I M SPEECH AND THE LEARNING PROCESS* C. H. WOOLBERT University of Illinois I. The Origin of Speech T HEORIES of Speech. Assuming that few people speak well and that almost nobody reads interestingly, what is the best method of curing defects and improving proficiency? The safest way of ascertaining the answer, it would seem, is first to find out how we ever learned to speak in the beginning, and then to come as near to following out this process as the fallen state of our linguistic shortcomings permits. The experience of the race will be the proper beginning and the best guide. Then how has the race learned to use its voice in intelligent, interesting, and even captivating discourse? A compact statement is given by Wells : 1 “The origin of language symbols is to be found in psychology and not in philol- ogy; just as concepts of the origin of life belong to biology rather than to paleontology. Although the question has been con- sidered mainly by philologists, the consideration has always been from a psychological viewpoint. Three principal origins of lan- guage have been postulated : “First, that the names given to objects have been derived from sounds naturally associated with them, especially sounds produced by the objects named. (Onomatopoeia, 'Bow-wow’ theory.) The names of birds and insects often show this origin: chickadee, whippoorwill, katydid, cricket, etc. It is possible that the sound association need not be constant and direct as in the above cases ; occasional and even chance associations of some sound with an object or phenomenon might give rise to a name, thus greatly extending the application of the theory. “Second, certain affective reactions provoke motor responses through the vocal organs. ('Pooh-pooh’ theory.) Interjections * Read at the 1919 national convention. 1 Wells, F. L., Mental Adjustments, New York, 1917, p. 72-3. 56 THE QUARTERLY JOURNAL OF SPEECH EDUCATION still preserve their primitive mechanism ; but words of this origin are but rarely to be traced in the living grammatical structure of the language. “A third mechanism, which is more hypothetical than the other two, supposes some association between the object and a definite vocal response, though the two may not have been experienced in direct association. That is, just as the knee will jerk when the knee cap is tapped, although it has never been tapped before, so there might be a vocal response which would give a name to an object, though the vocable and object had not been experienced together. (‘Ding-dong’ theory.) “Above all one must not suppose that language arose by any special act of creation which no longer operates. All the mental processes by which language originated are still operative. New language is being daily created by the same processes through which the first words arose.” By way of correcting the incompleteness of any one or all of these three theories — four, with special creation counted as a theory — Judd 2 gives this statement of the origin of speech: “Every sensory stimulation arouses some form of bodily ac- tivity. The muscles of the organs of circulation and the muscles of the limbs, as well as other internal and external muscles, are constantly engaged in making responses to external stimulations. Among the muscles of the body which with the others are in- volved in expressive activities, are the muscles which control the organs of respiration. There can be no stimulation of any kind which does not affect more or less the character of the movements of inspiration and expiration. In making these general state- ments, we find no necessity for distinguishing between the ani- mals and man; so far as the general facts of relations between sensations and expression are concerned, they have like charac- teristics. That an air-breathing animal should produce sounds through irregularities in its respiratory movements when it is excited by external stimulus, especially if that stimulus is violent, is quite as natural as that its hair should rise when it is afraid or that its muscles should tremble when it is aroused to anger or to flight. 2 Judd, C. H., Psychology, Revised Edition, 1917, pp. 211-12. SPEECH AND THE LEARNING PROCESS ' 57 “The important step in the development of language is the^ acquirement of the ability to use the movements of the vocal cords for purposes other than those of individual emotional ex- pression. The acquirement of this ability is a matter of long evolution and depends in its first stages upon social imitation. The importance of imitation in affecting the character of animal behavior appears as soon as animals begin to live in packs or herds or other social groups.” Inasmuch as speech is most obviously a process that is learned, 1 the acquisition of it must follow the general rule for learning. This rule grows from the following sequence of events always found in the learning process: All activities start from random movements, movements having no definite aim or manifest pur- pose, uncontrolled and without direction. In the earliest stages of existence the child or animal is nothing but aimlessness ; but soon some of the chance activities bring results that are greatly desired or needed; such as getting food, relieving pain or pres- sure, aiding in the circulation of the blood and the work of ali- mentation, relieving the lungs of bad air. Activities that get such results as these, no matter how random when first started, become quickly set, first, into volitional processes, that is, acts that the child or animal can do when it wants to, and, secondly, into habits, which whenever the stimulus is presented bring a cer- tain action more or less automatically. Under volitional action and habit — automatic action — all the superfluous components of the original welter of random movements drop out, and what is left is the movement or activity that gets the results desired. In this way it is that we learn to eat, pick up objects, turn over, sit up, walk — and speak. The tongue, the lips, the throat, the jaws, and the breathing ^ apparatus are the seats of the random movements with which speech begins. Chance activities of these sets of muscles bring sounds ; these sounds come in time