(_e_) _Chorus-work before Individual Work._--Before we call on an individual pupil to articulate a sound or a succession of sounds, let the work be done in chorus on two or more different occasions. For an individual to have to submit his tentative efforts to the criticism and perhaps laughter of his fellow-pupils is not conducive to good results. Let the individual pupils test their articulation in company with others, and when by so doing they have gained a certain mastery of what they have to repeat and have thereby gained a certain degree of confidence, let them proceed to reproduce singly what they have previously phonated together.
(_f_) _Drill-work before Free Work._--This is perhaps the most important of the precepts to be observed in connexion with gradation. The forms of exercise to which the general term _drill-work_ may be applied are many and varied. Some of them are calculated to train the student in perceiving and discriminating the sounds of which the language is composed; others are articulation exercises; there are also special forms of drill-work which aim at securing fluency and accuracy in producing successions of syllables. The question-and-answer method may be embodied in many interesting forms of drill-work; there exist also many varieties of action drill, conversion drill, translation drill, and grammar drill. All these forms are characterized by common attributes: they are all systematic, highly organized, and susceptible of infinite gradation; the work is methodical and proceeds steadily and continuously without breaks or interruptions. Most forms of drill-work have been composed and are carried out in such a way as to preclude the possibility of the student's forming bad habits. Indeed, if the work is carried out as designed the element of error should be almost entirely excluded.
Now _free work_ in all its varied forms, such as free conversation, free translation, and free composition, differs greatly from drill-work, and we can all testify to the ludicrous results these forms of work yield when performed by one who has had no previous drilling. If the student has not been put through a proper course of drill-work, all his efforts at free work will be based on that most unnatural and vicious of processes--conventional translation from the mother-tongue. The undrilled French student will be speaking and writing not English as we understand the term, but anglicized French. Having formed no English language habits, he will cast all his thoughts in the French mould, and when the exact English equivalents to his French words and phrases are missing he will break down.