Publications of the University of Texas 
Publications Committee: 
W. J. BATTLE: c. IIARTKA.N 
E. c. BARKER J. L. IIENOERSON 
J.M. 
BRYANT A . C. JUDSON 

G. 
c. BUTTE J. A. LoMAX 


R.H. GRIFFITH 
The University publishes bulletins six times a month. Thrse comprise the official publications of the University, publica­tions on humanistic and scientific sn bjccts, bulletins prepared by the Department of Extension and by the Burr11n of Thfnnic­ipal Rcs<>arch, and other bulletins of general edncation11l in­terest. With the exception of spcci11l numbers, any bulletin "·ill be sent to a citizen of Texas free on rcrpiest. A11 comm1miC'a­tions about University pnblicntions should be addressed to the Editor of University Publications, University of Texas, Austin. 
A. C. BALDWIN 6 SONS: AUSTtN 
B3.51-116-25h 

BULLETIN 
OF THE 

UNIVERSITY OF TEXAS 
1916: No. 63 
NOVEMBER 10 1916 
THE ENGLISH BULLETIN 
(Number 3, November, 1916) 

Published by the University six times a month and entered as second-class matter at the postoffice at AUSTIN, TEXAS 
The benefits of education and of useful knowledge, generally di:ft'used through a community, are essential to the preservation of a free govern­ment. 
Sam Houston. 
Cultivated mind is the guardian genius of democracy. It is the only dictator that freemen ac­knowledge and the only security that freemen desire. 
President Mirabeau B. Lamar. 
The English Bulletin 
(Number 3, November, 1916) 
Editors: IULLIS CAMPBELL 
E. M. CLARK 
L. W. PAYNE, JR. 
The English Bulletin is intended as an organ for the expression of opinion by teachers of English in Texas concerning pedagogical and other problems that arise in their work. It will appear from one to three times a year. 
Copies of this bulletin will be sent free, on application, to any teacher of English in Texas. Address The English Bulletin, the University of Texas, Austin, Texas. 
CONTENTS 
TEACHING LITERATURE IN THE SECONDARY SCHOOL, by James Finch Royster. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5 
CONCERNING CORRELATION IN THE TEACIDNG OF ENG­LISH COMPOSITION, by Pauline Belle Warner . . . . . . . . . . . 16 
SPELLING IN COLL£GE AND IDGH SCHOOL, by Leonidas Warren Payne, Jr. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31 
QUESTIONNAIRE FOR ENGLISH TEACHERS IN TEXAS... 39 