to be accompaniments of suc- cessful moments when the organism is getting what it needs for its bodily satisfactions; so that when the same situation arises later, out of the original chaos of hit-or-miss movements of which the sound-making is one component, this is the one likely to be selected for repetition. If the situation is such that the sound proves to be the best way for carrying a message to others 58 THE QUARTERLY JOURNAL OF SPEECH EDUCATION in the group, then whenever the necessity for carrying a message occurs, the sound activity will be the one tending to be selected out, while the rest of the random movements gradually drop away and are eliminated. Later after several repetitions with attend- ant success each time in meeting a need, the child or animal can make the sound every time it so desires and without error or failure. This is an act of will; volitional action. Later yet when such volitional activity has been repeated often enough, the whole series of actions runs off from the original stimulus on to the action without excess motion, and even at the same time that the child or animal is occupied with something else. This type of action is automatic, the basis of habit ; and habit must be the goal of all teaching and learning. Apply this more directly now to the learning of speech. From the animal we can get the first beginnings; for animals speak after a fashion . 3 Assume, then, animals eating in the woods; food newly found, everybody keen and hungry. As the beasts eat, their enthusiasm and earnestness leads to all sorts of random, excess activity. Observe pigs at the trough and understand what is meant. Among these random movements will be some of the mouth, throat, and lungs that will produce vocal sounds — grunts and snorts. Let these same sounds occur repeatedly in the pres- ence of others while eating, and by association of this sound with the joyous success of munching something to eat, any animal who hears this sound will habitually in time get himself set to find and partake of food. Remembering that speech is the social aspect of the sound-making type of random movement, that it is sound made into communication, we readily see that in such lead- ing of his fellows to food the grunter has spoken, has talked to them, has indulged in the beginnings of speech. The animal who learns to respond to a grunt goes through all these stages : primary randomness, initial set toward getting a desired result, conscious volitional repetition, and finally repeti- tion without specific awareness of its presence. So that in the last stage an animal who understands the signals would immedi- ately upon hearing the particular food grunt rouse himself at once and without inhibition or opposing tendencies or hap- 3 The hen has ten or twelve significant sounds, the dog five or six, the monkey, six. Cited by Romanes, Mental Evolution of Man. SPEECH AND THE LEARNING PROCESS 59 hazardness of action go straight to the food or to the comrade who thus cries, “Food here for him who wants it.” Apply this process to all the complicated situations of life, and even the lower animals, whose needs are relatively simple, can develop and standardize, that is can conventionalize, a large number of sounds that have definite and understandable meaning. With animals of a social nature, given to running in packs, and depend- ing upon each other for food and protection, these speech conven- tions increase in number. So that with men, whose needs and desires are almost countless and whose social disposition is the greatest of all, the number of sounds conventionalized into mean- ingful conveyers of messages becomes tremendously large. In this way we get the greatly extended speech possibilities of civi- lized races. From this we can see that the necessary factors in the process of learning to speak are: first, random movements; then, in order, a process of trial and error, with success in some of the trials; next, repetition with more or less labored effort involving imita- tion of models; next, reduction of the effort and increase of the chance of success; then success, without loss of effort or likeli- hood of failure; and, finally, success without conscious effort or likelihood of mistake. Especially important in this process of learning to speak is the factor of imitation, owing to the circumstances that speech is essentially a social activity, learned in the presence of others for the purpose of communicating with them. Watson points out 4 that while “imitation plays a very minor role in the acquisition of manual habits ... in the case of vocal acts there seems to be a difference. Imitation seems to be a process directly connected wih the establishment of the act. The parents, of course, watch every new instinctive sound [random vocal activity] that ap- proximates articulate speech, and they immediately speak the word that is nearest the child’s own vocal efforts (for example, “ma,” “pa,” “da”). The imitation here may be more apparent than real. That is, the parents by repeating the sound constantly offer a stimulus for that which the infant’s vocal mechanisms are just set to utter. (Conradi has shown that the forms of the cries 4 Watson, J. B., Psychology as the Behaviorist Views It , N. Y., 1919, pp. 3i8-9. 60 THE QUARTERLY JOURNAL OF SPEECH EDUCATION and songs of young birds brought up by adults of a different species are greatly modified.) Whether the parents’ words can set the mechanism is doubtful. Certainly imitation in the popu- lar sense is the only way a new conventional word can be learned by the child until the elementary laws of word formation are learned through reading and instruction.” In the same passage Watson gives a hypothetical illustration of the formation of speech habits. “We will suppose that for some reason or other a child’s toys are laid away or covered up. What does he do in such a situation ? Essentially what the ani- mal does when hungry. The child begins general restless move- ments, among which are movements of the language structures as shown by the ‘aimless’ vocal sounds. His throat formation at that stage is of such a character that a particular sound is uttered frequently; let us take ‘tata’ for illustrative purposes. He begins to utter this sound as he roams about. The attendant, knowing the child’s range of toys and the frequency with which he plays with a certain one, predicts that an old rag doll is sought. She finds it, hands it to him, and says, “Here’s your tata.” Repeat this process long enough and ‘tata’ will be always used for rag doll and will always be spoken whenever the doll is sought. . . . In this day baby words grow up as the first genuine form of true language organization.” In this way we account for the learning of tones and of words; we see that learning to speak involves a constant inter- mingling of random activity and imitation. Imitation is both conscious and subconscious . 