THREE-BOOK EDITION ORAL AND WRITTEN ENGLISH INTERMEDIATE BOOK BY MILTON C. POTTER, LITT. D. SUPERINTENDENT OF SCHOOLS, MILWAUKEE, WISCONSIN H. JESCHKE, M.A. SOMETIME TEACHER OF ENGLISH, CLEVELAND CENTRAL HIGH SCHOOL AND HARRY O. GILLET, B. S. PRINCIPAL, THE ELEMENTARY SCHOOL, UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO PREFACE This book, which is intended for use in Grades Five and Six, is based on the principle that, if results of value are to be achieved in the teaching of English, children must enjoy their work. If pupils fail to have a happy time during the daily English period, if they do not like composition, something is fundamentally wrong. The remedy, however, lies not at all in making the work easier but in somehow transforming it so that the child will be eager to do it. In this the book must, in a large measure, help the teacher. It must help create the right conditions, must supply the real situations in which pupils face their work gladly and speak and write freely, self-forgettingly, and purposefully. Perhaps the least interesting and, as English has usually been taught, the least profitable side of the entire subject has been the correction of compositions. Here has been drudgery indeed, and in most instances drudgery without compensation. A better understanding of the whole English problem has enabled the newer education to effect a signal transformation. It means nothing more or less than a change of critics. Heretofore pupils have been little more than comparatively indifferent bystanders, as teachers corrected their compositions. Now they become the critics themselves, do the correcting themselves, and themselves apply to their compositions the knowledge of sentence writing, paragraph writing, correct use, etc. that has been imparted to them for this very purpose. The Group Exercise—that is, the socialized recitation — provides both the opportunity and the machinery for this significant pupil activity. 568677 In the teaching of grammar not much more is attempted than to enable the pupil to separate simple statements and questions into their large divisions (subject and predicate) and to make him acquainted with the characteristic function of each of the eight parts of speech. Even this minimum is incidental to the language work, is introduced for language purposes, and is presented by the simplest inductive development. It is recommended that each pupil's compositions be preserved. Little booklets may be made of them, or they may be dated and kept in large envelopes. To the reasons for this that will readily occur to every teacher should be added these, that some of the compositions should be passed on with the class to the next teacher, and that others should be used as models of excellence for the coming class, to supplement and, in a sense, to qualify the use of the literary selections in the text. There is an abundance of oral work in the book, much written work, and a wide diversity of projects and exercises, — including story-telling; dramatization, oral and written; studies of poems and of pictures; work with the dictionary; games; word studies, including synonyms and exercises in variety of expression; punctuation; copying; writing from dictation; habit-forming correct-usage drills; vocal drills; giving directions; writing letters, telegrams, advertisements, descriptions, reports, and explanations; biographical studies; correction exercises; elementary grammar; varied exercises to develop the sentence sense and to eliminate the "run-on" sentence habit; and so on. Besides, attention should be called to the Notes to the Teacher, which are printed in the back of the book and numbered to correspond with the cross references in the text. Acknowledgments are due and gladly made to authors and publishers for permission to use copyrighted material, as follows: to William J. Long for the extracts from "Wood Folk at School" and "Wilderness Ways"; to Mary Catherine Judd for the extract from "Wigwam Stories"; to M. F. Lansing for the selections from "Quaint Old Stories"; to Henry Holcomb Bennett for "The Flag Goes By"; to C. V. Gulick for the extract from "Emergencies"; to Charles Scribner's Sons for Henry van Dyke's America for Me"; to G. P. Putnam's Sons for the extracts from Washington Irving's "Sketch Book"; to The Page Company for Susan Hartley Swett's "The Blue Jay"; to The Bobbs-Merrill Company for James Whitcomb Riley's A Sudden Shower." The several poems by Henry W. Longfellow, Ralph Waldo Emerson's "Fable," Oliver Wendell Holmes's Old Ironsides," and John Greenleaf Whittier's "The Barefoot Boy" are printed by permission of, and under arrangement with, Houghton Mifflin Company, authorized publishers. ་་ " To the good friends, readers, teachers, critics, coworkers, and helpers who have contributed to the making of this book, the authors take pleasure in expressing their appreciation and gratitude. THE AUTHORS |