TEACHING LITERATURE IN THE SECONDARY SCHOOL 
BY JAMES FINCH ROYSTER, PH. D., PROFESSOR OF ENGLISH, THE UNIVERSITY OF TEXAS 
If our secondary schools, in teaching the books they require their pupils to read, are not creating and incl'leasing a desire in their students voluntarily to read good books, they are failing largely in attaining the object they should strive for. The proof of good teaching of literature is the creation of a desire to read more literature. A teacher may, it is true, fail to attain this object and yet render his pupils some service; he may inci­dentally, under the masquerade of literature, teach them some history and a small amount of composition; but history and com­position, as worthy subjects of instruction as they are, are not literature. We do not gain the aim of our efforts in teaching literature, which is, we all glibly agree, the founding and fos­tering of a genuine appreciation of literature, if we do not succeed in getting the appreciation we have founded and fos­
tered put into practice by our students upon their own initia­tive. 'rhe proof of appreciation is the practice of enjoyment. Appreciation is neither stationary nor retrospective; unless it is super-critical, it does not dwell upon one or a few object'l; liking demands more. 
Criticism of the methods of teaching literature in the sec­
ondary school, on the score that it does not encourage in the 
pupils a desire to read, is perhaps more plentiful-it surely 
is more sharp-than the criticism that is directed, in this age 
of pedagogical inquiry, at the methods of teaching any other 
subject of the school program. The clearest evidence in sup­
port of the justice of the wide-spread fault-finding with the man­
ner of teaching literature in the schools comes from the pupils 
themselves; it is in the possession of every college teacher of 
last year's high school graduates who seeks it; it is recorded in 
many published confessions of those who have been through the 
mill of books "for reading and practice" and books "for study 
and practice.'' The president of one of the publishing firms 
that profit largely from the sale of "high school classics" re­
peats, with an expressed belief in its truthfulness, the opinion 
of one of his acquaintances who confided to him "that he at­tributed his antipathy to the reading of good books to having been obliged to read such works [English classics] as a task in the schoolroom. "1 None of the published confessions is bolder than that of the youth who, after he had passed the college entrance examinations in English, told his tutor "that he had read but one book in his life except those required in school or colleg.e; that this was a 'red book' called The Girl and the Bill; that it had taken him all summer to read it; and that he never expected to read another. " 2 This boy who frankly ac­knowledged his restricted travels in the realm of reading may be regarded as an extreme case, but he surely cannot be considered a single case, of the great mass of pupils who are untouched by the instruction in literature they receive in the secondary schools. 
It is not a statement of fact to say that the students in our schools and the public generally do not r.ead, or to say that they do not read as much as did their forefathers of one or two gen­erations ago. The forefathers of a great many of the pupils in our private and public schools never acquired the art of reading at all. It is unquestionably true that more reading is being done in America now than was ever done in any other country at any time before today. If there were descendants of Wil­liam Shakespeare or of John Milton living now to enjoy the re­turns from an unending copyright, they would be made rich again every year by the enormous sales of the writings of their distinguished ancestors in cheap school editions. In no other age has a fiction-and-essay magazine been sold to two million weekly buyers. The truth is that democratic education in America has made an enormous number of readers: readers who in the schools, under the pressur·e of a task, read some of the highest productions of English literature; and who at home, at their own choice, read a large amount of cheap, sensational printed matter. The gap between this task r·eading and this casual reading is so enormously wide that the conclusion cannot be avoided that the influence of formal school reading upon the choice of informal home reading is extr.emely weak; and that 
'The Atiantic Monthly, November, 1914, p. 625. 
•The North American Review, September, 1916, p. 417. 
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the schools have done little to connect what literature they teach with what outside--0f-school reading their pupils do while they are under the dominion of the school, and what they will do when they become men and women. For other ends, the schools have neglected the task of making the reading of good books felt to be a pleasure. 
We shall never advance the object we must have in view­to make the reading our pupils do in school remain with them as a habit in life-unless we put before them reading that is agreeable to the mind and pleasant to the senses. The power of literature to please and to amuse must be prov.ed by example. The teacher himself must honestly believe that literature is mentally and sensuously enjoyable; he must find in literature one of his own unforced joys in life; he must read beyond his class-room texts merely for his own amusement. If he cannot confess this belief and prove this practice, he should be doing something else in life other than professionally and mechanically teaching children "literature." Mere schemes and plans of in­struction will not aid him; manuals of facts about literature will make his teaching more mechanical. Much reading will, how­ever, help him tremendously. 
If the teacher is able to prove his liking for literature by his practice of reading and by his own efforts at composition, he must publicly force the claim of literature as one of life's highest pleasures; he must force it in the face of other forms of human amusement, lower but very human forms of amusement, with which it must come into competition for obtaining the at­tention and a part of the time of the public. The two most characteristically modern forms of pleasure that compete, all to their own advantage, with the cultivation of the habit of reading good books are the automobile and the moving-picture theatre. We should grant these institutions their proper share in creating for the ordinary mortal an idealized atmosphere for his material world; but we should not avoid the challenge to put forward the bid of good reading for a part of the time of this same movie-loving, automobile-moving ordinary mortal. Those who regret the passing customs of the days of our grand­fathers, when from their non-statistical, sentimental point of 
view everybody read, must realize that people of two generations ago, as well as those of a hundred generations ago, had splendid means and many manners of wasting their time upon inferior pleasures, and that we of to-day do not possess the exclusive right of the ages in the matter of being frivolous in our amuse­ments. The particular forms that we. in our weakness, have devised for avoiding the use of our minds and for keeping our feelings upon a low plane have, indeed, changed from those of an earlier day: they are conspicuously more rapid imd more nervously jerky. Old-fashioned reading, on the contrary, was a quiet, leisurely habit; old-fashioned books were timed to the speed of the age in which they were written. The most popular modern form of writing is short; if necessity makes a narrative comparatively long, it is furnished the reader in brief install­ments. The average modern reader demands a quick, skim­ming, hilarious rnn over a smooth, well-paved boulevard; he starts with a jump; he ·will endure no turn-outs ; he refuses to look at the scenery; he speaks to no passer-by; he makes di­
rectly for the next village. 
Let us not make a stupidly uncompromising stand against the reading of journalistic writing. It will be useless. !Jet us rather try to adjust the habits of the pupils we teach between the case of the ephemeral magazine and permanent books. Are we making the best use we could make of the immense army of teachers of literature and the enormously costly machinery we are employing in guiding the public reading habit from its strongly advertised-to, line-of-least-resistance taste up to a taste for good reading ? This service to civilization all of us want to render. Are we, however, encouraging the further reading of worth-while books by teaching the books we are teaching in the way in which we teach them 1 
The present practice of teaching literature in the secondary schools has quite generally failed to implant in any large num­ber of their pupils a genuine desire to read good books. The particular part of this practice that is most discouraging is the incessant teaching of the history of literature and the use as a text-book of a manual history of literature, which is full of names, dates, and summary criticism, in place of books that are full of poems, plays, and essays. A text history of litera­
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ture, unless it is used as a companion guide to a good course in reading, is a pedagogical abomination. To the teacher who has read little, and who does not know what to do with the little he has read, it is, of course, a God-send; for it gives this teacher a body of definite facts to work with; he is able to as­sign so many pages to be accurately learned; and on this matter he may set an examination. To define literature positively is almost impossible; to define it negatively is easy: it is not, above all, a cold record of names, dates, and titles. When a student has learned that Walter Scott, of whose works the student has read, at best, Iv·anhoe and selections from Scott's poems, was born in 1771, died in 1832, and wrote a large number of novels, which he knows by title, he has not learned anything about literature. Repetition by a student who has read none of his work of book-made criticism of Matthew Arnold's poetry is worse than useless instruction. Beyond being useless, it is not quite honest to give an opinion about poetry one has not read. The honest thing to do with a poem is to read it, dislike it, or enjoy it. After one has read a poem, one may have an opinion about it with perfect frankness, whether one's opinion is correct or not. Furnishing pupils another's judgment about literature, without giving the pupils a chance to square the 
thing criticized with the criticism, magnifies the Vi'eight of crit­ical authority and discourages the exercise of independent opin­ion. Interest will not lie where there is no chance for personal opinion to express itself. 
The history of any school subject should be taught only to students who know something about the subject. It should not be studied independently of the subject. From a course in the history of literature that precedes the reading of much li~erature negative, or positively bad, results follow. It is a pernicious practice to force such a study upon a mass of students who have done no reading at home and little at school. 
If we do not teach the history of literature, what shall we teach? Some hold the opinion that in literature there is a quality so free, so pleasantly untrammelled, that formal in­struction hinders, rather than helps, grasping its spirit; that it defies definite schoolroom analysis ; that drama and pedagogy are contradictory terms; and that poetry and lesson-plans are polarly separated. Whether this opinion be true or not, there can be no doubt that formalism in instruction in literature is more damaging to the spirit of the subject than it is to that of any other subject we teach. In regard to the harm done by undue formalism, one need not go so far as to accept the whole doctrine of Mr. H. G. Wells to admit a basis of correctness in his protest. Mr. Wells says: "What you organize you kill. Organized morals or organized religion or organized thought are dead morals and dead religion and dead thought. Priests and schoolmasters and bureaucrats get hold of life, and try to make it all rules, all etiquette and regulation and cor­rectitude. " 1 The name under which organization is no"" best known is efficiency, the most popular catch-word of the day. It is in art and literature that the last refuge of protest against this fetish of the time is found. And now thoroughly forma­lized instruction in Werature, moving against the spirit of the thing it is attempting to teach, is too frequently striving, be­yond any other aim, to make instruction in literature efficient­
