the college student who undertakes to learn to swim in the gymnasium tank gets discouraged if he does n't master the art after one lesson a week for ten weeks. The same may be said about practice in learning to pronounce a foreign language. The instructor who compares the German pronunciation of a college German class at the end of one semester unfavorably with the German pronunciation of children who have had German for five years in the elementary school usually fails to make allowance for the much longer practice that the children have had.

Social needs and relations of subjects are determining factors. -These points would seem to justify accepting as a working hypothesis the theory that there is little or no difference in the natural facility with which motor skill is acquired at different ages from six to eighteen years. Proceeding on this basis, we would contend that instruction in swimming, tennis playing, handwriting, the pronunciation of a foreign language, etc. should be organized with little regard to the differences in ability to learn that are supposed to be characteristic of different ages. The important factors determining the arrangement for such instruction are (1) the social needs of students at different ages, (2) the relative importance of subjects, (3) their interrelations (that is, the way each subject will contribute to the learning of other subjects), (4) the number of years of practice necessary to master a given form of motor skill, (5) the chances that students who need this form of skill will remain in school long enough to get it, etc.

Learning a foreign vocabulary. Here maintained that later years are as favorable. So far as high-school instruction is concerned, the most important practical question raised in the present discussion is whether the ability to learn a foreign vocabulary varies with age. It is almost universally claimed that a student must begin a language when young in order to learn it effectively and economically. In opposition to this theory, we shall maintain, as in the case of motor

skill, that a foreign vocabulary can be learned just as economically at the later end of the period from six to eighteen years of age as at any other part of it. As the basis for this contention we have some very closely related evidence from experimental psychology, in the work done upon facility in memorizing at different ages.

Experiments upon memorizing at different ages give evidence. Learning a foreign vocabulary is largely a matter of memorizing. As pointed out on page 122, in learning a foreign vocabulary a person makes automatic many thousands of new associations between foreign words, or symbols, and their meanings. The new language presents a vast new series of associations that have to be built up. The automatizing of these is pedagogically a matter of economical and effective memorizing. Hence, to get light on the problem of the best age at which to provide instruction in learning a foreign vocabulary, we need evidence showing how well students memorize at different ages.

The ex

Summaries of experiments upon memorizing. perimental investigations of changes with age in ability to memorize are summarized in accessible form in a number of places. One of these summaries is found in the books of G. Stanley Hall, namely, in his "Youth" (pp. 268–273) and in his "Adolescence" (Vol. II, pp. 488-492). Somewhat more critical summaries are found in Thorndike's Elements of Child Study" (pp. 81–85) and Kirkpatrick's "Fundamentals of Child Study" (pp. 254–255 and 268–271).

Distinguish temporary learning from prolonged retention. Mental grasp.-Kirkpatrick, in his summary of the investigations in question, distinguishes between "increase in mental grasp," or temporary memory, and prolonged memory. Concerning increase in mental grasp he says:

The experiments of Jacobs, Jastrow, Bolton, Smedley, and myself upon children of school age show that their ability to repeat or write a list of letters, figures, syllables, or familiar words immediately

after they have been heard or seen generally increases with age by about one third from the age of eight or nine to eighteen. As the reproduction is immediate, it is not so much a matter of memory proper as of mental grasp.

The cause of this increase in mental grasp with age is probably the same as that which makes it possible for us to hold in mind a long description of a route to be taken among familiar objects, while a short description of a route among unfamiliar objects cannot be kept in mind long enough, perhaps, to get started right. The same cause makes it easy for a skillful chess or checker player to see at once many more results of a move than he could when he began, or for an experienced musician to play with both hands, work the pedals, perceive the notes, and sing the words of a song all at the same time. In other words, ideas or a series of ideas, and even combinations of several series of ideas that have become definite and well established, are easily held in mind, while indefinite and newly formed ideas can be kept in consciousness only in limited numbers and with effort.

