OUR STUDIAL CAPACITIES AND HOW TO USE THEM
We have seen that each of us possesses certain spontaneous capacities
for learning how to use the spoken form of any language or variety
of language. We have seen that these capacities may be either in a
latent or an active state. We have seen that unless we enlist these
powers in our service we are unlikely to make any real progress in
language-study, either in point of quality or quantity. We shall see
later by what means we may awaken our latent capacities and cause them
to become active, and, incidentally, how we can exercise ourselves to
make the fullest use of them.
But we also possess capacities other than these for assimilating and
using a language. It is our purpose in the present chapter to see
what these are, and to differentiate between them and those already
described.
In the first place, let us note carefully that we have so far dealt
with no other form of language than the normal spoken colloquial, that
form which is used under normal conditions by the average educated
native. We have not been considering any written form of language
whatever, either colloquial or classical, nor have we given any
attention to the more classical or literary form of speech whether
spoken or written. We have, indeed, alluded to these aspects or
varieties of language, but merely in order to state that they are
beyond the range of any truly _spontaneous_ capacities. Reading and
writing are not spontaneous processes; they are even _unnatural_
processes if we do not already possess the spoken form. Learning how
to use classical or artificialized forms of language such as poetry or
rhetoric is a more or less studial process, an _unnatural_ process if
we do not already possess the normal colloquial. For this, then, if not
for other reasons, we must be prepared to adopt certain forms of work
unknown to man in his natural state (as exemplified by the very young
child); we shall allude to these as the ‘_studial_ methods.’
What, then, are these studial methods? Roughly speaking, we may say
that they comprise all those forms of work which require on the part
of the student _conscious efforts of attention_; work in which he must
think, reflect, or calculate; work necessitating the exercise of his
reasoning powers, work which cannot be performed automatically; this
constitutes conscious work, and all methods embodying conscious work
become _ipso facto_ studial methods.
Most work of analysis and synthesis is of this order; all that we do to
break up a sentence into words, into syllables, into sounds; all that
we do to piece together sounds, syllables, and words in order to form
sentences is of this order. Whenever we are distinctly conscious of the
words and constructions we are using, we are doing something unknown
to nature. Whenever we come to understand a sentence by analysing it,
or to utter a sentence by piecing together as we go on, we are working
by processes of the studial order; they were not used when we were
learning our mother-tongue.
All those forms of work which we may include under the heading of
‘conversion’ are studial, and these are many and varied. Dictation
consists in causing the pupil to convert the spoken into the written
aspect of language, reading consists in causing him to do the reverse,
most forms of translating consist in causing him to convert something
from one language into another. We may also at times require our pupils
to convert an affirmative sentence into a negative or an interrogative
one, to convert a present tense into a past, a singular into a plural,
passive into active, to convert a certain word-order into another.
All these things are of the studial order; sound they may be, necessary
or essential they may be, but they are not spontaneous forms of work,
for we have not by their aid learnt to use the spoken colloquial form
of our mother-tongue.
All methods which necessitate the use of the eye are studial methods;
nature never meant us to learn spoken language by eye. We may
therefore designate as studial all forms of reading, reading aloud or
mental reading, reading from traditional orthographies or phonetic
transcriptions, reading of isolated sounds or of connected passages.
More especially of the studial order are those curious and complicated
practices (common, alas! to so many students) of ‘reading what we hear’
or ‘writing what we speak.’ In the former case, we hear a sentence, we
reduce it mentally to written characters, and read mentally what we see
in our imagination; in the other case we write in our imagination what
we wish to say, and read aloud what we are writing.
It follows that all methods which require us to use the hand are
studial methods; nature knows no more of spellings and handwriting
than she does of shorthand, typewriting, and type-setting; all these
things are of comparatively recent origin, and all of them have been
deliberately invented by man.
All methods which teach meanings by means of etymology are of the
studial order; nature intended that each word should become attached to
that for which it stands and not become associated with its ancestral
etymon or modern cognates. The dictum of nature is that a word means
what all speakers of the same language (or variety of language) mean it
to mean.
Thus it would appear that nearly everything that the average person
actually does when learning a foreign language comes under the heading
of the studial processes. He learns rules in order to become proficient
in analysis and synthesis; for the same purpose, he memorizes the
exceptions to the rules. He becomes (or hopes to become) an expert
in pulling words to pieces and in reconstructing them from roots and
affixes, in sentence-making and sentence-breaking. He learns chiefly by
eye, and expresses himself chiefly by the pen-grasping hand. Indeed, he
becomes so proficient in converting the spoken into the written form
that he cannot understand or retain the foreign words or sentences
he learns until he has converted them into an imaginary written form
which, in his imagination, he reads off word by word. Similarly, he
finds himself only able to express himself by dint of reading aloud
the sentences which he is constructing bit by bit by a complicated
process of ‘mental writing.’ He aims at becoming (and often does
become) expert in converting one language into another by a process
(unknown to nature) called translating. His accuracy is gained by rapid
conversions of words from one inflected form to another: nominatives
into accusatives, singulars into plurals, infinitives into participles.
He attaches great importance to etymology, and the time he might spend
in associating words with their meanings is often devoted to working
out the family tree of foreign words. He spends little time in finding
out what meanings the natives attach to their words and forms, but much
time in identifying the units of etymology and in tracing them from one
language to another.
This does not necessarily imply that the student is always doing the
wrong thing, nor that his methods are always bad ones; we merely
observe that he uses (or is taught to use) all manner of studial
methods at the expense of spontaneous ones, and that, in so doing, he
develops his studial capacities of language-study at the expense of his
spontaneous ones. The question whether the studial methods should be
used at all and, if so, which should be used, forms the subject of the
next chapter.