assigns for the next day a definite lesson on a definite subject in a textbook or on a subject not in the textbook. He then asks a group of questions on the topic assigned or assists the class in framing a set. A leader, a secretary, and a reader or a speaker are then named in regular order; the pupils whose turn it is to act in these capacities go to the board and write their names there. This assignment is taken down in systematic form in the notebooks.

Next day, the leader takes the chair set apart for him and with the aid of his notebook conducts the meeting. He calls for the secretary's report and asks the reader or speaker to do his part. Then he calls on members of the class to recite on the questions of the day's assignment or to take up the problem on which the class is working. During the meeting, any pupil may ask a question or criticize a statement by parliamentary procedure or good-mannered conversation.

Social procedure in the correction of blackboard work, in the correction of notebooks, in dramatizations, in discussion of threeminute talks, in the testing of memory selections, etc., offers many opportunities for teachers and classes. Perhaps someone may be interested in the following accounts by pupils:

SOCIAL-GROUP CORRECTING IN BOARD WORK

Early this term our teacher instituted a new form of blackboard-work correction. A representative of each of the five groups was chosen by the group members to write on the blackboard on a topic assigned by the leader for the day. The group leaders were assigned to write an account of this new method of doing blackboard work, while the other members of the group were assigned to watch and correct the work of their group representative at the blackboard.

While the persons at the board were writing, the members of their groups offered criticisms from time to time. Some of those at the board had to begin their work over again, since their opening sentences did not have a close connection to the topic assigned. Some had to omit portions. Errors in punctuation and spelling were corrected. At the completion of the blackboard work each writer reported what help he or she had obtained from the members of the group. These are the names of the groups: "L'Etoile,” “We Girls,” "Handsome Four," "Ambitious Four," "The Liberty Five."

ABRAHAM FRANZBLAU

SOME OTHER ACTIVITIES OF THE GROUPS

For the purpose of aiding every member, the eighth-term English class has formed itself into social groups. Thus the members have become a very good aid to each other and at the same time to the teacher. Each group is composed of about six members chosen according to seating, according to fitness for

mutual helpfulness in the judgment of the teacher, or according to individual preferences of the pupils. The groups then hold a meeting and choose leaders. The leaders form a committee that has in its charge the social work of the class. There are several ways in which this social work is carried on in the class recitation. One interesting way is by having everyone write a theme and then having the members exchange papers to correct mistakes. Another use of the social groups that serves to keep the interest of everyone alive is dramatization. Every term there is a play to be read in the course of the English work. The groups take turns in dramatizing the most important parts of every day's lesson while the play is being read. Another use is the presentation of charades. The groups take turns in producing charades that represent the names of authors, or books, or even characters in a book that has been studied. The members of the class who do not take part guess the charades. A fourth procedure is to have a current-events program. We select a certain day, about every two weeks, when the whole lesson may be devoted to the news of the day. The leader of the group chosen to present that program acts as chairman for the day. He sees to it that every member has a topic to speak on that is of general interest. The weekly inspection of notebooks provides a fifth phase of the work done by the social groups. During the course of the English supervised-study period, every group corrects its own notebooks and then the teacher looks over the letter of inspection to detect mistakes. A sixth plan for this social work is that of editing a class story-book. Every group meets and decides upon a type of story. Some very interesting stories result. Each group leader looks over the stories in order to find mistakes that are not desired in the class story-book. The group leaders hold a meeting while the stories are on their way and select one of the leaders for the editor-in-chief, who superintends the editing of the book.

LILLIAN HOPKINS

What assists in making a social procedure effective in some schools is that for every meeting of the class there is a definite, clear-cut plan or program, which the leader has only to carry out as well as possible. In our particular school the notebook system helps to bind together our work, but that is another story (see English Journal, April, 1915).

An element that appears to be a weakness turns out to be a pillar of strength. Pupils are taken as leaders absolutely without favor and in regular turn. The teacher has to do no bookkeeping for this; the pupils arrange the daily assignment of officers for the meeting. The bright, lively, vivacious, clear-thinking, capable students have no monopoly on the leadership. Every person gets his turn. By alertness and resourcefulness, the teacher is able to

help the timid, backward leader to make the time of the class meeting count for something. Instead of being a waste of time, a period under such a shrinking leader becomes a triumph of democracy. The recitation is not felt by the class to have been flat, stale, and unprofitable; even a chance visitor who might drop in would admit the same, though he came with hostile attitude.

