INTEREST
We have laid great stress on the necessity for drill-like work, for
mechanical work, for exercises calculated to secure automatism, for
habit-forming types of work. It has even seemed at times that we take a
malicious pleasure in pillorying and condemning precisely those forms
of work which are generally the most attractive to the average student.
“The writer of this book,” some may say, “takes a savage delight in
reproving teacher and student whenever they contemplate work of an
interesting nature, heads them off whenever they approach anything
resembling intellectual work, and turns them into channels of routine
and repetition. He positively gloats over words like ‘automaticity,’
‘passivity,’ ‘mechanism,’ or ‘unconscious assimilation,’ and apparently
glories in the theory that language-learning like life itself should be
‘one demd horrid grind.’”
We readily plead guilty to a firm insistence on habit-forming exercises
and drills, but continue to urge in mitigation that the practical
study of language, the mastery of any form of actual speech, is a
habit-forming process and little else. We must have the courage and
honesty to face facts as we find them: a language cannot be mastered
by learning interesting things about that language, but only by
assimilating the material of which that language is made up.
But our attitude, far from being a pessimistic one, is positively
optimistic. We are prepared to deny most emphatically that good
drill-work _is_ dull and uninteresting, and if some teachers make it
so it is our duty to tell them not to. Those who have seen the sort of
lessons that embody the forms of teaching which result from the rigid
observance of these principles all testify that they are ‘live’ lessons
(to use the term they most generally employ), that the students are
keen and the teachers enthusiastic.
It is only too evident that every lesson must be made as interesting
as is compatible with pedagogic soundness. Few people learn anything
well unless they are interested in what they are learning. Hope of
reward and fear of punishment are certainly stimuli to work, but very
poor stimuli compared with that represented by interest. If the method
is the machinery of language-study (or any other study for the matter
of that), then interest is the motive power. Be the clock ever so
well and ingeniously constructed, it will not go without some sort of
mainspring; be the method ever so efficient as a method, it will not
work unless the student is interested. All these statements are of
course truisms and are accepted as axiomatic; the trouble comes when we
discuss the means by which interest can be induced and maintained, for
we are not all in agreement on this point.
There is, too, the question of intrinsic and extrinsic interest; the
subject may be interesting in itself or it may derive an artificial
sort of interest from some attendant circumstance, such as the hope of
reward and fear of non-success and all that that may imply.
But a point arises at the outset which deserves our attention. A
fallacy exists in connexion with interest, a fallacy which is the
cause of much error and of much bad teaching. This fallacy when
reduced to the absurd consists in saying, “We can make a subject of
study interesting by changing the subject of study.” Now obviously
it is absurd to say that we can make the study of French interesting
by teaching geometry in its stead, or that we can make arithmetic
interesting by replacing the arithmetic lesson by a history lesson. And
yet this is the sort of thing that frequently does take place in some
form or other.
It is necessary that the student shall learn how to understand spoken
French, spoken English, or spoken Pekingese; it is assumed that the
necessary phonetic and oral repetition work will be uninteresting, so
we change the subject and teach the student to _read_ French, English,
or Mandarin Chinese, or to analyse these languages or to construct
sentences in them by synthesis. Now reading and analysis and synthesis
may to some people be more interesting than ear-training and oral
memorizing, but whether this is the case or not it is certainly beyond
the point. If we wish to learn to read, let us read; if we wish to do
analytic and synthetic work, let us analyse and synthesize; but if the
object of our study happens to be the command of the _spoken_ language,
it is no use to amuse ourselves by doing work which does not further
our aim.
“Parrot-work is so monotonous, uninspiring, and uninteresting: let us
rather translate the work of some author into our mother-tongue.” “I
don’t find the study of the colloquial language elevating: I prefer to
work at the classical.” Very well, we will not quarrel about tastes,
but we will ask you to make it quite clear what you are setting out to
learn and what your object really is; when we have ascertained that, we
will see how we can make your path an easy and pleasant one. A journey
to London may or may not be an interesting one, but if your object is
to get to London it is no use taking a ticket to the Isle of Wight or
to the Highlands of Scotland, however interesting such journeys may be.
The general tendency among educationalists to-day is towards
interesting methods, methods involving the intelligent use of the
intelligence, methods which develop the reasoning capacities, methods
which form the judgment, which proceed from the trivial, familiar, and
known towards the more profound, unfamiliar, and unknown. Geography
is no longer a process of learning lists of place-names by heart,
history is no longer represented as a catalogue of dates, arithmetic
is taught by playing with cubes, chemistry is presented as a series
of experiments in the laboratory, botany and geology are studied in
the field. The old cramming process is being replaced by the method
of discovery; the teacher furnishes the documents and the students
discover the rules; the teacher suggests the problems and the pupils
set their wits to work and find out the solutions. All of which is very
interesting and, on the whole, very good.
There is, however, this danger: these interesting and mind-developing
methods do not tend towards automatism and habit-formation; they are,
indeed, not intended to foster any form of mechanical command.
