Page:Ora Maritima.djvu/15



We are familiar with the watchwords of two opposed camps on the subject of language-teaching. The old-fashioned view that the “declining of nouns and verbs,” to use Dr. Johnson's phrase, is a necessary preliminary to the reading of any text is nowadays met with the continental cry of “Fort mit der Grammatik!” But we are not really compelled to accept either of these harsh alternatives, as the more moderate adherents of the new German school are now fain to admit. Grammar has its proper place in any systematised method of teaching a language; but that place is not at the beginning but rather at the end of each of the steps into which a well-graduated course must be divided. Speaking of the course as a whole, we may say that the learning of grammar should proceed side by side with the reading of a text. The old view, which is far from extinct at the present day, though it is rarely carried out in all its rigour, was that the pupil must learn the rules of the game before he attempts to play it. The modern view is that just as in whist or hockey one learns the rules by playing the game, so in the study of a language one learns the grammar best by the reading of a simple text. But