ is there already inside the verb.”
You
do not need to go a step further; in fact it is not at all wise
to go further, but it is a good thing just to touch on this
difference, so that the pupil comes to have a certain feeling
for it; then from this feeling there emanates a living aptitude
to understand other things in grammar, and I beg you to absorb
this fact and to think it over very deeply, namely, that it is
possible, in a stimulating, living lesson, to develop during
the lesson the faculty necessary for teaching. The fact
is, if you have only touched, for instance, on a thing, and
have not enlarged on it pedantically, if you have said to the
child: “The Romanian language has not yet developed the ‘I,’
it still has it in the verb; but our languages have
developed it,” there is momentarily awakened in him a
faculty which is otherwise absent. This is stimulated
into life at this moment and not before, and you can more
easily study grammatical rules with the children after such
insight is awakened than if you had to evoke them from the
ordinary condition of the child's soul. You will have to think
out how you can create the aptitudes you want for a certain
lesson. The children do not need to have all the capacities
which you intend to use, but you must have the skill to call
them up in such a manner that they disappear when the
child no longer needs them.
This process can be exceptionally important in language
teaching if this is allowed to consist of correct reading,
accurate pronunciation — without giving many rules
— first reading yourself and letting them repeat it; then
have the reading-passage retold and thoughts about it formed
and expressed in the different languages — and, quite
independently of this, study grammar and syntax with
rules to be remembered and examples to be forgotten. There you
have a framework for language teaching.
Comentarii