efficient and not stimulating. efficient and not pleasant, efficient 
and not encouraging. 
Literature is the expression of man's search for his place in creation. A writer tries to turn your thought or to ply your emotion by his record of his clash with existence. He may ex~ press, in a lyric poem, the impression he receives from the con­flict in the temporary mood of a single moment; his completely thought-out attitude toward life in an essay; he may represent, in a novel or drama, his keenly felt sensations rising from the shock of life throul!h the persons of created characters who, in his imagination, pass through crises that lead to happiness or to sorrow. ''Relate literature to life'' indeed! The familiar phrase is weak; literature is life! From the fact that it is life springs a great part of the difficulty of teaching literature; for it is no easy task to call people who are sequestered in the commonplace securities of life to a feeling above that plane of existence; to a feeling for the mystery of existence, for the ir­
'Mr. Britling Sees It Through, pp. 60-61. 
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responsible hilariousness of being alive; or to the unmotived sad­ness of the world. Poets and dramatists who write the deepest record of life do not live the average life, and do not think the average thoughts; their appeals are not so obvious and so gross as the appeals of ordinary human intercourse, and are not universally felt. But the big lump of mortality has a spark of ideality that may be made to glow by incessant fanning. 
Fanning the fiame, leading students from a twenty-four-hour­the-day commonplace contemplation of life that ltas n<• time for beauty and truth-this is the task of the teacher of literature. This task he cannot, of course, perform if he is uot enthusiasti­cally interested in living, and if he is not of suffi.eirut s<:rrnitive­ne.'is of nature to receive sensations from his own conflict with life beyond the vulgar pleasures of material existence. The spirit qualities of the man who is teaching literattin· are, after all, of greater account than matter and method. Feeling, fine­ness, understanding enthusiasm, intense interest founded upon knowledge, are worth more than courses in methods, patented schemes of instruction, or college degrees. The man's the thing. Although personality does not make up for lack of knowledge, there is no good reason why the teacher with a catching interest in the subject he is teaching may not h1ow as much about it as does the mechanical laborer after mere facts. We should always be careful, too, not to mistake displayl'ul sentimentality for· personality; and we should always disting-uish between the hollowness and ineptitude of that sort of tea('.bin~ which, in assumed ecstasy, fulfils its whole service by such oft. repeated comment as "Ah, see the beautiful line!" and the genuine feeling of real appreciation. Condemnation of the af­fected and stagey does not mean, however, that a teacher shall be so modest that he will refrain from showing with spirit his own likes and dislikes, and that he will keep the expression of his appreciation for his own closet. A teacher's enthusiasm for the beautiful must lead others to a dislike of the ugly; insistent exhibition of the sincere, the simple, the harmonious, the heart­felt must raise in many who witness the exhibition a continually growing repugnance to the affected, the crude, the commonplace, the sentimental. Taste is habit ; habit can be formed but by imitation and practice. 
Bulletin of the University of Texas 
If liking and taste for literature are to be formed, there must be found in the material used for teaching literature a common ground for the young, unformed tastes of the pupils and the older, developed tastes of the teacher. There is grave question as to whether or not many of the books suggested for use by the college entrance examination lists are well selected for attaining the object of arousing a liking for reading. An honest and pragmatic way of answering the question as to the fitness of some of the books in this list is to go beyond the pupils and to ask the teacher if he reads, or if he would read had he the time, these books for his own pleasure. Does he spend his spare time in reading Milton ? Did he at any time in his life do so 1 Frankly, many of these universally used books cannot be made, even by good teaching, fascinatingly interesting to immature boys and girls. The gap between their ideality, between their learning, and the plane of life to which the usual indiscriminate­ly assembled high school group is accustomed is too great easily to be bridged even by excellent teaching. Milton did not address his poems to youths of sixteen with no Latin and Greek train­ing, who cannot, with interesting exceptions, wholly enjoy his praise of the reasonably temperate life and the brooding joys of the contemplative man. Too precious stones may be cast before the very youthful. 
Even the well-educated teacher finds difficulty in making many of the high school reading requirements incentives for further reading. The case is worse when these books are put into the hands of rule-of-thumb teachers who devote most of their ener­gies to furnishing information, obtained from introductions to the text or from other helpful sources, that sets up a ''back­ground of appreciation"; that supplies a biography of the author and a picture of his age; that presents a formal analysis of the characters and the plot or the argument, and a definition of the literary form. Such instruction has a very worthy place as instruction in history, biography, and logical analysis. But usually the spirit, the feeling, the thought fly out of the house of facts. The student who has passed an examination that is set to test his knowledge in regard to the external facts of a poem usually feels that he has successfully solved a puzzle, which is, indeed, a high form of intellectual pleasure, but 
The English Bulletin 
it is not an artistic satisfaction. The student may have, fur­thermore, solved the puzzle without having read the book. He may have taken the advice given several years ago by a well-known tutor of his day to a younger tutor: ''In preparing students [for college entrance examinations] never allow them to read the books. It merely confuses them and wastes time. Coach them carefully in the plot of each book and the names of the characters ; and make them learn by heart, with exact attention to the spelling and the paragraphing, several short compositions on each book. Then they will be sure to pass.'' 
Many of the books in the high school list, one must admit, have only a historical interest. Many of them are intellectually too deep or spiritually too subtle for young and indiscriminately collected students. Literature is, after all, selective. We cannot force it. We must prepare for it. In the school course of our day no care for a reasonable approach to the big things in litera­ture is taken, and students too frequently find themselves suddenly over their literary depth. A natural method of introduction to the great past of literature is an acquaintance with the worth­while writing of our own time. Getting students interested in present-day literature is a comparatively easy task. The average person is more interested in the politics, the social conditions, and the thought of his own day, whether they are superior or inferior to these manifestations of life in other ages, than he is in the politics, the social conditions, and the thought of any other time. It is only the antiquarian spirit of every age that is not interested in the life and writing of its period, and that neglects it because it is different from the life and the writing of the golden ages. Scholasticism upholds the doctrine of com­parative excellence to the point of complete exclusion of the present; but it offers no good reason why, rather than allowing the legitimate curiosity of beings who are alive to the expression of their own world to run to seed in mere journalistic writing, we should not turn it to a consideration of the books that try to interpret modern life; why we should not seize the concern of to-day for to-day, direct it, and convert it into good. The an­swer of scholasticism-read only authors who are dead !-is too 
Bulletin of the University of Texas 
nearly a flaunting protest against the present; it not only ignores the present, but it teaches by implication and by lack of example the doctrine that the day of the making of literature is over. Especially the young student should be made to feel that art is a living thing, that its expression has not ceased, and that all of its examples do not lie on the far side of the river of death. The contrary view is a disheartening doctrine, which is partly responsible for the lack of interest in any sort of literature, past or present, among those who go out of our schools. 
Objections to offering compositions by living writers to living students are frequently heard. One of the most common is that present-day writing cannot be estimated. If one cannot say that a poem is a good poem or a bad poem, whether it was writ. ten in 1635 or in 1916, <me 's critical faculties are blinderl by the fear of tradition. By "estimate" is usually meant fear that Mr. Masefield, for example, will next week do something so dif­ferent from what one has commended him this week for having done that one will have to revise one's opinion of him. The ob. jection that modern literature is not worth while comes usually from those who have read little of the best of recent writing, and who are so wedded to the traditions of the past that any question of the absolute perfection of the materials and pattern" of art of another day sends them scurrying from those adven­turers who try to do things in an unconventional manner. Th.: objection that students will read so much good modern writing that there is no necessity for including it in formal school in­struction is founded upon a false estimate of the public's read­ing habits. The best and quickest sellers of the day the public does read, but the best writing of its own time the great mass of the people knows little of. The schools do not tell. The schools of another generation will offer instruction in what is being written now. 
A real difficulty to be overcome in any attempt to include recent writing in the matter of school instruction fr, the p•irely commercial problem of getting modern compositions at prices low enough to suit the interests and purses of the paren1s of 0'1r pupils. On account of the absence of copyright, and of th as­surance of large annual sales, school editions of the works of authors standardized by age are now sold at extremely reason­
The English Bulletin 
able prices. Anthologies, too, have made accessible poems and essays that bought in single editions would run the bo0k-p,1r­chase price of a reading course very high. But recent writing cannot be put into cheap publication form, or included in antho·· logies, unless assurance is given the poet and publisher tl1at there will be a general school use of their wares. We mm;t, then, confess ourselves under the government of the publisher and the poet-and who will begrudge the poet his small share 7 -or under the necessity of making the dissemination of litera­ture cheap. 
There is another difficulty. Left to his own choice, many a teacher would make injudicious selections from the mass or modern writing; too many teachers would descend to a low journalistic plane, and would follow the direction of p<~pu~ar non-resistance. The teacher need not, however, be left any more free to make his own selections of modern literature than he is now to draw up his reading list from the books of resNctable age. His college training ought to direct the secondary school teacher in choosing the books of yesterday he will use; but his college training has failed, in the large majority of inEtane:es, to give him any information that will help him in regard to the literature of to-day. 
This is only a minor responsibility the college bears for many of the shortcomings of school instruction in literatu!'e. .A long list must be admitted, but it cannot be set down here J;et this confession serve. We college teachers are too fond o[ helieving that our pupils have the same specialized interests that we have developed in university graduate schools; and our students who become teachers, absorbing our interests in problems in the his­tory of literature, pass them on, in diluted mixture. t.o immature boys and girls, soolll to be men and women of a work-a-day world, to whom the problems of literary history wiiJ be of small consequence, but to whom the joy and the com;olation of reading Hhould mean much. 
CONCERNING CORRELATION IN THE TEACHING OF 