5 It is of the unconscious order when a child repeats the sounds made by its nurse or mother simply because that sound is the one it hears and is one for which its mechanism is set; if other sounds that its throat can easily make were within its hearing, these would be imitated in the same way. That is to say, our activities are affected by our environment ; the stimulations that happen to greet us and to which we are adjusted are the ones we learn to react to. So with the words and tones of voice of the elders in the presence of impressionable children ; 6 The words unconscious and subconscious lack sharp delineation; cocon- scious is even added to suggest the peripheral processes plainly within the purlieus of the conscious movement. What is intended here is synonymous with James’s periphery and Titchener’s primary or passive attention. SPEECH AND THE LEARNING PROCESS 61 the sounds they hear are largely those of articulate speech; and these are the ones it singles out to try. In this ambition it is strengthened by any success that brings rewards ; better comfort, a quicker response to the food call, increased coddling, and at- tention with its accompanying delights. So that as against any other sounds it hears there is every tendency to lead it to master the sounds it hears its elders use. Such imitation is subconscious, not in the center of its awareness. Imitation becomes conscious, on the other hand, when the child singles out a tone or word as such and deliberately tries to master the use of it. In this way it increases its vocabulary and its general vocal competence, learning so to make new pronuncia- tions and to improve its enunciation and articulation. In this again there is the combination of random movement, or trial and error, and imitation. The effort begins with some sort of at- tempt to pronounce the word or to employ the right tone of voice ; the result thus achieved is inspected in the light of the success at- tained, and another trial made to improve the faults discovered. Especially is this self-criticism applied consciously if the parents and friends refuse to accept the first imperfect effort and insist on a nearer approach to their standard of correctness. Under such a stimulus, when persistent, the child tries repeatedly, criti- cising itself after each trial and endeavoring to do the thing more as the others do it. Eventually it comes to the point where it de- cides that the lesson is learned, and then makes no further effort at improvement. Probably improvements are added by time, but in the same subconscious way. From this point forth successive repetitions of the approved way of speaking or using the voice fix it rapidly into habit, and then automatic action has set in. The thing is by this time learned. II. Implications of This Process for a Method of Speech Training From such a statement of the origin of speech we can now predict what direction a course of training must take that deals with the problem of how to improve one’s speaking methods. To extract from this the parts most valuable we must first take cog- nizance of certain obvious considerations. 62 THE QUARTERLY JOURNAL OF SPEECH EDUCATION (1) Speech Usages Are Not Instinctive. In the first place there is no such thing as a natural speech instinct, no disposition to speak and speak well independent of a process of learning. Any inference that man is naturally a speaker and that the solu- tion of speech difficulties can be found in a reliance upon natural tendencies must disappear if this explanation stands. Speech is always learned, and unless learned under what we might call per- fect conditions it will not be perfect speaking. In learning to articulate, to pronounce, to use the right combinations of tones for conventional usage, to select the right word, there is no return to nature, no reliance upon a tendency born with man and work- ing independent of his childhood experiences. It is' all learned from the very start. The only inherited thing is the disposition toward random activities and chance sounds. (2) Good Models for Imitation Are Not Common. Sec- ondly, relatively few people have genuinely good models to imi- tate. Here in America we suffer from several causes for poor speech ; among them, a polygot population giving rise to countless brogues, dialects, types of provincialism, brands of patois, and de- grees of ignorance ; then an almost universal indifference to excel- lence in speech arising from a democratic feeling that attention to the niceties of speech is affectation and posing ; also the lack of a common standard of excellence, especially in the way of pro- nunciation; akin to this, the inescapable flux and anarchy that comes with a rising civilization and a changing world, leading to an almost complete abrogation of authority in the matter of laws and norms and inducing the youth of the land to accept easily the notion that excellence of speech is not worth the cultivating; finally, from the wide-spread influence of such speech-perverters as vaudeville, cheap song writers, and the newspaper para- graphed All these combine to furnish the learning youth with examples for imitation which lead to speech habits that are in- effective, unpleasant, and inimical to communication on its best and easiest terms. To this array of bad models can be added the influence of the great majority of the public men of the day. Few who attain rank as public speakers get it because of ability as speakers; they are