PREFACE The author of this manual is strongly of the belief that it is the business of text-books only to suggest of teachers, to direct and guide and of pupils, to work. No attempt has been made in the following pages to say it all. The most that has been attempted is to be wisely suggestive, more work being left for the teacher to do than has been done by the author, and much more being left for the pupil than has been delegated to the teacher. The illustrative material has, therefore, been kept at a minimum, it being ...
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PREFACE The author of this manual is strongly of the belief that it is the business of text-books only to suggest of teachers, to direct and guide and of pupils, to work. No attempt has been made in the following pages to say it all. The most that has been attempted is to be wisely suggestive, more work being left for the teacher to do than has been done by the author, and much more being left for the pupil than has been delegated to the teacher. The illustrative material has, therefore, been kept at a minimum, it being much better for the pupil to seek and find his own illustrations for principles he has studied than to have them has it been the intention served up for him. Particularly to throw him on his own responsibility in the last four or five chapters of the book. Here the knowledge gleaned from the earlier chapters should stand him in such stead, if he has done the work faithfully, as to enable him to proceed in planning the various types of composition with but little suggestion and guidance. His progress always, everywhere, means the mastery of elementary details to such a degree that he can proceed with fewer and fewer of such details as he pursues any subject. However, consecutiveness of development along any hard and fixed line is impossible in so fluid a subject as English composition. It may be necessary, it may indeed be very wise, to ignore the order in which the various sub- jects are treated, and to take them up for study most irregularly. This depends, of course, upon the individual needs of pupils. It is quite conceivable, for instance, that Chapter X should precede Chapter II that Chapter V should perhaps follow Chapter IX and so on. These are matters that everyteacher must settle for each and every individual class. It too frequently happens that teachers make the mistake of allowing consecutive numbering of chapters and pages to determine the order which a students career of learning must follow. This, it need hot be said, is very often a most serious blunder. The first aim must always be to get at the teaching point with the pupil, wherever in the book or out of it that may mean to begin. The object in the present book is not to teach how to write, but to teach how to go about writing, how to pre- pare to write, how to begin to write. For this reason it is advised that a good grammar or rhetoric be used along with the Composition Planning, as a supplement. At any rate spelling, punctuation, and their many kindred subjects must always be taught, whether their teaching be provided from books or, what is better, from the teachers own ingenuity. Composition work in our schools has come into more or less bad repute, not because the market has not been sup- plied with composition books, but largely because pupils have been allowed, and therefore have been taught, to write and say things before properly meditating or consid- ering them. We complain of our youth, especially in our cities, for being rattle-brained, confused, unsettled in their thinking. This is but the natural outcome of the manysided interests that modern life with all its complexities is charged with. Add to this condition the indefiniteness, the fluidity of a subject such as English, and there arises a situation of the greatest possible bewilderment. But instead of being a detriment, all of this may be turned to a most wholesome opportunity indeed, if properly controlled andmanaged. The mental range and activity of our modern youth, applied under able guidance and direction to the problem of oral and written expression, can be made productive of results unequaled by those in any other field of study...
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Add this copy of Composition Planning to cart. $63.74, good condition, Sold by Bonita rated 4.0 out of 5 stars, ships from Newport Coast, CA, UNITED STATES, published 2016 by Palala Press.