ENGLISH COMPOSITION. 
BY PAULINE BELLE WARNER, B. A., TEACHER OF ENGLISH IN THE BRYAN STREET HIGH SCHOOL, DALLAS 
Foreword 
A constantly recurring subject in educational journals and in teachers' meetings during the past few years has been the ques­tion of correlating the work in composition with tht: pupil's other studies and other school and extra-school activities and in­terests. 'l'hat the work in English composition should be pushed as a unifying and cons.erving force in the schools is generally conceded. That such a procedure would, moreover, result in a great saving of time, energy, and nervous force is also admit­ted. But, notwithstanding the prominence and popularity which the subject has attained, no one, so far as I am aware, has as yet treated it in a manner adequate to its importance, nor has any one come forward with a practical and objective plan by which so highly desirable an end may be achieved. I do not wish by this statement to depreciate the work of others, but merely to assign a reason why I have been induced to come for­ward with an attempt to fill up the obvious chasm. 
In the prosecution of my undertaking, I have made a careful and searching investigation of the question as a whole with the view of obtaining a basis for constructiv.e recommendations. I have profited by various articles that others have written on the subject, but I have in every case tried out in my own classes all suggestions which I have adopted from these sources. The bulk of the outlines that I give are, however, built up on my own thought and experience in teaching not only English composi­tion, but other subjects as well. It is not intended that these outlines shall supplant in any measure the text-book in composi­tion. They are designed to serve as a helpful guide to the teacher of English composition in the upper elementary grades in the work of correlating composition with other subjects. It is also not intended that the outlines shall be followed rigidly in every detail. The teacher is left free to avail herself of her own initiative and versatility in teaching, and the pupil equally free to preserve his own individuality in learning. My aim from first to last has been to indicate some of the more import­ant fields in which correlation may be practiced and to set forth in some detail various practical schemes by which it may be achieved. "All subjects may be correlated," says Dr. Hopkins in his excellent little treatise, The Teaching of English, "but of course the principal object is not to teach geography, history, arithmetic, but to use so much of any subject as may be con­venient in helping the student to grow in thought and in co­incident capacity for expression." It is obvious that much of the pleasure and effectiveness of the work in composition will result from its spontaneity and adaptation to circumstances. The specimen compositions which appear in the following pages are not presented as models of their kind, but as merely suggestive of what a teacher might expect and accept from her pupils. Many students, it is to be hoped, will and do achieve results far superior to these productions, which are, in virtually every instance, the work of students of ordinary ability in composition writing. 
Just what, specifically, is to be gained by correlation, the conscientious and conservative teacher will demand to know. This question can best be answered by a consideration of the object of composition teaching. That object is succinctly stated, I believe, by Miss Rose Colby, in a recent issue of the Bulletin of the Illinois Association of Teachers of Engligh: ''Composi­tion has for its main business to help boys and girls into the way of getting possession of their thought, arranging it, and then putting it into words.'' Thus, it will be seen, the work of composition teaching involves a threefold process. First, the pupil must be helped to get possession of his thought. If he has no ideas, or few, says a prominent educator, the plight of the children of Israel in making bricks without straw is pleasant in comparison. What is more natural, then, than to let him write and talk about the things with which he is occupied at school, at home, or on the playgrmmd? He certainly has ideas about these things. All he needs is to be put in the way of get. ting full possession of them. "The subjects given a pupil for composition," says Professor Minto on this point, "should in­spire his confidence in himself, not be a load for him to carry. If he has an abundance of ideas, he will be likely to express him­self with ease and force.'' 
The second step, the organization of thought, once the pupil gets it into his possession, is of supreme importance. For this reason, I have devoted what, I fear, some may consider an undue proportion of space to this feature of the work. Just how cor­relation aids the process at this point is, perhaps, not so easy to see. Suffice it to say, then, that it provides the student with some­thing to organize. Not the least important element in the building of anything, be it a sentence or a steamship, is ma­terial with which to build. Those of us who were taught com­position in the ''good old-fashioned way'' know what it feels like as a twelve-year-old to be given on Friday a subject like "The Mill Will. Never Grind with the Water that Has Passed," with the injunction to hand in on next Monday morning a com­position on that subject. We have a vivid recollection also of how we wrestled all day Saturday with the task, and even stole off alone and in secret at odd intervals on Sunday and struggled vainly to compose something, even a few sentences; and of how, in sheer desperation, just before retiring on Sunday evening, we took down the encyclopedia and read up on the subject of "mills" in the vain hope that the ponderous tome would shed a ray of light on the puzzling thing. 
The third, and most important, step in the process-the ex­pression of the thought in words-depends upon and is condi­tioned by the two former steps. Professor Wells, of the Uni­versity of California, contends that correct expression is impos­sible without clear, definite thinking on the part of the student, and that most of the difficulties in expression arise from the fact that there is a hazy, ill-defined idea in the mind of the writer. Professor Wells strongly urges that the teacher require the student to have his though1:8 clearly formulated in his mind, before he be permitted to put them in writing. If this result be attained, he declares, there will be no conflict between self­expression and correct expression, as the latter will follow log­ically from the former. 
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It is obvious, then, that by doing composition work in con­nection with other departments and with the home and other outside interests of the pupils, we make the work of the English instruction a conserving and unifying force in the school and a connecting link between school life and home life. It is obvious also that the procedure operates to render more highly effective the efforts of both teacher and pupil in their respective tasks of composition teaching and composition writing. 
I. Report of a recent recitation in a:rithmetic, geography, com­position, etc.1 
OUR FIRST LESSON IN PERCENTAGE. 
We had our first lesson in percentage yesterday. Our arith­metic teacher, Miss---, did not assign a lesson the day before, but told us that we should take up a new subject next day. 
When we came to class next morning she began by asking us to reduce a number of fractions to hundredths, as 1/2, %, 2 / , , etc. We could do this easily. Then she had us write the results in decimal forms also, for example : 
1h=50/100=.50; %=75/ 100=.75. 