Proficiency in shorthand cannot be gained by any method of discovery,
and the capacity for doing good and rapid work on a typewriter is not
attained by the heuristic method. Mathematics is a science, but the
absolute mastery of the multiplication table is an art and cannot be
gained by the exclusive practice of playing with cubes.
“The memorizing of the multiplication table is a wearisome grind; let
us therefore make it interesting by teaching in its place the theory
of numeration!” “Practising scales on the piano is monotonous and
inartistic; let us therefore abolish such finger-gymnastics and replace
all such work by the theory of harmony!” “Learning sentences by heart
and performing these drills are so tedious; let us therefore reject
these forms of work, and replace them by analysing a text or by trying
our hand at literary composition!”
Now, as we have seen and proved to our satisfaction, language-learning
is essentially a habit-forming process, is an _art_ and not a
_science_, and if we insist on considering as a science what is an art
we are confusing the issues and creating a breeding-ground for all
sorts of fallacies. Linguistics is a science, language-teaching is
largely a science, but the practical study of languages is not; let us
remember this primordial fact while we are endeavouring to make our
subjects interesting.
What are the chief things making for interest? We suggest six rational
and reasonable factors calculated to produce interest if not enthusiasm
without any detriment to any of the eight other fundamental principles,
viz.:
(1) The elimination of bewilderment.
(2) The sense of progress achieved.
(3) Competition.
(4) Game-like exercises.
(5) The right relation between teacher and student.
(6) Variety.
(1) _The Elimination of Bewilderment._--“I can’t make out what it’s all
about! What on earth is the teacher driving at? I don’t understand
these new terms nor the use of them. What is it all for? What good is
it going to do me? I do hate this lesson!”
Have you ever heard comments of this sort? Have you ever made them
yourself? The attitude of one making such comments (either openly or
inwardly) is not a hopeful one; it gives no promise of successful work;
it shows that interest is entirely lacking. What is the cause of this
attitude, and how can we change it? Is it because the subject is too
difficult? No, surely not, for some of the most difficult subjects
may be most fascinating, even for the average student; difficulty
often adds to the attractiveness of work and may even induce interest.
Difficulty is not necessarily an unfavourable factor. But bewilderment
invariably is!
There is an immense difference between difficult work and bewildering
work; of difficulties there must necessarily be many, but of
bewilderment there should be none.
New methods often bewilder those who have become used to the old ones;
unfamiliar grammatical systems are bewildering to those who think that
one system of grammar is common to all the languages of the world.
It is disconcerting to face the fact that languages have classical
and colloquial grammars existing side by side, which grammars are
mutually exclusive in many respects; it is more especially bewildering
to those who have never made any study of colloquial language. Easy
things and easy systems are more bewildering than difficult ones
if one has already become more or less familiar with the difficult
system. To those who have wrestled for years with difficult and
tangled orthographies a phonetic system of writing, the acme of ease
and simplicity, may appear bewilderingly difficult. A good deal of
bewilderment may be ascribed to prejudice or to preconceived notions
concerning the nature of language; this is why (other things being
equal) children are generally less bewildered than adults when learning
how to use the spoken form of language; they have fewer prejudices or
even none at all.
There are two ways of eliminating bewilderment. One is to give in the
clearest possible way certain fundamental explanations whenever there
appears to be confusion in the mind of the student; the other is to
see that the programme is properly graded. Once the student grasps the
scope of the particular problem or series of problems, and once the
programme is reasonably well graded, there will be no more bewilderment
and there will be no more puzzled learners.
We might perhaps add here that there are times, strangely enough, when
the teacher finds it necessary to induce a temporary bewilderment.
Categoric and unconventional devices have occasionally to be adopted
in order to break certain undesirable associations; ‘mystery words’
and ‘mystery sentences’ often play a useful part in destroying false
associations and vicious linguistic habits. But these intentionally
created mysteries, puzzling for the time being, are not of the same
order as those hopeless and perpetual mysteries which are the cause of
so much discouragement and discomfiture.
It is a subject of debate whether we ought to use explanations at all
for the purpose of teaching anyone to use a language. Some maintain
that we should no more explain a point of theory to a schoolchild or an
adult than we should to a child of eighteen months. The young child,
it is said, learns to speak the language which he hears around him by
dint of sheer imitation; he learns no theory and would understand no
explanations; why therefore should we explain at all?
We would suggest that the chief function of explanations is to
prevent bewilderment. It may or may not be useful for a schoolchild
or an adult to know why certain things are so, why French nouns
are either masculine or feminine, why it is sometimes _avoir_ and
sometimes _être_, why we do not say in English he _comesn’t_, why we
do not say _I had better to go_, and why certain French conjunctions
require the use of the subjunctive. Appropriate explanations may
induce a more rapid rate of progress or they may not (probably in the
long run generally not), but they certainly do have the effect of
satisfying that instinctive curiosity which, if unappeased, will induce
bewilderment and so cause the student to lose interest.
We might add (although this is not pertinent to the subject under
discussion) that in the case of a ‘corrective course’ simple and
rational explanations should form an essential part of the treatment.