chosen rather because they have been successful at something else — business, organizing a ward or a congressional district, making SPEECH AND THE LEARNING PROCESS 63 some scientific discovery, writing a book, or producing some work of art. But as speakers they are the rawest of novices ; so that the young people who listen to them and are given to believe that these are models of what they should strive to be, gain from them nothing but lessons in inefficiency, muddling, and banality. A certain newspaper reviewer speaking of the disillusionment that an audience almost invariably feels at sight of a great author, says: “A shadowy and somewhat mystical creative figure, work- ing among romantic surroundings, intrigues the interest; but when that figure emerges as something not much to look at and spends two hours telling a bored audience that ‘art makes life pleasanter/ the effect is disastrous. Whereas the audience had previously imagined the author as a compound of its heroes, it regards him as a harmless sort of nincompoop who needs exer- cise.” Effective speaking is rare enough from men trained for it, and almost an unheard of thing among the untrained. (3) Very Few People Have Perfect Speech Mechanisms :*■{ The machinery out of which speech comes involves 'the whole body; for speech is man’s crowning achievement, and is a com- posite of his whole state; mental, bodily, spiritual, emotional, intellectual, rational. Almost any affliction that besets a man af- fects his speech to its harm ; poor health ; some form of disease, the state of his mind, dominance of emotions over intellectual processes and intellectual over emotional, bad habits, unhappy surroundings or mode of living — the whole moral and social tone that pervades his being. To particularize some of these difficulties that upset the speech mechanism: First, repressions of all kinds invariably show in the vocal organs and in one’s ability to speak fluently, frankly, forcefully, and pleasantly. Repressions are at the bottom of most mental troubles, of most excessive emotionality, of most cases of lack of control. Bad personal habits account for much of this, unclean thinking, unsocial desires and ambitions. Then, many children are suffering from mental wounds inflicted by ig- norant parents, from harrowing emotional experiences in early childhood, from living among people who do not control them- selves nor teach control to their offspring. Then again the effects of puberty and adolescence are particularly disastrous, bringing as they do a sorry crop of morbid habits of thought, fears of so- 4 64 THE QUARTERLY JOURNAL OF SPEECH EDUCATION cial disgrace or exposure, and lack of ability to fit into one’s social surroundings. Add to these the mistakes parents and teachers make in trying to advise and control when all the wisdom they have is merely foolishness, and the result is that relatively few people arrive at adult state with that freedom of speech that can be given where the body is in good condition, the emotions under control, and the intellectual life well ordered and stable. Under such conditions speech training becomes positively imperative. The mental tests applied in the army brought an appalling exhibition of mental defects among the men of the draft, sup- posedly the nation’s finest and best. Mental defects practically always influence speech ; so that the revelation of so much weak- ness of mind was also a revelation of so much weakness of speech. Someone has said that we are nation of sixth graders, which fits in with the companion declaration that the average mental age of the country is twelve years. Evident enough then that we do not need to go far to find the reason why so few people speak inter- estingly or entertainingly. What is worse, altogether too many teachers and parents lack the knowledge as to how to give ade- quate training in speech to the sub-normally minded ; few enough can give the right training to the sound and the mentally alert. (4) This condition of low mentality and imperfect training brings out, in addition to a low order of emotional living, a con- sequent impoverishment of intellectual equipment, a barrenness of jdeas and memories and associations. Some of the worst aspects bf the speech of the day come from a general bankruptcy of ideas. A very large proportion of poor usage in the sense of ill-chosen word habits, is the result of simple mental indigence. Take slang for example; a surprisingly large portion of slang, and other counterfeits for effective speech, is based not so much upon words, as upon inflection. “Believe me,” “Good night,” “What do you know about that?”, “Oh boy,” are cheap, not so much be- cause they contain anything reprehensible in the way of wording, but because they play one tune over and over again, one melody cadence or one type of emphasis. When subjected to use for a score of ideas for which they do serve, they become weasels suck- ing the blood of intellectuality and imagination. They usurp the function of thinking and suggestion; and without thought and SPEECH AND THE LEARNING PROCESS 65 imagination there can be very little of intelligent and captivating speaking. Contributory to this poverty of the thought necessary for good speaking is a general lack of information, mostly arising from poor schooling and ill-advised reading, if any at all. As a general rule the man who is thus ignorant has a vague con- sciousness that he has nothing to say worth while, and usually cares little how he says it ; while the man who knows he can speak of interesting things, if he is not inhibited by foolish theories about reserve and self-effacement in public gatherings — again as a general rule — takes delight in saying them well. It is a case of the success that is gained by success. The man who has to keep silent in company because he has an empty head has for the most part the wit, conscious or subconscious, to know it, and so finds himself more and more disposed to crawl into his shell of silence. Yet never in such a fashion can one acquire the gift of vital speech. Effectiveness in speaking in reality grows like a snowball ; it aids thinking, which again aids speaking — to the cumulative advantage