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Note: This text has been automatically extracted via Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software. The text has not been manually corrected and should not be relied on to be an accurate representation of the item.
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Untitled Article
always thought , however , of toll-bars , and wondered what sort of tolls were curfew-tolls ; but he durst not of course put any idle question on such a subject to tbe master . The original impression , as might be expected , remained , and to the present hour continues to haunt him , whenever this well-known poem comes in his mind . ct , in the fast place , they little know the full value of the explanatory method , who think it unnecessary , in any case , to carry it beyond what is
absolutely essential to enable the pupil to understand the meaning of the individual passage before him at the time . As well , indeed , might it be maintained , that , in parsings the only object in view should be the elucidation of the particular sentence parsed ; or that , in reading Caesar ' s Commentaries in a grammar-school , the pupil's sole attention should be directed to the manner in which the Gallic war was conducted . A very little reflection , however , should be sufficient to shew , how erroneous such a practice would be in either case . The passages gone over in school must of course be very few
and limited , and the direct information communicated through them extremely scanty . The skill of the instructor must therefore he exhibited , not merely ia making his pupil understand these few passages , but in making every lesson bear upon the proper object of his labours , the giving a general knowledge and full command of the language , which it is his province to teach , together with as much other useful information as the passage may suggest and circumstances will admit . As in parsing , accordingly , no good teacher would be satisfied with examining * his pupil upon the syntactic construction
of the passage before him as it stands , and making him repeat the rules of that construction , but would also at the same time call upon him to notice the variations which must necessarily be made in certain hypothetical circumstances ; so also in the department of which we are now treating , he will not consider it enough , that the child may have , from the context or otherwise , formed a general notion of the meaning of a whole passage , but will also , with a view to future exigencies , direct his attention to the full force and signification of the particular terms employed , and likewise , in some cases at
least , to their roots , derivatives , and compounds . Thus , for example , if in any lesson the scholar read of one having ' done an unprecedented act , ' it might be quite sufficient for understanding the meaning'of that single passage , to tell him that * no other person had ever done the like ; ' but this would by no means fully accomplish the object we have in view . The child would thus receive no clear notion of the word unprecedented , and would therefore , in all probability , on the very next occasion of its recurrence , or of the recurrence of other words from the same root , be as much at a loss as
before . But direct his attention to the threefold composition of this word , the un , thepre , and the cede . Ask him the meaning of the syllable un in composition , and tell him to point out to you ( or , if necessary , point out to him ) any other words , in which it has this signification of not , ( such as uncommon , uncivil , ) and , if there be leisure , any other syllables which have in composition a similar effect , such as in , with all its modifications of ig , il , im , ir , also dig and non with examples . Next investigate the meaning of the syllable pre in composition , and illustrate it with examples ( such as previous .
premature ) . Thea examine in like manner the meaning of the syllable cede , and having shewn that in composition it generally signifies to go , demand the signification of its various compounds precede , proceed , succeed , accede , recede , exceed , intercede . The pupil will in this manner acquire not only a much more distinct and lasting impression of the signification of the word in question , but a key also to a vast variety of other words in the language .
This , too , he will do far more pleasingly and satisfactorily in the manner which is here recommended , than by being enjoined to commit them to memory from a vocabulary at home as a task . The latter practice , wherever it is introduced , is , we know , regarded by the children as an irksome drudgery ; the former , on the contrary , is an amusement . The former makes a strong " and lasting * impression upon the mind ; under the latter the information
Untitled Article
380 Edinburgh Sessional School .
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), June 2, 1829, page 380, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2573/page/12/
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