When we had practiced this for about fifteen minutes, she told us that in business operations it is customary to express fractions as hundredths, but that the denominator, 100, is omit­ted, and the symbol % or the word per cent used in its place. For instance, the whole of anything is 100% of itself, one-half of it is 50% of it, etc. She now wrote on the board in a ver­tical column 1, 1/2, 14, %, 1/ 5, etc., and called on us for the different ways of denoting each. We could now express each number in four different ways: 1=100/100=1.00=100%, or 100 per cent; 1/5-20/100=20%, or 20 per cent. 
Just here the bell for recess rang. The recitation had been so interesting that the period seemed shorter than usual. 
'The essays here given were written by pupils of the sixth and seventh grades, respectively. 
Bulletin of the University of Texas 
WE LEARN THE MEANING OF COMPOSITION 
We had a very interesting lesson in English this morning. The subject was, What Composition Is. We learned that the word composition may be applied to other arts besides the art of speaking and writing, and that it means putting things to­gether so as to make one thing out of them. We had never heard of that before. We had always thought that it only meant ex­pressing our thoughts in words, either spoken or written. But Miss Nelson led us to see that the artist composes who paints a picture, because he puts forms and colors together in a pleasant order; that the musician composes who makes up a piece of music, because he puts notes together in a certain relation; and that the workman composes who builds a house, a bridge, or a fence, because he puts lumber, mortar, and brick together in an orderly way and thus makes one thing out of them. Miss Nelson asked us if we could say that the teamster composes who dumps a pile of brick from a wagon upon the ground. We said no, because he does not put the brick together in any order and so does not make a united thing out of them. 
II. Imaginary exploits of the pnpil, calling into nse facts learned in geography, history, physiology, etc. 
The pupil relates his adventures at the Boston Tea Party, which he attended in disguise along with his father. 
He is a pupil in the school of Ichabod Crane, and he describes a typical day in this school. (The day upon which Ichabod re­ceives the invitation to the Van Tassel party would be a good choice.) 
He is drummer boy in Washington's army during the retreat from New York, and he tells of the crossing of the Delaware, or of the surprise attack on Trenton. 
He is a ship's captain, and he makes up his cargo in the ports of South America, or Africa, or India, etc. He is a blood corpuscle, and he describes his journey through the circulatory system. He is thrown into a situation similar to that of a character in the reading lesson, and tells how he acts. 
TM English Bulletin 
He is one of the party who accompany George Rogers Clarke on his perilous journey to the West, and he describes the hard­ships endured, the taking of Vincennes, etc. 
He is an especially difficult problem in arithmetic, and he describes the pathetic or humorous attempts which various pu­pils make to solve him. 
III. Interpretation of a Poem. 
The pupil gives briefly the thread of the story, if the poem is narrative, explains the deeper meaning of the piece, giving the theme, the lesson taught and its application, etc. The selection may be assigned the pupil for independent study, or the teacher may read it to the class and, by skilful questioning, lead his pupils to discover the hidden meaning-to make the interpre­tation themselves. Poems adapted to this sort of treatment are such as Lanier's Song of the Chattahoochee, Bryant's To a Waterfowl, Emerson's Days, Joaquin Miller's Columbus, Long­fellow's The Builders, Julia Eastman's The Bluebell, Celia Thax­ber 's The Sandpiper, Tennyson's Bugle Song and Crossing the Bar, and Leigh Hunt's Abou Ben Adhem. A composition of a seventh grade pupil on Longfellow's Excelsior follows. The pro­duction, though full of faults, is not devoid of promise. 
A Study of Longfellow's Excelsior 
The story which Longfellow tells us in his beautiful poem Excelsior has a deeper meaning than one gets when he first reads the poem. It is not merely the story of a rash young man who attempted to climb the Alps. It represents a young person's efforts to achieve a high aim in life. The banner with the strange device which the young man carries signifies his lofty aim. The mountain represents the hard work he must do if he lives up to his ideal. The happy homes and the three per­sons,-the old man, the maiden, and the peasant,-represent different kinds of temptations which come to stop him as he struggles onward. The constant repeating of "Excelsior" (higher) signifies that he keeps his mind and heart always on his ideal so that he will not be tempted to give it up. That one 
Bulletin of the University of Texas 
cannot always succeed in what he tries to do is shown by the death of the young man before he reaches the mountain-top. But the voice in the air, which took up the cry of ''Excelsior,'' is the promise that the young man will be rewarded in heaven for trying to do great things, even if he did not succeed in doing all that he attempted. 
This poem teaches us that if we wish to achieve a high and noble purpose in life we must never let the temptations o.f pleasure and idleness cause us to turn aside from our path. We must be unselfish, persevering, courageous, and willing to bear great hardships. History is full of such persons as the young man in the poem. Washington, Columbus, Lincoln, Booker T. Washington, and Edison are the best examples I can think of now. Each one of these men made up his mind early in life to live to a purpose, and then spent the rest of his life doing his level best to accomplish the thing he set out to do. 
IV. Compositions based upon the pupil's own experience. 
The following are suggested subjects: 
A narrow escape, or other exciting adventure. 
A joke that failed (or succeeded). 
How I made a garden (a pen for rabbits, a pie, an apron, etc.) . 
How I care for my rabbits (pony, canaries, room, etc.). 
How our baby behaved over her first shoes. 
When the whole family salted the oatmeal. 
Report of a recent ball game, as discussed by two boys on the winning side ; by two boys on the losing side ; by a boy on the winning side and one on the losing side. An account of the last meeting of the club of which the pupil is a member or of his class at Sunday School. 
Story of the pupil's cleverness or stupidity as a small child. 
Report of an article read in a recent magazine or other period­
ical. This report should not be merely a mechanical recapitula­tion of the substance of the article read. In addition to the brief but comprehensive summary of the article, the pupil should make some original comment on the discussion ; e. g., he might state in what way it applies to the members of his class, or he might 
The English B1J,Uetin 
indicate some reason why they should be interested in the sub­ject. The excellent articles by Colonel Sterrett on the conserva­tion of bird life now appearing in the Dallas News furnish ex­cellent material for such reports. Periodicals like The Outlook, The Independent, and The National Geographic Magazine will prove helpful in this sort of exercise. 
V. Brief argumentative compositions on subjects in which a student is interested. 
Why it pays to tell the truth when in a tight place. Why a grammar-school graduate should go through high school instead of going to work. Persuade a prospective purchaser to buy a Pierce-Arrow bicycle. 
Persuade a "Qoy or girl to subscribe for the Youth's Companion or Saint Nicholas instead of spending the money for a pair of skates or other toy. 
Favorite character in history or fiction, with reasons for pref­erence. 
What 	our school needs most. 
Why I can study better at school than at home (or vice versa). 
A pupil's outline of the last-named subject follows: 
''Resolved, That it would be better for grammar-school stu­dents to study all lessons at school.'' 
Brief for the Affirmative 
A. Studying at school w.ould be better for our health, fo1· 
1. 
We should have our evenings for play and sleep. 

