Children learn to speak while at play. They are active and much interested when they are acquiring a natural vocabulary. Much of the vocabulary is wrong from the standpoint of the grammar and dictionary, and they have to unlearn it. They have to unlearn it at school and from the lips of pains-taking parents. One reason it is so hard for them to learn the correct forms is this unintelligent way of teaching. Another is that the incorrect conversation is heard under circumstances favorable to retention and reproduction; that is, when the child is much interested and happy; while the correct forms are given him when he is but half aroused, or when he is somewhat intense over another matter, and many times the intended instruction goes in at one ear and out at the other. When the skill of the teacher and the things of the schoolroom become so powerfully attractive to the pupil that once hearing a new word will fix it, once seeing a word will make him master of it in all its forms, then the language lesson will not need to be given; for language, which is as natural to man as breathing, will flow in correct forms trippingly from the tongue, being so fixed in the pupil's mind from the first that he will have nothing to unlearn.

Conversation lessons are intended to take care of some of the crudest errors in speech before the child has committed the indiscretion of putting them in writing. It can be done with so much less severity in conversation than in a written lesson. Notice silently the peculiarly bad expressions and forms of statements of the whole class, then plan your talking lesson in which those who are not guilty of those errors are allowed to lead. Then let the child whom you consider most likely to profit by hearing correct expression from his mates give you the necessary statement. If he use correct forms, let another try.

For instance, suppose you have a number of pupils who are inclined to say "The robin isn't so purty as the bluejay." The reason for this is that the parents of nearly all these pupils will make the same error. If early in their experience with you you are shocked by their speech and let them know it, you either lose their respect or make them feel that they and their parents are inferior beings with no right to speak.

It will take a few minutes to speak of something else that is pretty, and let several of your pupils who speak the word correctly give some statements concerning pretty things.

Then call upon one of the offenders, without his suspecting himself to be such, and the probability is that he will say "pretty," as you wish. But suppose he fail, you must not think he does so because of dullness, for he may say "purty" for the sole reason that his mates are listening and he fears they may think he is trying to "put on style." If you pass the matter in silence that day you will find him bolder or more acute the next day, and he will speak the word correctly. In this way he will seem to himself to be teaching himself. Self-culture will begin in him and the credit will be yours. Another teacher would suppress that sort of language and compel the boy to say the word right instanter. But her pupils speak one language in school and a different one in places where they are more comfortable.

Aim to set the child to correcting his own speech by his own apparent choice. A single error is easily repressed, but the habit of looking after one's own speech is not easily acquired. It is easy to make a child feel his inferiority to you, but it is a great thing to inspire him to do the good and wise and elegant things which you are capable of doing in his presence.

The process of unlearning words has always been a failure with the majority of pupils, and most of the English speaking race are ashamed of their inability to speak. Men most eloquent and successful in business conversation, who were by nature fitted to thrill the world with tongue and pen, have been confused and repressed by this process till they believe themselves vastly inferior to others because they cannot translate their thoughts out of the terms of the street or counting room into the language of the grammar school, and so they never try to fill the large places that would have been open to them if they could but have learned to think in terms which may be spoken right out without fear of opprobrium.

Now since so much of our teaching psychology and common sense have shown to be radically wrong, let us build up our language work on the high plane of interest in real things, expressing thought directly without translation into fitter terms. Let the thinking be done in terms suitable for life. And use the color photograph to insure that enthusiasm necessary to good thinking; be guarded as to how you deal with thoughts that come hot from growing minds, repress never, advise kindly, and know that by following the natural method in language you are not ruining the speech powers of your best pupils, as has been done heretofore.