Graded Lessons in English | Page 2

with
copious extracts from the leading authors, English and American, and
full instructions as to the method in which these books are to be studied.
485 pages, 12mo, cloth.

PREFACE.
The plan of "Graded and Higher Lessons in English" will perhaps be
better understood if we first speak of two classes of text-books with
which this course is brought into competition.
+Method of One Class of Text-books+.--In one class are those that aim
chiefly to present a course of technical grammar in the order of
Orthography, Etymology, Syntax, and Prosody. These books give large
space to grammatical Etymology, and demand much memorizing of
definitions, rules, declensions, and conjugations, and much formal
word parsing,--work of which a considerable portion is merely the
invention of grammarians, and has little value in determining the
pupil's use of language or in developing his reasoning faculties. This is
a revival of the long-endured, unfruitful, old-time method.
+Method of Another Class of Text-books+.--In another class are those
that present a miscellaneous collection of lessons in Composition,
Spelling, Pronunciation, Sentence-analysis, Technical Grammar, and
General Information, without unity or continuity. The pupil who
completes these books will have gained something by practice and will

have picked up some scraps of knowledge; but his information will be
vague and disconnected, and he will have missed that mental training
which it is the aim of a good text-book to afford. A text-book is of
value just so far as it presents a clear, logical development of its subject.
It must present its science or its art as a natural growth, otherwise there
is no apology for its being.
+The Study of the Sentence for the Proper Use of Words+.--It is the
plan of this course to trace with easy steps the natural development of
the sentence, to consider the leading facts first and then to descend to
the details. To begin with the parts of speech is to begin with details
and to disregard the higher unities, without which the details are
scarcely intelligible. The part of speech to which a word belongs is
determined only by its function in the sentence, and inflections simply
mark the offices and relations of words. Unless the pupil has been
systematically trained to discover the functions and relations of words
as elements of an organic whole, his knowledge of the parts of speech
is of little value. It is not because he cannot conjugate the verb or
decline the pronoun that he falls into such errors as "How many sounds
have each of the vowels?" "Five years' interest are due." "She is older
than me." He probably would not say "each have," "interest are," "me
am." One thoroughly familiar with the structure of the sentence will
find little trouble in using correctly the few inflectional forms in
English.
+The Study of the Sentence for the Laws of Discourse+.--Through the
study of the sentence we not only arrive at an intelligent knowledge of
the parts of speech and a correct use of grammatical forms, but we
discover the laws of discourse in general. In the sentence the student
should find the law of unity, of continuity, of proportion, of order. All
good writing consists of good sentences properly joined. Since the
sentence is the foundation or unit of discourse, it is all-important that
the pupil should know the sentence. He should be able to put the
principal and the subordinate parts in their proper relation; he should
know the exact function of every element, its relation to other elements
and its relation to the whole. He should know the sentence as the
skillful engineer knows his engine, that, when there is a disorganization

of parts, he may at once find the difficulty and the remedy for it.
+The Study of the Sentence for the Sake of Translation+.--The laws of
thought being the same for all nations, the logical analysis of the
sentence is the same for all languages. When a student who has
acquired a knowledge of the English sentence comes to the translation
of a foreign language, he finds his work greatly simplified. If in a
sentence of his own language he sees only a mass of unorganized
words, how much greater must be his confusion when this mass of
words is in a foreign tongue! A study of the parts of speech is a far less
important preparation for translation, since the declensions and
conjugations in English do not conform to those of other languages.
Teachers of the classics and of modern languages are beginning to
appreciate these facts.
+The Study of the Sentence for Discipline+.--As a means of discipline
nothing can compare with a training in the logical analysis of the
sentence. To study thought through its outward form, the sentence, and
to discover the fitness of the different parts of the