2. 	
There would be no danger of over-work, as our time for study would be limited. 

3. 	
We should not worry or fret over our lessons as we do at home. 


B. Studying at school would be better for our minds, for 
1. 	We should train ourselves to concentrate our thoughts on our work in order to get it finished in the time set aside for it. 
Bulletin of the University of Texas 
2. 	We should not receive improper aid as we do at home, but should have to think things out for ourselves. 
C. We should do more effective studying, for 
1. 
We should not be interrupted. 

2. 	
We should study in daytime while we are not tired and sleepy. 

3. 
We should be near the reference books we need. 

4. 	
We should study more willingly and earnestly when every one else is studying. 

5. 	
'l'he teacher would show us how to study and would give us what help we need. 


VI. Written r;riticism of an oral composition deVivered by a fellow-student or of a composition which one of the· pupils has copied upon the board before the opening of the recitation. 
Half a period each week might well be used in this exercise. The composition in hand should be studied in point of excel­lencies as well as of deficiencies. For an oral composition, the criticism might follow some such scheme as the following, the pupils jotting down their notes as the speaker proceeds: 
1. 
Position of the speaker; ease and self-possession or absence of the same; earnestness of manner; interest of speaker in his subject; control of voice, etc. 

2. 
Grammatical errors; mispronounced words and slurred endings ; slang, vulgarisms, and misused words. 

3. 
Arrangement of ideas; does the speaker ramble or stick to his subject? stop when through? is his climax effective or fiat? is his conclusion graceful and adequate or awkward and abrupt? 


For a criticism of a written composition, the following outline is suggested : 
1. 
Form, neatness, legibility. 

2. 
Misspelled words, errors m punctuation, capitalization, hyphenation, division, etc. 

3. 
Grammatical errors; slang, vulgarisms, misused words; nice or happy choice of word or phrase; good descriptions. 

4. 
Subject matter, arrangement of ideas; paragraphing; ef­fectiveness 0£ climax, if any; conclusion. 


A seventh-grade pupil's criticism of a written composition follows. 
A CRITICISM OF MARY SMITH'S COMPOSITION ON "MY FIRST BIRTHDAY PARTY" 
The composition is written neatly and legibly. The form is good, except that the left-hand margin is uneven in places and the last paragraph is indented farther than the other two. Three words are misspelled: ''occurred,'' ''which,'' aRd ''curtain.'' The comma is omitted in the compound sentence ''The event oc­curred on my fourth birthday, but I remember it distinctly." The last sentence in the second paragraph needs a period, and the words "reddish-brown" and "dining-room" need hyphens. There are two grammatical errors: "Presently the sound of horses hoofs were heard" and ''every one of the girls wore their best party dress." "Was" should be used in the first sentence, because the subject "sound" is singular; and "her" should be used in the second, because it refers to ''one,'' and not to "girls." The description of the tea-table is fine. You can al­most taste the goodies described. The climax is very good, and the conclusion is not too long or tiresome. 
VII. Topics requiring research. 
The encyclopedia, books of biography, and other reference works will be called into requisition. Such themes should be assigned a week in advance in order that the pupil may make a visit to the city library, if necessary, to gather his material. It is not expected that he will give a verbatim report of what he reads there, but a brief, well-organized summary or outline of the chapter or passage, with some comment upon it, if he be equal to the task. If rightly conducted, this exercise will lead the student to consult reference and other non-fiction books with interest and enthusiasm, a thing greatly to be desired. It has been my observation that the minds of children who give a rea­sonable portion of their time to such reading expand more rap­idly than do the minds of those who are restricted to fiction. Moreover, the reading of biography will lay the foundation of historical knowledge and instil high ideals. The teacher will find that many of her pupils will not restrict their reading to the single topic assigned, but will be interested enough in many cases to read the whole book. The following are a few suggested topics: 
Benjamin Franklin's first business transaction. (Brook's 
True Story of Benjamin Franklin.) 
A successful newsie-. (How the boy Edison sold one thousand papers in a day. See Rolt-Wheeler's Life of Edison.) Booker T. Washington's entrance examination at Hampton Institute. (See his autobiography, Up from Slavery.) Florence Nightingale's first patient. (See Mattheson 's 
Florence Nightingale.) 
A classification of birds according to feet and claws. (En­cyclopedia.) A classification of birds according to methods of building their nests. (Encyclopedia.) How Benjamin Franklin learned to write. (A1ttobiography of Franklin.) The four days' schooling of Davy Crockett. (Sprague 's David Crockett.) 
Wild life in 'l'exas. This should be subdivided into (a) plants; (b) animals; (c) birds; (d) insects. (See Benedict and Lomax's The Book of Texas.) 
Abraham Lincoln's Schooling. (See the Life of Lincoln by Schurz or Nicolay.) 
Edison and the goose eggs. (This should illustrate the great inventor's inquisitiveness as a child. See Rolt-Wheeler's Life of Edison.) 
Grant's famous horse trade. (See Lang's Life of U.S. Grant.) 
An account of the "Bird Village." (Story of how the vil­lage of Meridian, N. H., became a paradise for birds. See Baynes' Wild Bird Guests.) 
Why we sh::nld protect birds. (Should be given in the fol­lowing subdivisions: (a) economic reasons; (b) aesthetic and moral reasons. See Baynes' Wild Bird Guests.) 
VIII. Examination of a pupil's written work in subjects other than English. 
In those schools in which there can be effected an intelligent and sympathetic cooperation of other departments with the de­partment of English, the teacher of composition should from time to time call on the teachers of other subjects for a pupil's examination papers, note-books, outlines, etc. A cursory glance through these will enlighten her as to the extent to which the pupil puts into practice what he has learned in the English class, and will give her a further basis for evaluating the work of the pupil in question. If a pupil knows that his note-book in history is eventually to come under the inspection of his English teacher, is it not reasonable to believe that he will at­tend more carefully to the mechanics of composition in the prep­aration of the same ? The great objection to this form of pro­cedure is the extra amount of work which it demands of the already over-burdened English teacher. It is much better that each teacher correct the English of her pupils or point out how an explanation lacks clearness (to quote from the Report of the Committee on Cooperation of the Association of Teachers of English of New York City), for the pupil will then be im­pressed with the general validity of the principles of composition and will become more uncomfortably conscious of his shortcom­ings. 
IX. Exercises in the organization of thought: the outlining of chapters 01· passages in text-books, articles in magazines, sermons or speeches which the piipil hears or reads. 
selections from literature, and the making of 01itlines for themes. 
By showing how good writers arrange their thoughts in log­ical order, the teacher can lead the student to organize his ideas in an orderly and effective way. We are all familiar with Benjamin Franklin 's account of how he acquired a good prose style by a persistent study of the literary architecture or mech­anism of Addison 's Spectator. On this point, Professor Minto, in his Plain Principles of Prose Composition, says: ''The man who writes well must do so by example, if not by precept. What­ever he purposes to write, there are hundreds of things of the same kind in existence, some of which he must have read and cannot help taking more or less as patterns. If a man writes effectively without giving thought to the manner of his 
Bulletin of the Uni11ersity of Texas 
composition, it must be because he has chanced upon good models, and not merely because he knows his subject well, or feels it deeply, or has a natural gift of expression." 
In the making of outlines, elaborate headings and subheadings should be avoided. The pupil should be trained to grasp the large divisions of the subject and to appreciate the effect of their logical arrangement. Then he should be taught to select the main points under each heading. A sixth-grade pupil's out­line of an article in the Youth's Companion, written by Theodore Roosevelt and entitled Two Kinds of Courage, follows: 
Two Kinds of Courage 
Outline 
A. 	Introduction : The two kinds of courage and the necessity of each. 
B. Moral courage. 
1. 
What it is. 

2. 
Its value. 


C. Physical courage. 
1. 
What it is. 

2. 
Its value. 

3. 
Its uselessness if unaccompanied by moral courage. 


A seventh-grade pupil worked out the following outline of The Legend of Sleepy Hollow with only slight assistance from his teacher. 
Outline of The Legend of Sleepy Hollow 
A. Introduction. 
1. 
Scene of the story. 

