Graded Lessons in English | Page 5

certain sounds, and that letters are signs of sounds, and that spoken and written words are the signs of ideas.
This question should be passed from one pupil to another till all of these answers are elicited.
All the written words in all the English books ever made, are formed of twenty-six letters, representing about forty sounds. These letters and these sounds make up what is called artificial language.
Of these twenty-six letters, +a, e, i, o, u+, and sometimes +w+ and +y+, are called +vowels+, and the remainder are called +consonants+.
In order that you may understand what kind of sounds the vowels stand for, and what kinds the consonants represent, I will tell you something about the human voice.
The air breathed out from your lungs beats against two flat muscles, stretched like strings across the top of the windpipe, and causes them to vibrate. This vibrating makes sound. Take a thread, put one end between your teeth, hold the other in your fingers, draw it tight and strike it, and you will understand how voice is made.
If the voice thus produced comes out through the mouth held well open, a class of sounds is formed which we call vowel sounds.
But, if the voice is held back by your palate, tongue, teeth, or lips, one kind of consonant sounds is made. If the breath is driven out without voice, and is held back by these same parts of the mouth, the other kind of consonant sounds is formed. Ex. of both: b, d, g; p, t, k.
The teacher and pupils should practice on these sounds till the three kinds can easily be distinguished.
You are now prepared to understand what I mean when I say that the +vowels+ are the +letters+ which stand for the +open sounds of the voice+, and that the +consonants+ are the +letters+ which stand for the sounds made by the +obstructed voice+ and the +obstructed breath+.
The teacher can here profitably spend a few minutes in showing how ideas may be communicated by Natural Language, the language of sighs, groans, gestures of the hands, attitudes of the body, expressions of the face, tones of the voice, etc. He can show that, in conversation, we sometimes couple this Natural Language of tone and gesture with our language of words, in order to make a stronger impression. Let the pupil be told that, if the passage contain feeling, he should do the same in Reading and Declaiming.
Let the following definitions be learned, and given at the next recitation.
+DEFINITION.--Artificial Language, or Language Proper, consists of the spoken and written words used to communicate ideas and thoughts+.
+DEFINITION.--English Grammar is the science which teaches the forms, uses, and relations of the words of the English Language+.

LESSON 3
Let the pupils be required to tell what they learned in the previous lessons.
+Teacher+.--When I pronounce the two words star and bud thus: star bud, how many ideas, or mental pictures, do I call up to you?
+Pupil+.--Two.
+T+.--Do you see any connection between these ideas?
+P+.--No.
+T+.--When I utter the two words bud and swelling, thus: bud swelling, do you see any connection in the ideas they stand for?
+P+.--Yes, I imagine that I see a bud expanding, or growing larger.
+T+.--I will connect two words more closely, so as to express a thought: Buds swell. A thought has been formed in my mind when I say, Buds swell; and these two words, in which something is said of something else, express that thought, and make what we call a sentence. In the former expression, bud swelling it is assumed, or taken for granted, that buds perform the act; in the latter, the swelling is asserted as a fact.
Leaves falling. Do these two words express two ideas merely associated, or do they express a thought?
+P+.--They express ideas merely associated.
+T+.--Leaves fall.
Same question.
+P+.--A thought.
+T+.--Why?
+P+.--Because, in these words, there is something said or asserted of leaves.
+T+.--When I say, Falling leaves rustle, does falling tell what is thought of leaves?
+P+.--No.
+T+.--What does falling do?
+P+.--It tells the kind of leaves you are thinking and speaking of.
+T+.--What word does tell what is thought of leaves?
+P+.--Rustle.
+T+.--You see then that in the thought there are two parts; something of which we think, and that which we think about it.
Let the pupils give other examples.

LESSON 4.
Commit to memory all definitions.
+DEFINITION.--A Sentence is the expression of a thought in words+.
Which of the following expressions contain words that have no connection, which contain words merely associated, and which are sentences?
1. Flowers bloom. 2. Ice melts. 3. Bloom ice. 4. Grass grows. 5. Brooks babble. 6. Babbling brooks. 7. Grass soar. 8. Doors open. 9. Open doors. 10. Cows graze. 11. Curling smoke. 12. Sugar graze. 13. Dew sparkles. 14. Hissing serpents. 15. Smoke curls. 16. Serpents hiss. 17. Smoke curling. 18. Serpents sparkles. 19. Melting babble. 20. Eagles soar. 21. Birds chirping. 22. Birds are chirping.