269. There would be less controversy about language teaching if existing differences in conditions were given proper attention. The most general distinction to make is that between understanding and speaking. The distance between the two is a given factor at the time when regular instruction begins. It is very great in some cases, and, again, slight in others, according to individual aptitude and early surroundings. 270. First of all, one’s language was acquired by hearing it spoken, by receiving it from others, by imitation; it was refined or vulgar; it was perceived accurately or indistinctly; it was imitated by organs, good, bad, or indifferent. Little by little the imperfections of the earliest stage are outgrown, where cultured persons set a daily example and insist on correctness of speech. Sometimes, however, it takes years to bring about such a result. 271. Another factor, and one deeply rooted in individual temperament, is the stronger or weaker impulse toward expression through language. This fact elevates the language of each one above mere imitation; its improvement must start from the thoughts which it seeks to express. Striking progress of this kind often occurs during adolescence. The differences noted in this and the two preceding sections are psychological, hence common to German and American children. The problem of teaching American children their mother-tongue, assumed to be English, is both harder and easier than to teach German to German children. It is easier in that English is mostly uninflected, hence unencumbered by nice distinctions in grammatical form. This same fact, on the other hand, causes didactic difficulties, since most teachers are at a loss as to what definite body of knowledge they should or can impart that will train the child into a mastery of good English speech. The last twenty years have seen a large number of experiments on the part of authors in the effort to present a body of information and exercises calculated to secure a good training in the mother-tongue. These efforts have met with but partial success, owing to the inherent difficulties of the subject. Many who can teach a foreign language, where there is a movable fulcrum of difficulties to be overcome, such as those found in inflection, or in the meaning of foreign words, fail when confronted by a language that is practically uninflected, and in which the words are easily understood. The old recourse was technical grammar. But this is an analytical study, calculated to lead to apprehension of subtle meanings, rather than to an instinct for correct form. Furthermore, the grammar cannot be successfully studied until after the habits of speech are fairly fixed. For these reasons, it bears much the same relation to living speech that formal logic does to real thinking. Grammar makes the mind keen to detect formal errors of speech, just as logic trains one to detect fallacies in reasoning.