2. 
Description and location of Sleepy Hollow. 

3. 
Magical influence of the air. 

4. 
Superstitions of the inhabitants. 

a. 'l'heir firm belief in the Headless Horseman. 

5. 
Effect of Sleepy Hollow on visitors. 


B. The Story. 
1. The hero, Ichabod Crane. 
a. His occupation. 
The English Bulletin 
b. 
Description of his person. 

c. 
Description of his schoolhouse. 

d. 
His methods of discipline. 

e. 
How he made himself useful to the patrons. 

f. 
His 	work as singing master. 

g. 
Attitude of the ladies toward him. 

h. 
His 	favorite pastime. 

(1) 
Reading Cotton Mather's tales. 

(2) 
Relating anecdotes of witchcraft, omens, etc., to the Dutch wives. 



i. 
His cowardice. 


2. The Van Tassels and their farm. 
a. 
Description of Katrina. 

b. 	
Description of the exterior of the Van Tassel home. 

c. 
Ichabod's delight in this scene of plenty. 

d. 	
Description of the interior of the Van Tassel home. 


3. Ichabod's rival, Brom Bones. 
a. 
Description of Bones and his character. 

b. 
Bones 's superiority over other suitors. 

c. 
Peaceful policy and preservation of Ichabod. 

d. 
Persecution of Ichabod by Bones. 


4. Ichabod's adventure. 
a. 
The invitation to the quilting frolic. 

b. 
Ichabod's preparation for the event. 

c. 
Description of Ichabod and old Gunpowder. 

d. 
Ichabod's enjoyment of the fine day. 

e. 	
Scene at the Van Tassel h-0me upon Ichabod's arrival. 

(1) 
The guests. 

(2) 
The feast. 



f. 
The dance of the younger set. 

g. 
The story-telling among the older guests. 

(1) 
Stories of war. 

(2) 	
Story of old Brouwer and the Headless Horseman. 




Bulletin of the University of Texas 
(3) 	
Brom Bones's story of his adventure with the apparition. 

(
4) 	Ichabod's stories from Mather and from his own experience. 


h. 
Departure of the guests. 

i. 	
Ichabod's tete-a-tete with Katrina and his crestfallen departure. 

j. 
His lonely ride homeward. 

(1) 
His fright at Major Andre's tree. 

(2) 
The 	apparition at the brook. 

(3) 
The chase and its horrible conclusio·i. 




C. Conclusion. 
1. 	
Absence of Ichabod next morning and the search for him. 

2. 	
Finding of his hat and bundle and the shattered pumpkin. 

3. 
Speculation of the villagers as to his disappearance. 

a. Brom Bones 's knowing look and laugh. 

