ENGLISH PROBLEMS A SERIES OF PAPERS FOB TEACHERS OF ENGLISH IN SECONDARY SCHOOLS AND COLLEGES THE TEACHING OF ENGLISH IN COMMERCIAL COURSES BY OSCAR C. GALLAGHER HEAD OP THE DEPARTMENT OP ENGLISH, BOSTON HIGH SCHOOL OF COMMERCE HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY BOSTON NEW YORK CHICAGO ENGLISH PROBLEMS HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY Number6 February, 1914. THE TEACHING OF ENGLISH IN COMMERCIAL COURSES BY \ OSCAR C. GALLAGHER HEAD OF THE DEPARTMENT OP ENGLISH, BOSTON HIGH SCHOOL OF COMMERCE The suggestions contained in the following pages are intended primarily for teachers of English in commercial courses in high schools. In the treatment of composition, however, the needs of pupils in business colleges and in short, intensive courses, such as are offered in evening schools, continuation schools, and some high schools, have been carefully considered. The teacher of English in a commercial course has a rare opportunity. He is free from the dread of ccHege examinations. Neither in the choice of his texts of literature and his treatment of them, nor in the insist- ence that he wishes to lay upon special points in compo- sition does he have to consider a set of questions which are to determine, at least in the minds of many, whether or not his work has been successful. Incidentally, a pupil who has done satisfactory work in a standard commercial course should find little difficulty in the composition examination of any college, — though that is not a matter for discussion here. Coupled with the opportunity that lies before the teacher in a commercial course, however, stands a strict responsibility. Freedom from the standard imposed by Copyright, 1914, by Houghton Mifflin Company. All rights reserved. MAR 30 1914 ©CI,A371102 TEACHING OF ENGLISH IN COMMERCIAL COURSES the prospect of college examinations must not breed license to indulge in spasmodic attacks upon imrelated points or in slovenly treatment of trivial books. Recog- nition of the fact that the supervised study of the pupil is to end with the commercial course should emphasize the need of the command of accurate and direct English, both in speaking and writing, and of breadth and sym- pathy to be gained from a wide range of literature. Whatever may be the relative value of composition and literature in the final analysis, there is no doubt that the immediate needs of the commercial pupil demand the most thorough attention to composition. At the outset the teacher should keep in mind that English is English. Business English is nothing but talking and writing in good English about business problems. What is ungrammatical or incorrect for other purposes is like- wise ungrammatical or incorrect for business. The great difference between the EngHsh of a college preparatory or general course and that of a commercial course lies in the content, which in the latter is drawn almost entirely from the enterprises and operations which are associated with business. Furthermore, emphasis should be laid upon English as a means rather than as an end in itself. The practical, rather than the artistic, is the goal. At the very beginning the class may be shown the value of a secretary's report. As essentials of a good report the class will readily suggest correct expression, complete treatment, proper order, and reasonable pro- portion. The reading of poor and good reports by the teacher will bring out these qualities if the class does not suggest them. The position of English secretary may then be created, to be filled for a week by each member of the class in turn. At the bell for the beginning of the recitation the secretary should rise and begin his report ENGLISH PROBLEMS of the preceding recitation in English. The attention that the class gives to this detail of business soon be- comes a habit, especially as all pupils are responsible for criticisms of the report at its close. These criticisms, at first brief and confined to gram- mar and pronunciation and to the adequacy of the report, form a good starting-point for more effective work in speaking. Most reports and criticisms abound in ungrammatical and cheaply colloquial expressions. A minute at the close of the report may well be spent in rote drill on correct expression. Five or six conspicuous mistakes may be daily considered, a word or two of comment made on each, and the class drilled in pro- nouncing the correct form. Thus "he don't," "we wuz," "they done,'* "the guy what come," and others die an ultimate, though perhaps a lingering death. To be profitable, oral composition must be attacked with enthusiasm both by teacher and pupil. If no guid- ance is given in the choice of a subject or a distasteful subject is set, the talks that pupils give will be ill pre- pared and weakly delivered. The recent realization that for most pupils business means competition and dis- tribution