What Can Beginners Read?*

Abstract

O Y BOSS wants to know .. . is about the only remark ,,M that I remember from a recent talkie. My superindent also wants to know why we study French in high school. Competent men in the field of modern languages have decided that the skill most worth acquiring is that of being able to sit down and read from a book of comparatively easy French, gleaning its ideas and thought. Two years is a very short time in which to accomplish such an aim, but it can be done if we start reading at once. Now reading, as these committees have defined it, does not admit of any use of the Hunt system, such as is generally used by beginning typists who wish to become one-finger experts. In the Hunt method, the breeze in the study hall is gentle, but continuous, as pupils turn the leaves to get to the vocabulary for the meaning of every third word. The words thus found are hastily written in above the French ones, and the pupil has his French lesson for the day. How much would adults read if they had to look up every fourth or fifth word in the dictionary? Not even the funny strip! Of course, there would be a few puzzle-solvers and unusual people who would like the task, but most of us would not relish such an activity. We would say that this procedure could not and should not be called reading, that reading is a thinking process, and that the mechanics of reading must not be conscious. We read to appreciate the ideas and feelings expressed, and not to juggle words.