Children learn to speak while at play. They are active and much interested when they are acquiring a natural vocabulary. Much of the vocabulary is wrong from the standpoint of the grammar and dictionary, and they have to unlearn it. They have to unlearn it at school and from the lips of pains-taking parents. One reason it is so hard for them to learn the correct forms is this unintelligent way of teaching. Another is that the incorrect conversation is heard under circumstances favorable to retention and reproduction; that is, when the child is much interested and happy; while the correct forms are given him when he is but half aroused, or when he is somewhat intense over another matter, and many times the intended instruction goes in at one ear and out at the other. When the skill of the teacher and the things of the school room become so powerfully attractive to the pupil that once hearing a new word will fix it, once seeing a word will make him master of it in all its forms, then the language lesson will not need to be given; for language, which is as natural to man as breathing, will flow in correct forms trippingly from the tongue, being so fixed in the pupil's mind from the first that he will have nothing to unlearn. Conversation lessons are intended to take care of some of the crudest errors in speech before the child has committed the indiscretion of putting them in writing. It can be done with so much less severity in conversation than in a written lesson. Notice silently the peculiarly bad expressions and forms of statements of the whole class, then plan your talking lesson in which those who are not guilty of those errors are allowed to lead. Then let the child whom you consider most likely to profit by hearing correct expression from his mates give you the necessary statement. If he use correct forms, let another try. For instance, suppose you have a number of pupils who are inclined to say "The robin isn't so purty as the bluejay." The reason for this is that the parents of nearly all these pupils will make the same error. If early in their experience with you you are shocked by their speech and let them know it, you either lose their respect or make them feel that they and their parents are inferior beings with no right to speak.