ESSENTIALS OF ENGLISH COMPOSITION BY HORACE S. TARBELL, LL.D. AND MARTHA TARBELL, PH.D. BOSTON, U.S.A. GINN & COMPANY, PUBLISHERS The Athenæum Press Educ 769.02,822 HARVARD COPYRIGHT, 1900, 1902 BY HORACE S. TARBELL ALL RIGHTS RESERVED PREFACE. THE demand that an educated person must write good English is everywhere recognized, and in recent years emphasized. The criticism of the poor English of college graduates has drawn the attention of college authorities to the work in college rhetoric, and recently great changes have taken place in the requirements and instruction in English. Professor Genung, speaking of this, says: "The changes which have taken place in the study of rhetoric, as I have tried to point out, have been steadily in the direction of making the subject democratic, of emphasizing its value for the many rather than the few, of simplifying its theory and enlarging its practice. In colleges the carrying out of these changes has necessitated a great increase in the number of teachers; and as a result the brilliant lecturer on belles lettres has given way to a battalion of industrious theme-readers. The next step in the development will clearly be to turn over the study entirely to the secondary schools." Secondary school teachers have been stimulated by the demands of the colleges to make an examination, on the one hand, of the character of college requirements in English and, on the other, of the preparation of the pupils coming to them from the lower grades. This pressing backward of the demand for thorough instruction in the art of composition will be felt more and more. Teachers in grammar schools will repel the charge of poor work and deny their responsibility, representing that such and such requirements are unsuitable for grammar school pupils. Great gain will come from this effort to locate the responsibility for satisfactory results in English composition. When school superintendents, for this matter must come at last to them, clearly perceive which elements of the writer's art can be well learned in the grammar school, which can be better done in the high school, and which must be left for college; when college professors establish a standard in English to which all must attain, and leave elegancies of style, originalities of expression, and the appreciation of the higher attributes of literature to those able to master them, then a due order of study will be established, and all that can be done at an early age will be reasonably expected to have been done when a pupil has attained to the higher grades. If the teachers of the high school comprehend the entire course in English, and the due order in which its elements must be studied, then they will know what work to do when pupils come to them deficient in some of the work preparatory to their own. They will then do in English as they do in other studies, lay the foundation before trying to build the superstructure. But we must regard not only those who are to go on in our school courses, but also those who are to go out from them. A large part of the pupils in the public schools do not reach the high school to gain therein the training in correct and ready expression that marks the cultivated mind. Hence in the grammar school this training should be given as far as the pupils are able to receive it. Those pupils who continue their studies in the high school are thereby all the better able to profit by the advanced instruction there given. This book is designed for grammar schools and the lower classes in high schools. It may also be profitably used in ungraded schools, and for the private study of those who are desirous of personal improvement in the art of writing. It is complete in its treatment of the practical features that underlie the art of composition. To put complete and connected thoughts upon paper should not be more difficult than to express such thoughts orally. Each form of expression has its difficulties and its advantages. Training in oral speech precedes that in written speech, and, from our greater familiarity with the oral form of expression, it seems the more natural. There is much to be gained, however, from the use of the pen. If the writer fails to express his thoughts clearly at first, he can change and improve what has been written. The painstaking construction of one's own forms of expression is a chief condition of improvement. A book designed to teach the art of writing must furnish both instruction as to the principles on which good writing is based and exercises adapted to training in the art of speaking and writing. |