With regard to the second manner of eliminating the factor of
bewilderment, viz. the proper grading of the course, we would refer the
reader to the chapter dealing specifically with this subject.
(2) _The Sense of Progress Achieved._--All work becomes more
interesting when we are conscious that we have made and are making
progress in that work. That sense of discouragement which is so
inimical to interest arises when, in spite of our efforts, we seem
to be no nearer to our goal. Statistics compiled by those who have
made a special study of the psychology of learning show us that
periods frequently occur in which there is no apparent progress and
during which, as a necessary consequence, the interest of the student
diminishes. It is generally during such periods (technically called
_plateaux_) that the adult student gives up his study as a bad job and
retires from the contest.
The cause of such _plateaux_ would appear to be a defective system of
gradation; the student has overreached himself and has temporarily
absorbed more material than he can retain permanently; he has worked
too fast for his habit-forming capacities and has to mark time until
the previously acquired material has been properly assimilated.
Novelty always gives a certain amount of interest to a new subject,
and during the first period students often gain the idea that they are
making more progress than is warranted by the facts; when the novelty
wears off the reaction occurs, and a period of depression follows.
In order, therefore, to make it possible for the student always to
feel he is making progress, and thus to maintain interest and zest,
it is necessary to see that the course is properly graded, that the
repetitions are kept up regularly and systematically, and that the rate
of progression is consistently increased.
(3) _Competition._--The spirit of emulation gives zest to a study.
The fear of being outdistanced by one’s fellow-students or rivals,
the satisfaction of gaining ground on them, and the hope of becoming
or remaining the best student in the class is a stimulus not to
be despised. This is really one of the chief _raisons d’être_ for
examinations, tests, and registers of progress.
(4) _Game-like Exercises._--In the case of young students a
considerable amount of interest can be induced by making certain
forms of exercise so resemble games that the pupils do not quite know
whether they are playing or working. Games of skill such as chess are
almost indistinguishable from many subjects of scholastic study, and
many types of puzzles and problem-games are practically identical with
mathematical problems. The only danger here is that language-games
may not further the student sufficiently in the habit-forming
process; some types certainly will not; indeed, we can imagine types
of exercise-games which would tend to inhibit it. If, however, the
necessity for habit-forming is constantly present to the teacher’s
mind, it is permissible to introduce at appropriate moments forms
of exercise such as ‘action drill,’ ‘living grammar,’ or ‘sorting
exercises,’ possessing real educative value and an interest-giving
value at the same time.
(5) _The Relation between Teacher and Student._--“No, I don’t take
French lessons now. M. Untel used to be my teacher, but he went away,
and I didn’t much like the man who took his place, and so I lost
interest and stopped. The new man was all right in his way, but it
wasn’t at all the same thing as with M. Untel; he didn’t have the same
way of giving the lessons, and somehow or other I didn’t seem to get on
with him.”
“I like the French lesson; M. Untel makes it so interesting; he’s got
a nice way of explaining things, and we are never afraid of asking him
questions. He doesn’t laugh at you if you say something that sounds
silly; he understands what you’re trying to drive at, and always knows
what the trouble is. I didn’t use to like French lessons at all. We had
another master then; he always seemed to be telling you things that
you didn’t feel you wanted to know, and yet when you did want to know
something he never understood what it was you wanted to know.”
These expressions of opinion (written in colloquial English) give
us a good idea of why two students (one an adult and the other a
schoolchild) are interested in learning French when M. Untel gives the
lesson.
(6) _Variety._--A monotonous type of drill-work is performed during
an entire lesson. In the next lesson a second and different type of
monotonous drill-work is performed. The third lesson is devoted to a
third type of drill-work. A fourth lesson consists of sixty minutes of
another sort of grind. A fifth and a sixth lesson are similarly devoted
to two other sorts of mechanical work. The net result is six dull and
monotonous lessons.
Another case. Six lessons are given. Each lesson is divided into six
periods of ten minutes. Each period is devoted to a different type
of mechanical work or drill-work. The net result is six moderately
interesting lessons.
Not that any lesson should consist exclusively of drill-work or
mechanical work; there is a place in every lesson for listening to the
living language in actual use; there is a place in every lesson for
interesting explanations and for the factor of human interest, for
the use of devices which usually engage the keenest attention of the
students. If, however, there are forms of work which generally appear
less popular or less vivacious, if the repeating of word-lists and the
reciting of groups of sentences do tend towards dullness, then we can
compensate for this temporary lack of vivacity by introducing an extra
dose of variety.
A change of work is in itself a factor of interest even if the work
should not be particularly interesting; variety will relieve any
tedium which may possibly be associated with mechanical work. Let us
suppose that on one or more occasions we do find it necessary for some
particular purpose to introduce an unpopular form of exercise; we can
sandwich that exercise between two popular forms of work, and the evil
ten minutes will pass unnoticed.
This point will be treated incidentally when we come to examine
principle 9 (the multiple line of approach); we shall see what bearing
this theory has on the question of variety and the interest engendered
thereby.