"Never allow a single mistake to pass uncorrected, and make pupils always learn the corrections.
"Language should be a translation of life. It should proceed all day long, out of school as well as in it. If spoken so much the better, but finger-spelling is not a hindrance but a valuable help to its acquisition.
"In most language lessons, especially those exemplifying a particular form of sentence, the pupils should:
"(1) Correct each other's mistakes. Correct 'mistakes' designedly made by the teacher.
"(2) Teacher rubs out a word here and there on the blackboard or tablet; pupils to supply them.
"(3) Pupils to answer questions, giving the subject, predicate and object of the sentence as required, e.g. 'A farmer ploughs the ground.' 'Who ploughs the ground?' 'What does a farmer do?' 'What does he plough?' Also additional and illustrative questions; e.g. 'Does the ground plough the farmer?' 'Does a farmer plough the sea?' 'Does he eat the ground?' &c.
"The pupils should learn meanings or synonyms of unfamiliar words before such words are signed.
"(4) Teacher gives a word, and requires pupils to exemplify it in a sentence, e.g. 'sows,' 'He sows the seed.'
"(5) Let them give as many sentences as they can think of in the same form.
"Occurrences, incidents, objects, pictures, reading-books, newspaper cuttings and correspondence should all be used."
The "pure" oral method, as before noticed, came with a bound into popularity in the early seventies. Since then it has had everything in its favour, but the results have been by no means entirely satisfactory, and there is a marked tendency among advocates of this method to withdraw from the extreme position formerly held. Opinion has gradually veered round till they have come to seek for some sort of _via media_ that shall embrace the good points of both methods. Some now suggest the "dual method"--that those pupils who show no aptitude for oral training shall be taught exclusively by the manual method and the rest by the oral only. While this is a concession which is positively amazing when compared with the title of the booklet containing utterances of the Abbé Tarra, president of the Milan conference in 1880--"The _Pure_ Oral Method the _Best_ for _All_ Deaf Children"!--yet we believe that in no case should the instruction be given by the oral method alone, and that the best system is the "combined." That the combined system is detrimental to lip-reading has not much more than a fraction of truth in it, for if the command of language is better the pupils can supply the lacunae in their lip-reading from their better knowledge of English. It is found that they have constantly to guess words and letters from the context. Teach all by and through finger-spelling, reading, writing and signing where necessary to explain the English, and teach those in whose case it is worth it by articulation and lip-reading as well. Signs should be used less and less in class work, and English more and more exclusively as the pupil progresses--English in any and every form. A proportion of teachers should be themselves deaf, as in America. They are in perfect understanding and sympathy with their pupils, which is not always the case with hearing teachers. Statistics which we collected in London showed the following results of the education of 403 deaf pupils after they had left school:--