of thought and speech both. (5) A Complete System of Speech Training Calls for a Knowledge of Speech Mechanics P The vast majority of people are ignorant of how the speech mechanism works and of what to do specifically to mend their voices and their speaking man- ners. They are completely lacking in the knowledge that speech is made up of components, and that these components can be analysed and studied with great profit; that in order to get over their bad voices and unpleasant ways they must first know how the voice apparatus works. Then, many more know that there is a mechanism of speech and that it has the components which may advantageously be studied, but do not know what these components are nor how to study them. Being in this state they are in no way to get over their wrong ways or to make good their shortcomings. Let us pass over those who know that there 8 One situation is to be found where attention to speech mechanism is not wise, and that is where the student is already having trouble with his speech precisely from too much concern over the mechanism as against his thought. The typical form of this is found in some cases of stammering, where the stammerer can speak easily so long as he can be kept unaware of the me- chanics of speech, but has trouble as soon as he begins to think of the way in which he is doing it. 66 THE QUARTERLY JOURNAL OF SPEECH EDUCATION is a speech mechanism and that it has components to be studied but who insist that such study is not profitable; for all learning needs criticism, requiring some apprehension of the elements in- volved. In the most of our learning we rely upon subsconscious judgments, a process of making decisions without being able to state in words the basis of our judgment. This is what we do whenever we naively try to remedy a speech difficulty, to pronounce a new word or correct an inflection or master a nuance of pitch and quality without a teacher or a prompter. Yet rela- tively few people can rely with safety upon this subconscious analysis; the vast majority can give themselves valid criticism only by being made consciously aware, using names, laws, and principles consciously and explicitly expressed, of the nature and functions of the elements of speech. They need a chart that marks and names the shoals and rocks. Accordingly, from the above description the following ways of learning to improve speech are outlined for us: (a) When good models are to be had, imitation can for certain purposes be used to good effect; but where no good models exist the case is pretty bad. (b) The point at which imitation fails is where repressions and social fears are dominant; and whenever these are present the first step must be to eliminate them, thus freeing the mind from oppression and the slavery of fear, (c) Yet not all minds, even when freed and with past good models to fall back upon, have the supply of ideas necessary to make speech full and free. Be it remembered that there is no natural in- stinct for speech; we possess no such blessing; so that a large part of speech training, even after the removal of repressions, must of necessity be given up to the enrichment of the intellec- tual content of mentality, the expanding of ideas, the illuminating of what is in the mind or on the printed page. And lastly, (d) to get the finest and best effects with most students, as well as to deal with the most insistent difficulties and the most stubborn cases, there must be a knowledge of the nature of the voice, of the elements of speech, and of the technique by which one can gain control and efficiency. Only in this way can relearning take place; and most people need, not so much to learn, as to learn all over again. SPEECH AND THE LEARNING PROCESS 67 Thus it appears that the learning of speech is no light task. In the face of what speech means to the life of man it is fair enough to say that it is one of the most vital studies in which anyone can indulge. It calls for all the processes generally ac- knowledged to belong to all sound instruction and learning — ability in discrimination and analysis, power of abstraction and generalization, capacity for observation and application to new cases, and a mechanism for the manipulation of ideas and the control of the emotions. It is, in fine, a system of applied logical- ity- For the learning of speech is in reality the learning of think- ing. Judd 7 propounds a vital question, and then gives us its answer: “Did human mental advance result from the develop- ment of language, or did language result from the development of ideas? The only answer to this question is that language and ideational processes developed together and are necessary to each other.” Other statements as to the primacy of speech are given by Carus and Romanes. Says Carus 8 : “Man thinks because he speaks. He has learned to think by self -observation through an analysis of his own thinking.” And Romanes 9 puts it: “For we must never forget the important fact that thought is quite as much the effect as it is the cause of language, whether of speech or gesture.” So that in learning to speak a student is in reality learningX to think. Indeed, there is no thinking without speech. For thought is invariably bound up with the activity of the muscles of the jaw, tongue, lips, and throat. What our thinking is is a complicated process of tensions in the muscle systems just named. In children the actual words of speech are used when they talk aloud; the rest of us do the same thing, only silently. Often among adults we can see a person’s lips moving while he is think- ing. Some, when they assume that no one is looking, or when they forget themselves — rather, when they forget others — even do their thinking in overt spoken words. It is the fear of de- tection that drives the growing child, possessed by fears of social consequence, to push his thinking more and more out of sight ’Psychology (revised edition), 1919, p. 215. 8 Carus, Paul, Monist, XXVIII, 2, April, 1918, p. 265. 8 Romanes, G. J., Mental Revolution in Man, p. 151. 