Book Description

Excerpt from First Lessons in English Grammar Tun: following treatise is an attempt to put the science of grammar upon a more simple, natural, and practical basis. That the schools of our coun try are generally restless under the present systems of grammar, and that the results obtained from the study of this science are not generally satisfactory, may be taken as conclusive evidence that the tima has come in some radical change in this department of education. It is rather remarkable at how early an age children learn to speak their mother-tongue; and this fact proves that they are also able to understand the great and obvious principles of language early, certainly before their minds are overrun with those errors of expression which seem to spring up, in every community, as naturally and inevitably as weeds. To see what is true or right in the niceties of grammar, is often a puz zilug matter even to persons of mature and cultivated judgment; and it is unreasonable to suppose that young children can master dun subtleties, or that they will take pleasure in what must appear to them incomprehensible and useless. It is therefore probably best to teach them as much practical grammar as possible, but with just as little of the science as will suffice for this pur pose. Let them learn to avoid, as soon as they can, all the common errors of language; and when they are older, and have time to study farther, they can learn more of the science in one year than many of them now learn in two or three years. The common mode of teaching grammar seems to us rather an inverted one. Children are worried for years in the abstractions of analysis and parsing, from which they often acquire a loathing and per manent dislike to grammar itself; yet, after all, when they quit school, most of them know, in regard to language, but little of that for which especially they were sent to school, - namely, to speak and write their mother-tongue with propriety. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.