For the teacher the advantages of socialized procedure appear to be:

1. Cutting down of teacher's nerve strain

2. Lessening of teacher's talking

3. Freeing of teacher for observation of pupils when speaking and acting as they do among themselves

4. Freeing of teacher for personal approach to pupils during recitation period

5. Shifting of point of view, so that pupils ask for assignment of work and for teacher's help in settling troublesome questions For the pupils the advantages are:

1. Developing of freedom in use of language

2. Developing of good manner among equals 3. Developing of sense of proportion

4. Developing of initiative

5. Developing of co-operative spirit

Whether the advantages are offset by disadvantages, so that such socialized procedure as has been described is not worth what it costs, is a question that might be settled thus: Let a teacher conduct one class socially as described and another directly. Let her test each class by some standard test. After a fixed time, let her test the classes again to see which shows the better results according to the standard tests. There will be some elements which have not been tested and thus far are not capable of being tested: elements of the spirit, such as initiative and co-operation. However, from the results of the tests inferences may perhaps be drawn regarding these elements. The tests at least will show the absolute attainments of the pupils after fixed periods of time spent in the two different methods of procedure.

Meanwhile let the teachers who as a matter of experience think the social procedure in the English classroom worth while propose

of the phrase in which the new word appears is also optional. Perhaps some instructors would not require at all an illustration of the use of the word. But under no circumstances should the student be allowed to get his new words from the dictionary, even if O. Henry did acquire his astounding repertoire of words by "giving his days and his nights to the study" of the dictionary.

In the first place, if the student depends on the dictionary for new words he will, half the time, select outlandish ones that he will never use or find used. In the second place, he will not be nearly so likely to remember isolated, disconnected words skimmed from lexicographic columns as he will be to remember words he finds imbedded in sentences from which he has wrung out the meaning; though here I must recall Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes's claim that the dictionary was the most engaging romance he had ever found. In the third place, if the student goes to a thesaurus for his new words, passing by unnoted the unknown words of human letters, the chances are appreciably less for his ever acquiring a close observation and full understanding of the words he must encounter in the reading of a lifetime-in fine, for his ever attaining that rare accomplishment, the art of reading intelligently. Moreover, as a second to this "two-handed engine" for teaching new words and also the art of reading thoroughly, I encourage my students to write down in the margins of their books definitions of all words unfamiliar to them; these marginal definitions will serve to keep the words they define fresh in memory.

The second and third of these reasons for using literature rather than lexicons for word sources require elaboration. Memory is a matter of association. Many of my students remember the titles of books they have read without remembering the names of the authors. I remember the names of whatever books I read and also those of the authors. I have a friend who, without effort, remembers the title, the name of the author, and the date of publication of every book he reads. He began early training himself thus, though the date may often be a worthless piece of knowledge. In like manner a student, provided he has the memory to retain a word, can often retain the setting in which he found that word, thus making his diction rich in connotation

"WORDS, WORDS, WORDS, MY LORD"

J. FRANK DOBIE

University of Texas, Austin, Texas

Three kinds there are, and only three kinds, of verbal expression: (1) old wine in old bottles, which is triteness; (2) old wine in new bottles, which is talent; (3) new wine either in old bottles or in new bottles, it matters not which, for this is genius. Few, indeed, are those who have great originality of matter, the geniuses; the name of those whose matter is old and whose manner is older, the bores of banality, is legion; whereas the number of those whose speech is not like the grinding of calliopes, but is refreshing and pleasing the people who in their speech, whether oral or written, make society bearable—is to an astonishing extent determined by the freshness of their vocabulary. I wish I could know that nevermore would a teacher teach the avoidance of "big words," or inspire a holy terror for "tall talking"—as reprehensible as "word painting" and "rodomontade" are. "Tall talking" implies, at least, the ambition to talk, and no talking being who has a plentiful stock of words is going to "debase the coinage" by calling down the thunderbolts of Jupiter to kill a flea. Therefore a tall talker requires, not an injunction to cease his talk, but more words with which to gratify rightly his legitimate ambition to talk.

What a student-or anyone without them, for that matter— needs is new words, big words, exotic words, "words, words, words, my lord," so many that he can "translate" a mummery into a clean lucidity, an ashen jargon into a vivid eloquence. Of late I have been reading in three diverse authors: Lafcadio Hearn, Robert Louis Stevenson, and Carlyle; and each one of them sends me to the dictionary at every turn of the leaf; each one of them depends to a remarkable extent upon the novel freshness of his diction. Take, for instance, Carlyle's famous description of Daniel Webster: "The tanned complexion, that amorphous crag-like