68 THE QUARTERLY JOURNAL OF SPEECH EDUCATION into the mechanisms that work hidden from possible observation of others. We do not care to have our thoughts read by our fellow man. On this point Watson says 10 : “The reason why children are so talkative probably is due to the fact that at an early age their environment does not force a rapid shift from explicit to implicit language ; they are really thinking aloud. . . . The shift is not com- plete even in the adult. This is clear from the observation of individuals while they are reading and thinking. ... A good lip reader can actually gather some of the words read by such an individual.” He goes on to show that the thinking of adulthood is but a continuance of the talking aloud of childhood ; that acceptable social form and common self-protection demand that this talking be done unobserved of others. In time the silent talker learns many short-cuts and substitutions, a kind of speech short-hand. It is by this means that abstract and con- ceptual thinking is possible, coupled with the mechanism that produces visual and auditory imagery, which is always linked up with the speech mechanism. But thinking is inextricably interwoven with speech forms. Consequently, the case is stated but moderately when it is said that training in speech is training in thinking; in imagina- tion, in memory, in classification, generalization, abstraction — that is, in applied thinking and reasoning. III. Speech Training as Affected by the Age — Mental and Bodily — of the Learner But learning to speak is even more complicated yet; for it is deeply affected by the age of the learner, and in the different stages of man’s growth is a definably distinct process. There are at least four stages in which the means of learning to speak or to improve speech are marked by clear and pedagogically impor- tant differentiations. The stages are (1) early childhood until about the fifth birthday, (2) childhood up to about twelve or fourteen, (3) adolescence up to maturity of bodily growth, and (4) adulthood. Babies rely almost entirely upon imitation. Children past five imitate still but they also invent their own speech devices and make somewhat of their own standards. “Work cited, p. 3 22-3 SPEECH AND THE LEARNING PROCESS 69 Adolescents present a medley of speech activities, some of them losing powers they once possessed in their childhood, and others making unexpected and unpredictable progress; while they too still employ imitation, they also use their powers of observation and reasoning to invent new speech devices, and even attain at times to some analytical, ability in criticising their own speech methods. Adults in their turn who need speech training, as- suming that they are possessed of anything like normal minds, are capable of learning speech by any of the suggested methods, and mostly need all four. Each of these ages needs special con- sideration. 1. Children under Five. Physiology and psychology are very clear today in their teaching that habits fixed in babyhood are the most influential of all ; some psychologists go so far as to say that the child’s mental and moral capacity is set and fixed by its fifth birthday. There is much to support this view. Obviously, then, speech habits formed before the fifth birthday are always important. And the factor that counts most heavily is clearly imitation. The child learns its speech from those around it; so that according to the excellence or faultiness of their speaking will be that of the child. In this lies the explanation why there is in the world so much poor speaking and reading; the child hears nothing but poor examples, and is given a handicap from the start. Children of mumbling, throaty, strident, or drawling parents will in all likelihood mumble, tighten their throats,' speak in shrill tones, or drawl. While, on the other hand, the children of parents who have open throats, well-modulated voices, and who speak gently and with animation, will in turn reveal the same graces as the elders with whom they have grown up. Many a grown man finds himself with a vexing speech problem on his hands wholly because of the influence of his parents, or his nurses, or the relatives who have trained him in poor speech in his plastic babyhood. 2. Children from Five to Twelve Years of Age. After the fifth or sixth birthday a new influence enters, the school and the playground, which means wider social contacts, with more people to furnish models for imitation. This means that the instruction in speech is gauged now by a standard of imitation which is a compromise between the standard of its own home 70 THE QUARTERLY JOURNAL OF SPEECH EDUCATION and the average of the homes represented in the school, play- ground, or neighborhood. The effect ensuing is a process of levelling; children from careful homes are taught things that their own family shut out, and those from the homes that are careless are at least exposed to a kind of speech better than their own. The common effect, though, is the victory of the more careless ones. Children from homes where the parents adjure the strident voice and raucous shout are more likely to pick up these afflictions than the other children are to become clear-voiced and well modulated. In this levelling process of the group the child is now sub- jected to the influences of speech as it prevails in stores, business houses, factories, theatres, and vaudeville shows. Once the child leaves the home to continue its education it is exposed to all the common things of democracy, and some of these have the ten- dency to bring all to a common level ; which in terms of speech in our country today means that they are made careless and for the most part uncouth. All this up to the age of puberty is done by imitation ; imitation that may at times be conscious, and often enough is, but an imitation for the most part unnoticed, unconscious. Children have a way of putting pressure on the members of the group who are “nicer” than the others; they have all sorts of delicate ways of making life miserable for those who try to use the niceties of their elders. Most children suc- cumb unconsciously; while others find it to their comfort to study how to conform to the modes of the mass. The conse- quence is that any school, play group, or neighborhood of chil- dren displays the speech habits of those at the lower usage level of the whole group ; they are somewhat poorer than their average or median. 