The ideas of the child are largely new, while those of the adult are oftener old or connected with old ideas; hence the adult's mental grasp is greater chiefly because of knowledge and experience. The effect of knowledge on mental grasp is well shown by a series of experiments in which first-grade children and adults reproduce ordinary letters, Greek letters, and familiar sentences. The adults have little advantage in the case of Greek letters, a great deal in ordinary letters, and are almost infinitely better in reproducing the letters making a sentence. Evidently the difference is due to greater familiarity and increased mental grasp. (6: 254-255)

Prolonged retention. - Concerning the changes with age in prolonged memory, or the ability to retain mental content for some time, Kirkpatrick says:

As already shown, mental grasp or memory span, in reproducing impressions just received, increases with age in a marked degree. The increase in power to recall after an interval of time, which is more properly called memory, is much less. Jastrow found that university students remembered only 1 or 2 per cent more words after an interval of three days than high-school students five years

younger. My tests showed little difference in the reproduction, after three days, of words seen or heard and objects shown, by children from the third grade up to college students, except that the memory of the older persons was more voluntary and less ready and spontaneous. Shaw found that a story consisting of three hundred and twenty-four words, and nearly half as many distinct facts, was reproduced more than twice as fully by pupils of the ninth grade as in the lowest grade tested [namely, the third], and as well or better than by high-school or university students. He counted as correct facts expressed in other words than those given in the story. The greater difference with age in this test, compared with others, is probably because it involves associations of ideas instead of mere retention of impressions. If we take into account the slight mental grasp of the children and the length of time required for them to express what they remembered in writing, the difference in memory of impressions is almost nothing, and in memory involving associations of ideas is not very great.

The receptivity and retentiveness of the child's brain is probably as great as that of the adult. The difference in the memory of children and adults is therefore a difference in kind rather than in degree, and is caused largely by experience. Nothing that can be used as a memory test is as new for the adult as it is for the child. The adult already knows a part of what he is given to remember, or, in other words, certain brain centers have already had practice in reproducing such impressions. In the adult brain also, where many centers are already well practiced, new impressions readily run into the old channels; hence impressions are easily classified, and their centers readily awakened to activity again because of their connection with centers frequently called into action. Finally, the adult mind has more power of voluntary attention, both in receiving impressions and in trying to reproduce them by holding in mind some idea connected with them. As a consequence the spontaneous and unclassified memories of adults are not better than those of children, if they are as good, while their voluntary and systematic memories are better. (6: 268–271)

In learning a foreign vocabulary by either the direct or the translation method of instruction the type of memorizing

involved is the voluntary and systematic kind referred to in the last sentence of the above quotation.

Evidence upon memorizing justifies postponing learning foreign vocabulary. — If we apply to the pedagogical problem concerning the best age at which to learn a foreign vocabulary the conclusions from the experimental investigations of ability to memorize at different ages, it is clear that the later years of the period from six to eighteen are just as favorable to such learning as any other years of the period. This is not merely a statement of opinion, as was our contention in connection with acquiring motor skill, but it is a conclusion suggested by the results of objective, precisely measured, expert experimentation.

Some reasons for prevalence of contrary opinion. Notice mature failures and overlook successful mature beginners. With this fact in mind, let us consider briefly the reasons why many teachers hold to the contrary opinion that the earlier years are more favorable for learning a foreign vocabulary. In the first place, the relative difficulties that older students experience with a foreign language are commonly exaggerated, owing to the following tendencies: to judge by a few extreme cases of poor mature students, to disregard extreme cases of good mature students, and to fail to get reliable averages for students of different ages who are beginning a foreign language. Thus, if a language teacher in college has a mature student of twenty-five years of age who fails, the teacher commonly says it is because he began the language when too old. At the same time, however, there will be young students failing with the language but attracting no attention. Moreover, to balance failures of mature students who begin a foreign language, it is an easy matter to cite examples of mature beginners who have made brilliant successes with foreign languages. Thus, the best teacher of German and Spanish that I have ever known was an American who began the serious study of these languages after he was thirty years