This general truth is easily brought home to young people by reminding
them how they began their knowledge of language with the acquirement of
single words and went on to appreciate how much more may be expressed
by word-combinations. After the infantile "give" came in turn "p'ease
give" and "please give me a drink." From such stages each of them has
gone on learning. They have constantly increased their vocabulary,
their knowledge of the value of words, of word-arrangement, and of
sentence-construction. Gradually by practical experience they have
gained some appreciation of all those points which make up the sum of
instruction in classes in composition. They now need to be shown that
literary appreciation is the extension of this knowledge along the same
lines; that it is the means of advancing toward a higher place in that
scale which extends from the ignorant savage to the sages. They may in
this way be brought to a conception of literary technique as a matter
connected with the process of perception which they have been carrying
on from childhood.
How value in all workmanship is to be judged by the effects produced is
admirably illustrated by machinery, but it is hardly less evident in
the case of language. The simpler forms of sentence come to be used by
the child in place of single disconnected words because with sentences
he can do more in the way of communicating his ideas and obtaining what
he desires. To illustrate more complicated forms of language we have
only to remind the child how carefully he orders his speech when he is
endeavoring to coax a favor from an unwilling friend or a reluctant
parent. The child feels himself clever just in proportion as he is
able so to frame his plea that it secures his end. He may be reminded
that he selects most carefully the terms which suggest such things and
ideas as favor his wish and avoids any that might hint at possible
objections. Out of these homely, universal experiences of childhood it
is possible to build up in the mind of the pupil a very fair notion of
the nature and the use of literary workmanship; a notion, moreover,
which is at once sound in principle and entirely adequate as a working
basis.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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