3. Puberty and Adolescence. Then comes the period of storm and stress, ushered in at puberty, which marks the divisions from childhood to manhood, when the body begins to be remade and a new personality to be developed lasting through adolescence to adulthood ; the years of strain and agony when the new body is growing and the new personality is getting its corners knocked off by contact with a newly discovered and somewhat harsh social world. What more natural now than that speech, the acme of all bodily development, should in this period of reconstruction SPEECH AND THE LEARNING PROCESS 71 go all to pieces when not watched with extreme care. But sad to say, our educational system has made no provision for guid- ing and directing the speech habits of the new-forming bodies and characters of the adolescent. In the first place, the task is a hard one because the adolescent is about as easy to deal with in habits so personal as speech as a fawn in the forest. In the second place, the educational world has not known how. But there is no escaping the conclusion that in these crucial days much can be done by intelligent, sympathetic instruction to cultivate pleasant voice, well-modulated elocution, and a careful, elegant diction. One of the best aids for the adolescent, especially for those who have had good models, is to help him to get back to the naivete and simplicity of childhood. Many a boy or girl who spoke easily and directly as a little child becomes, under the strain of adolescence, halting, stumbling, indirect, and harsh- worded ; so any device that can make him overlook the emotional and social struggles through which he is passing is so much gained in his speech training. Especially important is it that he should feel free from restraint and excessive emotion while talking and read- ing in the presence of others. So very often it is revealed that a boy who talks or reads indirectly, monotonously, and raucously, can be got to read or talk freely, easily, and pleasantly when in- duced by some means or other to overlook the fact that people are looking at him or that he has too many hands and feet and that he is for the most part a good deal of a gawk and a clown. Accordingly training in speech for adolescents ought to make much of relieving the emotional strain of talking and reading, leading the boy or girl back in speech habits toward early child- hood for a grip on both the essentials and niceties. Very often in this way the good effects of a careful home can out-ride the bad instructions of the playground, the crowd, the street, and the cheap show. It is a negative process, but very effective. For wherever early habits are bad, speech training becomes a process of rebuilding from foundations up ; of patching, of mending, of repair work. Speech Training for Adolescents Is Helped by Training in Social Ease. From this it is evident, then, that whatever allevi- ates the emotional strain on the growing youth improves speech. 72 THE QUARTERLY JOURNAL OF SPEECH EDUCATION Social intercourse can probably do as much as any other one thing; first, for the imitation thus involved — and this can be very powerful — then for the relief it gives from the fears and restraints which are the chief characteristics of adolescence. The awkward boy afraid to open his mouth lest he prove himself a boor and a lout can be freed in his tongue if made familiar with social ways and caused to feel that he has as great a right as any- one to mingle in good society and to do the things that others do. Observe, and it will be evident that youths who are unafraid of their social equals, who have courage to dare and to do, who have a certain gift of savoir faire, are almost invariably fluent and easy conversationalists. It is reasonably so; for with adults it is patent that the man who knows has a courage and a freedom not possessed by the ignorant. Hence a part of speech treatment for adolescents is study and practice of social graces under help- ful influence, thus removing the emotional complexes that re- strain and constrict speech. The rest of the process must be by way of education in ideas, of fertilizing the thinking processes, of enriching the imagination, the memory, and one’s store of facts. On top of all must come drill and criticism, practice and analysis, observation, study, and much repetition. 4. Adults. Speech training for adults is a knotty problem, for the reason that speech is a thing that ought under best circum- stances to be learned in the plastic days, those of babyhood, child- hood, and adolescence. Whoever has to take his lessons in speech after the age of sixteen is waging an up-hill fight ; he has to over- come the obstinate effects of the years when he was plastic, and he must work with an instrument and mechanism no longer so flexible as it once was. To give him adequate instruction, a little of every method known is none too much. So that speech train- ing for college men and women or those even older, is something of a tour de force; not by a good deal is it the simple and easy thing it could have been if they had been caught young. Hence, any course of speech training designed chiefly for young men and young women, to be adequate, must use and amplify in full proportions all the devices known for improving speech. It must bring back as much as possible the ease and urgency of child- hood; it must lead to the unafraidness, the openness of mind, the frankness, the enthusiasm, and the freedom from emotional com- SPEECH AND THE LEARNING PROCESS 73 plexes with which childhood is blessed; and it must enrich the store of experiences, facts, knowledge, imagination, and even fancy; and it must teach methods of improvement based upon a knowledge of the elements of speech. Hence the treatment in it ought to be highly elastic, taking account of all the agencies known, and made flexible enough to provide for all ages and de- grees of mentality. Relation of Mental Weakness to Speech and Speech Training. All that has been said thus far has tended to imply that all men are on one general level of mental