instead of clerical and accounting work has brought into the schools many sources formerly little used for subjects of discussion. The daily paper pre- sents town or municipal affairs, state problems, national issues, political complications, foreign conditions, local and national market reports, sporting events, book reviews, and dramatic notes. Informal discussion guided by the teacher may prompt different pupils to assume the role of information bureau on different topics. Without studying the forms of discourse as such, pupils early in the first year gain surprising facility in the use of oral exposition and argument. THE TEACHING OF ENGLISH IN COMMERCIAL COURSES The manifold home interests offer subjects about which pupils possess or can readily gain information. The family budget, the cost of keeping a child in school, the management of the corner grocery, money-making schemes in club and church, — such subjects will always find some pupils ready to rouse others by the knowledge they show. To set the class talking upon subjects of interest is, in fact, so easy that the task of making the talking pro- gressively effective is a difficult one. As long as pupils suft'er from self-consciousness it is well to praise the excellent points in their talks and overlook most errors other than indistinct utterance or shocking grammar. When they show greater ease, however, they may be required to make their work more energetic by the use of short crisp sentences. At this time, too, the teacher should insist upon an outline carefully arranged in the time or space order. The next step is to impose in ad- vance a definite time limit, that pupils may learn to select the most vital points in their subject and to guage the scope of their treatment. Before long the expository paragraph should be taken up and numerous topic sentences framed and developed by teacher and pupils. Following this may come the introductory paragraph enumerating different points, each of which will have its own paragraph. The other studies of first year pupils offer excellent opportunities for oral work. The English teacher can do much to help the teachers of science and history by giving his pupils practice in reciting their lessons in these subjects with attention to form of expression as well as to truth of statement. The chance to kill two birds with one stone will appeal to pupils as a wise investment. ENGLISH PROBLEMS The careers of prominent men and women of the pres- ent are followed by young people more closely than many imagine. The opinions they exchange informally may well be expanded into classroom talks. Contempo- rary biography, prepared with the help of Who *s Who, the newspapers, and periodicals, is often undertaken by some of the brighter pupils, and sows the seeds of char- acter analysis which will yield their fruit in the work in literature and history in school, and in business in active life. In all this work in oral composition — which should form a large part of the first year work in composition — steady progress should be made in attention to details as well as to wholes. At no other time can a teacher so effectively check bad grammar, slang, looseness of sen- tence structure, and false transition from point to point. The class, too, is eager to detect mistakes, and its alert- ness makes ^the speakers take more pains in their prepa- ration. It is in leading a pupil to take pains that the real power of a teacher is invoked if the oral work is to be success- ful. No pupil will give much more effort to a task than he has to. If, however, two or three rehearsals with a carefully arranged outline at hand precede each formal oral composition, both teachers and pupils will be sur- prised at the results. As a reward for excellent work a pupil should be invited to give his oral composition before other divisions of his class or before members of upper classes. After the first year, although oral composition should receive less time, it should by no means be neglected. The secretary's report and two talks each day will increase the pupils' ease in speaking and widen the scope of their interests in the outside world. THE TEACHING OF ENGLISH IN COMMERCIAL COURSES It is not to be expected even at the outset that the secretary's report will be the only written composition undertaken. From the very beginning a brief daily exercise in dictation is invaluable, for it shows the teacher the particular weaknesses in spelling, punctua- tion, and sentence sense which he will have to combat. The simplest method of conducting the exercise in dic- tation is to have one pupil take the work down on an inconspicuous part of the blackboard while the others are working at their seats. At the conclusion of the reading, the teacher corrects the work on the board, and the pupils, having exchanged papers, underline points that are at variance with the