Page:The Complete Works of Lyof N. Tolstoi - 08 (Crowell, 1899).djvu/234

220 instance, as this: "To-day Marfutka and Olgushka had a fight."

In order to organize this class the teacher had only to teach the children how to act together, just as an adult teaches children to play any infantile game. And, in fact, this class went on without change for two years, and every time with as much gayety and animation as in a good game. This included reading and conversation, and writing and grammar.

In this writing, the most difficult part of learning a language for a beginner is attained spontaneously: that is, faith in the unalterability of the form of a word—whether printed or spoken—their own word. I think that every teacher who tries to teach a language without depending on a grammar must meet with this first difficulty.

You wish to direct the pupil's attention to some word, menyà, "me," for example. You take his sentence: "Mikishka pushed me from the steps." That is what he said.

"Pushed whom?" you ask, wishing him to repeat the sentence, and hoping to hit on the word me.

"Nas—us," he replies.

"No, but what did you say?" you ask.

"We fell off the steps, owing to Mikishka," or "Because he pushed us, Praskutka flew down, and I after her," he will reply.

And here you try to get your accusative case and its ending. But the pupil cannot understand that there was any difference in the words he used.

But if you take a little book, or begin to repeat his sentence, he will distinguish with you, not the vital word, but something entirely different.

When he dictates, every word is caught on the fly by the other pupils, and written down.

"What do you say? what is that?" and they will not let him change a single letter.

In doing this disputes are all the time rising, from the fact that one writes one way and another another,