Excerpt from Sentence and Theme: Composition for the First Year of High School

English is so new a subject, the teaching of composition has been done with such a variety of new and old theories, that we teachers are perplexed by the multifariousness of counsel. There is a wide diversity of judgment about each element of composition-teaching. As to spelling, we may be urged to teach 5, 000 words in the grades or only 500 in high school or to attend mostly to 100 "demons", we may be told that troubles are largely oral or that oral difficulties are a small minority, we may be advised to teach spelling every day or not to worry much about spelling in themes. Grammar is insisted on in one quarter as vitally necessary, in another it is taboo. Punctuation is everywhere called for, but is said by many authorities to be a. matter of instinct, hardly reducible to definite rules for teaching pupils definite knowledge. Paragraphs are like geometrical propositions to one text-maker, and are "largely a feeling for appearance" to some who actually write books. School themes should be organized - many textbooks imply - with an introduction and a conclusion, "they should begin and end without those appurtenances" is the judgment of many journalists and authors.

Even more perplexing than contrary opinions about each of these subjects is the lack of guidance in correlating them. How much of the virtue of a theme inheres in good spelling? Is a grammatical error worse than a misspelling or less heinous than a bit of poor diction? What direct relation has grammar to composition as a whole? to punctuation in particular? Is grammar an isolated subject, or is it a vital component in the second teaching of sentence-making?

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.