corrected copy. Upon the return of papers, the pupils quickly correct their errors and pass the papers to the teacher, who at his leisure skims them hastily to see the prevailing weakness of the class and the individual shortcomings of particular pupils. As almost every commercial course includes dictation in typewriting and phonography, this sort of drill is a most helpful piece of cooperation on the part of the English teacher. In the regular work in written composition sentence sense and paragraph unity should be early insisted upon. If a half year of oral composition has been carried on, these two elements should occasion little trouble. Otherwise the tendency to write as sentences subordi- nate clauses or phrases, to use four or five- word sentences complete in themselves, but part of a single thought- unit, and to huddle into a rambling sentence of several lines statements with no unity in thought beyond sequence in time, demands long and unremitting attack from the teacher. The exercise in dictation will do much to overcome this weakness, so too will oral reading; but oral correction by the teacher and rewriting by the ENGLISH PROBLEMS pupil in the case of all errors of this kind are the most effective remedy. Furthermore, all credit should be withheld until the errors have been corrected in writing. To secure paragraph unity, the practice suggested for oral composition should be followed. A brief topic sen- tence should be required, and every succeeding sentence should be tested by the pupil as to whether at the right time and in the right way it explains the topic sentence. To develop logical unity and order, exposition is far preferable to description and narration, and has the additional advantage of helping the pupil in his recita- tions in subjects other than English. While keeping in mind these important elements, the teacher will, of course, drill thoroughly in the details of correct structure. Principles of agreement, the forma- tion of possessives and plurals, proper use of relative and personal pronouns, correct principal parts of verbs, discriminating choice of conjunctions, and the like call for constant drill and test. Grammar must be taught thoroughly as far as it is taught. It should be taught, however, solely as an aid to composition, — for the knowledge of forms and principles and for the grasp of such nomenclature as is needed in explaining or correct- ing the work of pupils. With the foundations thus laid, with the rote drill, dictation, oral composition, and oral reading aiding the written work, the teacher may proceed to follow the plan that his own experience has shown him to be most effective in dealing specifically with unity, coherence, and mass; with clearness, force, and ease; with intro- duction, body, and conclusion; and with the four types of discourse. In all his work of teaching and correcting, he must find time to extend his own knowledge of the men and affairs of the business world of to-day. With- THE TEACHING OF ENGLISH IN COMMERCIAL COURSES out his enthusiastic interest, the composition work will be a flabby dawdHng with words. Business-letter-writing is often regarded as the only part of English that is strictly business. Yet outside of certain mechanical details, commercial correspondence is nothing but English composition, demanding, how- ever, greater exactness and directness than are required in many types of ordinary composition. To treat commercial correspondence too seriously at the outset is a great mistake. The mechanical details, of course, can be easily taught; but the real business of a letter cannot be transacted unless the pupil actually understands the transaction involved. This knowledge pupils often lack at the time of their entrance into high school. The various types of note connected with their school affairs may, however, be well taken up early in the course. Excuses for tardiness and absence, requests for permission to consult other teachers or visit the library, etc., should be first taken up. A standard form should be decided upon by the teachers of English and business technique and the principal, and this form should be insisted upon in all rooms and departments. The habit of proper arrangement and correct expression can be speedily implanted if requests are uniformly refused when couched with the slightest inaccuracy. After these simple notes the teacher should take up the short business letters that young people find occa- sion to write. Requests for catalogues and samples, subscriptions to periodicals, inquiries about stamp, coin, and other agencies, orders for books and athletic goods, arrangements for games, specifications for decorating the school hall for a dance, and the like, are forms such as almost every pupil has to use. Following these may come the formal application for a position, the request ENGLISH PROBLEMS for interviews, or for a