strength, or intelligence. But the truth is far otherwise. Perfect specimens are very rare; and — the important thing for this study — whatever interferes , with the body interferes with the mind and interferes with sound speech habits. Here is a fundamental rule of such magnitude that whole books must be written on it in the near future as fast as scientific investigation can disclose the facts. But evi- dent it is already, that defective mind and defective speech go side by side. Obviously this is so if it be true that mind grows from speech competency and that speech grows from mental competency. Accordingly, a study of speech training that leaves out of account the factor of mental strength or mental weak- ness is clearly incomplete. The sad fact is that very few people are free from bodily de- j feet, which means mental defect, which means speech defect,. Bodily defects influence speech in this simple way; they are inva- riably the basis of either intellectual shortcomings and excesses or of emotional excess and shortcomings. And it is perfectly obvi- ous, needing no explication, that when the intellectual or the emo- tional powers of a man are affected, his speech is also affected in like degree. So that speech training takes on largely the ^ character of training in mental hygiene. A speech specialist can do much to overcome mental defects, both intellectual and emotional; oftentimes by training of the defects of the body under which it labors. The list of defects that can affect the mind and body is one to sober the thoughtful person. Such a list prepared by Dr. McReady, a psychiatrist, shows how largely these defects are prevalent. Read and see a parade of your friends, relatives, with yourself possibly joining in the procession: 74 THE QUARTERLY JOURNAL OF SPEECH EDUCATION Undue digestive disturbance in infancy, inability to digest food for age, hair-trigger digestion, fretfulness, extreme sensitiveness to light and sound, convulsions, early or late closing of soft spot, early or late teething, early or late muscle development of control, early or late walk- ing or talking, too sensitive in skin or mucous, thumb sucking, head rock- ing, fitful appetite, aversion to certain kinds of common food, night- mares, night terrors, muscular twitchings, tics, bed wetting, tremors of hands when extended, negativism, shut-in-isms, phobies, extreme imagi- nativeness, pathologic lying, hyper-emotionalism, f atigulability, extreme timidity, undue aggressiveness, cyclic vomiting, underweight, having too long bones, a sagging stomach. For people affected by ailments such as p,ny of these, with their attendant mental and speech defects, much care must be applied. And it would be a rare college or school class indeed that lacked a large number of such people. In the ordinary col- lege class we expect to see a minimum of these, for a college class is a selected group ; most of the worst defectives fall by the way- side in their earlier school careers. Yet even a class of college sophomores, or seniors, must contain a number of people who in some physical particular are not normal, thus being not normal in mental capacity and speech development also. As a conse- quence such a class can be assumed to include many people who in addition to having poor models in their youth and little at- tention ever paid to their speech habits, suffer from physical obstructions to perfect and effective speech. Such students will have to be made over, almost from the beginning. Teaching them how to speak becomes in reality a task in teaching them how to use their minds; how to think straight, how to keep their heads, how to appear in their true characters before others, how to open up their minds so that what they give forth in speech is a true index of what they think and feel. Add to these the students who have had gruelling emotional experiences during the reconstruction years of ado- lescence, and we find the ordinary class in speech needing much training in mental hygiene. It is precisely this cure for mental sickness that the course in speech training can give to the young man and young woman who cannot say easily, frankly, clearly, and with good effect whatsoever he thinks or feels. The class in speech training comes then nearest of any in the whole cur- riculum to being a class in mental health, mental growth, mental SPEECH AND THE LEARNING PROCESS 75 salvation. Speech training is training in the art of keeping mentally fit. Summary. Speech develops by random activities made from the breathing and vocal apparatus ; the sounds made by the voice mechanism come to have meaning for social communication through conventionalized forms, handed down from elders to children through imitation, conscious or unconscious/ Young children tend to speak easily and frankly in the presence of their familiars, and copy the degree of speech excellence with which they grow up. Later when they come in contact with the world outside their homes they adopt new forms, frequently to their detriment. (when they arrive at adolescence, being subjected to the irritations of a changing life and a newly growing body, they are filled with emotional complexes which are accentuated by their newly-acquired consciousness of sex relations and social responsibilities. This emotionality and lack of stability invari- ably affects speech habits and complicates the learning process, leading them usually farther away from the easy, simple speech habits of their early childhood.) With this condition further aggravated by bodily and neurotic defects, whether shortcomings or excesses, the speech mechanism is thrown farther out of gear and is the harder to bring back to a state of ease and frankness, ijflie business of the class in speech, then, where there are people of various kinds gathered together, is to employ all the methods available for reducing their complexes, overcoming their defects, and furnishing them with proper models, training them in think- ing, and offering them drill in elements and criticism of their vocal methods, thus by all these devices furnishing as near an approach as possible to acceptable standards of speaking that is direct, com- fortable, and effective.