letter of recommendation, the making of appointments, the specification of means and time of transportation for expected visitors, the engag- ing of rooms at hotels, and the reserving of parlor car seats. To give the letter-writing the spirit of real business, alternate rows in a class may be designated different well-known business houses, the intervening rows repre- senting the purchasing public. In each row a manager can assign to different pupils the tasks of writing circular letters, receiving and answering orders, handling com- plaints, adjusting claims, and requesting attention to accounts overdue. An extensive mail order business can be built up thus in the classroom, and the variety and earnestness of the letters will be surprising. As early as the beginning of the third year, the seri- ous study of a first-rate textbook in commercial corre- spondence should begin. In addition to the performance of tasks assigned in the book there should be brief criti- cisms almost daily of bona fide business letters that members of the class bring in. Almost every large busi- ness house has many letters of no permanent value or private nature that the manager is perfectly willing to turn over to the school. The reading of some of these letters helps to fix in the minds of the pupils expressions peculiar to special lines of business. The special vocabu- laries that are thus formed should be steadily developed by the use of a business speller, in which, in addition to principles and rules, the vocabularies peculiar to every common business are presented for spelling and the terms explained. With the knowledge of commerce secured from his other studies and his own experience in business, and with the insight that wide examination of business let- THE TEACHING OF ENGLISH IN COMMERCIAL COURSES ters gives him, a pupil should be able to think clearly upon business problems. With the practice gained in four years of composition he should be able to speak and write of these problems effectively. In the field of literature the teacher in the commercial course finds his chance to reach the hearts of his pupils. Though the practical must be always considered in com- position, in literature the moral and the aesthetic have the predominant claim. Many have written upon the various methods of teaching literature. In one of the recent English Problems Miss Ashmun has given valuable suggestions in The Essentials in Teaching Literature. The moral value of literature rightly taught is treated in the January Leaflet of the New England Association of Teachers of English. In fact, literature has been so well presented by teachers as a whole that little need be said about the teaching of it in the com- mercial course. The appeal of literature, however, is likely to be especially keen to yoimg people who are looking forward to business. The standards of society, the social and economic conditions of different periods, the customs of different lands, the essential elements in character- building make such an appeal because of their connec- tion with the studies of the commercial course that the pupils will readily respond to subsequent appeals to their appreciation of the beautiful and to the ideals of right living. Among books of real literary merit that appeal strongly to young people with business aims are Parton's Captains of Industry y Franklin's Autobiography, Owen Wister's Ulysses S. Grant, Pearson's An American Railroad Builder, Ruskin's Unto This Last and Fors Clavigera, Macaulay's Lord Clive and Warren Hastings, ENGLISH PROBLEMS Parkman's Oregon Trails Schurz's Abraham Lincoln^ and Stevenson's Travels with a Donkey. Novels and dramas should also be interspersed among these essays and biographies. In treating all such works the empha- sis should be laid upon the enjoyment of reading. By oral reading in class, by group assignments for special careers, by judicious assignment of topics for occasional written compositions, by informal debates upon issues faced by the characters, the pupils soon come to look forward to the literature periods with keen anticipation. The supplementary reading of a class should be guided by the English teacher. Many of the magazines contain thrilling stories, true to life, of business success in the face of stern obstacles. The articles of Carleton, Woolley, Connolley, Merwin, Webster, and Glass offer short tales rich in humor, pathos, grit, and gumption. From such entertainment some pupils may be led to the problem novels of Kingsley, Reade, and others. The novels of American authors of the present are particu- larly full of the problems that the business men and women of to-day have to face. In literature, far more than in composition, the teacher must gain and hold the confidence of the pupil. Pupils are willing to have their judgments criticized, but they shrink from having their emotions and ideals too rudely and publicly analyzed. The fair spirit of the game in all the English work for the years of the high school course will develop in the pupil both the spirit and habit of service. MODERN PROSE AND POETRY FOR SECONDARY SCHOOLS EDITED BY MARGARET ASHMUN Instructor in English in the University of Wisconsin {Ready in May, 1914) This book contains reading material chosen from the works of recent writers for students of the second high school year. The se- lections in almost every case are complete units. They possess the distinct quality of freshness, since they are taken from volumes most of which have not hitherto been accessible to high school classes. The modern content and treatment of these pieces of literature give them the contemporary tone that appeals to boys and girls in the first two high school years. The book is constructed somewhat upon the plan of the author's " Prose Literature for Secondary Schools." Each selection is equipped with notes, suggestions for study, theme sub- jects, helps in theme writing, lists of books for collateral reading, and references for biographical study. PROSE LITERATURE FOR SECONDARY SCHOOLS EDITED BY MARGARET ASHMUN 80 cents, net. Postpaid. The selections in this book cover a wide field, are well chosen from a literary point of view, and make an immediate appeal to students of .high-school age. The suggestions for study, questions, and notes are all practical and helpful. The theme subjects are such as will bring out the best thought and the best expression of the student. The book is extensively used in public and private high schools. HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY BOSTON NEW YORK CHICAGO LITERATURE FOR COMMERCIAL COURS ASHMUN: ES IN HIGH SC HOOLS Prose Literature for Sec- ondary Schools. .80 BROOKS; An American Citizen : The Life of WilUam H. Bald- win, Jr. 1.50 BRYCE: Promoting Good Citizen- {Postage Extra) ship. .35 BURROUGHS: Afoot and Afloat, R.L.S. 176. Paper .15 .25 Birds and Bees, R.L.S. 28. Paper .15 A Bunch of Herbs, and Other Papers, R.L.S. 92. Paper .15 Sharp Eyes, and Other Papers, R.L.S. 36. Paper .15 .25 COOPER: The Spy, R.L.S. 207. Paper .45 .50 DANA: Two Years Before the Mast, R.L.S. 84. .60 DICKENS: A Tale of Two Cities, R.L.S. 161. Paper .45 .50 ELIOT: Education for Efficiency. .35 FRANKLIN: Autobiography, R.L.S. 19- 20. In two parts, each: Paper .15 .40 HARTE: Selected Stories and Poems, R.L.S. 215. Paper .15 .25 HUXLEY: Autobiography, and Selec- tions from Lay Sermons, R.L.S. 187. Paper .15 IRVING: Bracebridge Hall (Selec- tions), R.L.S. 194. Paper .15 .25 (The prices given are n( HOUC ;t postpaid and for cloth binding except w len otherwise indi [PANY cated) IHTON MIFFLIN COW BOSTON NEW YORK CHICAGO LITERATURE FOR COMMERCIAL COURSES IN HIGH SCHOOLS MACAULAY: Essay on Lord Clive, R.L.S. 198. Essay on Warren Hast- ings, R.L.S. 199. Paper .15 Paper .15 PALMER: Self-Cultivation in English. .35 PARTON: Captains of Lidustry, R.L.S. 197. Paper .15 .25 PEARSON: SCHURZ: An American Railroad Builder: John Murray Forbes. Abraham Lincoln, R.L.S. 133 1.25 ; {Postage Extra) Paper .15 THOREAU: Walden, R.L.S. 195. Paper .45 .50 WARNER: A-Hunting of the Deer; and Other Essays,R.L.S. 37. BemgaBoy,R.L.S.209. Paper .15 .25 .40 LASELLE &WILEY: For Girls Vocations for Girls. .85 WILBUR: Every -Day Business for Women. 1.25 {Postage Extra) (The prices given are net postpaid and for cloth binding except when otherwise indicated) HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY BOSTON NEW YORK CHICAGO LIBRARY OF CONGRESS III ' '' "" lllliriii 1 i "If ill iiiliil THE BUSINESS I ^ ^^^ ^^^ ,,, , By ION E. DWYER Principal Commercial Department, Hope Street High School^ Providence, B.I. {To be published in May) The development of the new business letter is making an enormous contribution to the business growth of our coun- try. It offers the greatest opportunity we have for business building and extension. This book covers enough of the field of business correspond- ence to give the student an excellent working knowledge of the subject. Each difficult point is first explained, then il- lustrated so clearly that there can be no missing the point. Many of the illustrations are from the files of progressive business houses, and all of them are so full of life that a new interest is added to the study of letter- writing. Sufficient information about business usages is included to give the student a good background. The book is logical in presen- tation, attractive in style, and up-to-date in material. ENGLISH FOR SECONDARY SCHOOLS By W. F. WEBSTER Principal of the East High School, Minneapolis, Minn. 90 cents, net. Postpaid. A textbook that is especially well adapted to students in commercial courses in secondary schools. HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY BOSTON NEW YORK CHICAGO iHiiK'l'i!^ °^ CONGRESS 'iiiiiiniiif "" 019 747 571 7