4. 
The 	farmer's report. 

5. 
The old wives' story and its effect. 


SPELLING IN COLLEGE AND HIGH SCHOOL 
BY LEONIDAS WARREN PAYNE, JR., PH. D., ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR OF ENGLISH, THE UNIVERSITY OF TEXAS 
College professors are constantly complaining that the fresh­men who come up from the high schools are poorly trained in this or that branch. The professor of chemistry complains that the trouble he finds is that the freshman can't read; the pro­fessor of mathematics complains that the freshman can't reason; the professor of physics says that the freshman can't think ; and all with one accord say the freshman can't write or spell de­cently. "Why don't the high schools send us better prepared students 1" they cry. We are sure also that the high-school teachers are pushing the causes of the weaknesses and failures of their pupils back upon the grades. ' 'The grades are the place,'' they say, "where the pupils ought to be taught to read, and write, and spell. We ought not to be expected to have to teach grammar and reading and spelling along with the vast content material that we have to present." 
But this shifting of responsibilities back upon the lower de­grees in our system will never remedy the defects in our pupils. We must realize that it is every teacher's business to teach Eng­lish, whether he be high-school instructor or grade teacher. We may even say that it is the college professor's business to teach spelling if he finds that his students are deficient in this subject. Especially is it every college professor's business to teach the use and formation of the words in the more or less restricted vocabu­lary which attaches to his particular subject. Certainly all the high-school teachers are responsible for the English, and par­ticularly for the spelling, of their pupils. We must devise prac­tical schemes of co-operation and correlation, so that all the teachers may have a definite part in this special effort to teach correct English fo its various phases. We must devise plans for meeting what is acknowledged to be a deplorable need in the whole of our secondary school work and in our freshman classes in colleges-namely, the need for better ability and better habits in spelling. 
The reasons for the lack of ability in spelling among our 
freshmen and high-school students are manifold. In the first place, the attitude of the pupil towards spelling is one of care­less indifference or unconscious ignorance of his own weakness. He thinks he has finished spelling and put the subject behind him when he passes out of the regular spelling-book exercises of the grades. He has had nothing but mechanical drill on spelling, and hence he is left entirely dependent upon his more or less treacherous eye and ear memory for spelling the words he uses in his own original compositions and daily exercises in the various studies of his course. Frequently his teachers mark spelling er­rors; but they do not require these errors to be corrected, nor do they check up and especially penalize oversights in spelling by lowering of grades or having the exercises recopied. The child's spelling ability is left to develop or remain stationary or even 
to deteriorate as chance may direct. In most of our high­schools there is no time or place in the course for special instruc­tion in spelling, and in our colleges the teacher who spends any appreciable effort in trying to attain accurate spelling among his students is looked upon as a pedant or a picayunish trifler who is wasting valuable time and energy. It seems to me that there should be in every high school some definite effort to meet and solve the spelling problem, and even in our ro11eges there should be at least a definite plan for penalizing bad spelling and for providing a "hospital" method for the weak spellers. 
The old problem of "inherited weakness" in spelling bobs up serenely every now and then. There is never an adult who is a poor speller but is ready to defend the old saying that some people cannot learn to spell. ''My father was a poor speller before me,'' says one, ''and my children are coming along with similar defects.'' To acknowledge a congenital weakness in spelling is to acknowledge a congenital weakness in general in­telligence or brain power. Any person with average intelligence can learn to spell if he is willing to concentrate his efforts and pay the price necessary to learn to spell. If one begins with as­suming that he cannot do a given thing, he is foredoomed to failure; but if one begins with a feeling of confidence that a task can be accomplished, success is already half attained. I.Jet us, then, first of all assure our pupils that they can learn to spell 
The English Bulletin 
if they will only try. Many bad spellers have been cured by en­couragement and heroic treatment in the past, and anyone can certainly bring great relief to his own spelling infirmities if he will only persistently apply himself to remedial measures. 
English spelling is undoubtedly the most unscientific, irregu­lar, illogical, archaic, and difficult among the more widely used modern languages. This fact has caused many of us to magnify and unduly emphasize the practical difficulties in learning to spell reasonably well. Dr. W. Franklin Jones has shown us that the total vocabulary of 1050 students is only 4532 words. We can safely say that the actual working vocabulary of the average high-school student is not over 3000 words. Of these 3000 words not more than 1000 offer any real difficulty in spelling; and of these 1000 not more than 200 are frequently and persistently misspelled. Any high-school student with average intelligence can master perfectly 200 words in a twenty-minute period a day for two or three months at most; and if we can find the 200 words most frequently misspelled and concentrate on them, we shall have gone a long way toward solving our spelling problem. 
What each school should first set about doing, then, is to dis­cover the minimum list of 200 words which are actually most frequently misspelled by the pupils of the particular school. This can be done only by the cooperative effort of all the teachers in the school, so that the words from the various branches of study may be correlated. I have myself gathered material for a list of 170 words most commonly misspelled in the first and second year English classes in the University of Texas. This is a general list, and it may be easily adapted to the needs of any college or high school in the state. I shall be glad to distribute copies of this list among the teachers of Eng­lish who will use it and give me the benefit of their own experi­mentation in collecting material for practical spelling exercises in high-school and college classes. 
One of the most troublesome factors in the spelling problem is the repetition of common errors. What so appals us when we contemplate the bad spelling in our schools is not so much the number of words misspelled, as the number of times certain familiar words are repeatedly misspelled. Such words as led, lose, their, there, coming, truly, across, disappear, disappoint, separate, preparation are misspelled so frequently that the teach­er is surprised if one or more of them is not repeatedly misspelled in the average theme. A method of study which concentrates the pupil's attention on these common errors will, we believe, more than half solve the spelling problem. 
Moreover, in spite of the fact that it is difficult to formulate for English spelling many rules which do not fall to the ground because of numerous exceptions, there are at least five rules and two general principles that any pupil can learn to apply so as to save himself many a pitfall and many a time-consuming trip to the dictionary for purposes of verifying spelling. These five rules deal with (1) the doubling of final consonants before suf­fixes beginning with a vowel; (2) the dropping of final silent e before a suffix beginning with a vowel ; ( 3) the changing of y to i before a suffix beginning with a vowel other than i; (4) the ei and ie mnemonic device; and ( 5) the -eed and -ede mnemonic device. The two general principles that are helpful are, first, the use of the simpler form when there are two or more forms in general use; and, second, the general habit of etymologizing, or recalling the Latin or French forms of many words derived from the Romance languages. The first of these general principles leans toward simplification,-and there is none of us but would be glad to see many of the anomalies and inconsistencies in our language smoothed out,-and also gives us confidence in our own consistency of usage. If we know always that we prefer the simpler form, we are never in doubt as to which form we may have used on a previous page or in a previous article or exercise. The second of these general principles simply urges upon ui;; the necessity of thinking back to the real source or meaning of the word as we write it, and thus of correlating what we haYc learned from our Latin and other foreign language work with the actual form of derived words in our modern vocabulary. Students who are fortunate enough to have studied Latin will have little or no trouble with such words as separate from Latin separare "to separate," or ridiculous from Latin ridere, "to laugh''; or with the double or single consonants in annitally, centennial, desiccate, dissipate, disappoint, innocent, interritpt, 
inoculate, ocular, and the like. 
The English Bulletin 
The memorizing of the rule for doubling the final consonant, -namely, monosyllables and words accented on the final syl­lable, which end in a simple consonant preceded by a single vowel, double the final consonant before a prefix beginning with a vowel,-will give a sort of reason for and thus fix permanently in the mind the fact that beginning must have two n's and benefited must not have two t's, that referred must have two r's while offered must have only one. Of course th~re are a few exceptions that must be carefully segregated and memo­rized as such, but in the hundreds and hundreds of words in everyday use, the rule will apply accurately, and the constant use and practical application of it will beget confidence and finally comparative accuracy, even in a weak speller. A rule is not worth a thrip until it is absolutely mastered, both in its ex­ceptions and in its practical applications in hundreds of eases. 
The old key-word "lice" and the familiar rhyme: 
"I before e, 
Except after c, 
Or when sounded as a, 
As in neighbor or weigh,'' are merely mnemonic devices to tell us that in the ei and ie com­binations e follows c, and i follows all other consonants. A brief list of familiar exceptions must be memorized, but in dozens of familiar words the rule will apply. 
A motto worth memorizing for the -eed and -ede group is, ''If you wish to succeed, p.roceed to exceed;'' or if you prefer it in rhyme: 
"If you wish to succeed in learning to spell, 
Proceed to exceed even those who do well.'' These three words from Latin cedere, ''to go,'' are spelled -eed. All other words from this root are spelled -ede. There are not many words in this group, but with their compounds they make a great deal of spelling trouble. The whole list, so far as I have been able to compile it, is as follows: accede, antecede, cede, con­cede, intercede, precede, recede, retrocede, secede, exceed, pro­ceed, succeed. All the derivatives of these words follow the root spelling except in the case of the shortening of the central vowel, as in excess, success, process. The only real exception to the rule is procedure, which is spelled with e instead of ee, as we might be led to expect. Supersede is a catch word, because it happens to end in -ede, though it comes from Latin sedere, ''to sit,'' instead of cedere, ''to go''; hence it is spelled -sede instead of -cede. It seems to me that the material in this rule is interest­ing for its own sake, as well as exceedingly practical in fixing in the mind the correct spelling of this troublesome group of words. 
The rule for dropping the silent e before the present parti­ciple in -ing is notably troublesome in such words as coming, tiring, wiring, caring, etc. Similarly the changing of y into i in words like lilies, countries, cries, tries, replies, or the unchanged y in plurals like jockeys, monkeys, chimneys, etc., gives rise to numerous errors in practically every set of high-school or col­lege-freshman themes. Why the teachers should go on and on correcting these same old errors when a little systematic drill and severe penalizing for infraction of well-known rules would save all the trouble, is a thing hard to understand. Even if no regular spelling period can be provided, it would pay the Eng­lish teachers to give up from ten to twenty minutes of the Eng­lish period every day for a month or more early in the term to practical exercises on these few rules and on a concentrated list of the 200 most frequently misspelled words. In any circum­stances it would pay the English teacher to have each of his pupils keep a cumulative list of the words actually misspelled during the whole year. The average high-school student and college freshman would probably collect between thirty and forty words in the course of the year, and the poor speller would have from fifty to one hundred errors to record. A few of the very weakest ones might have an even larger number of words to record. 
The question of finding time for spelling in the high-school course is a difficult one. We have added so many new studies and given up so much time to laboratory work in the sciences and in the manual and domestic arts that there is little or no time left to be devoted specifically to drill in spelling. And yet in the business and social world the great majority of our students will have to prove their right to employment, and to advancement after they are employed, on their ability to express themselves accurately and clearly in their mother tongue. We cannot afford to neglect 
The English Bulletin 
spelling and writing. Our spoken anC. written English is, whether we will it so or not, largely the criterion by which we are estimated and placed in the social and business world. Hence we must not neglect to give our pupils every opportunity to learn to spell and write correctly. 
The English teachers are held largely responsible, not only for the history of English literature and the science of rhetoric, but for the speaking ability, the reading ability, the writing ability, and the spelling ability of all the pupils in the high school. This is an unequal division of responsibility. 'I'he mathematics, history, language, science, and domestic and manual arts teachers are equally responsible for the spelling and the writing of the pupils who come under their care. If all the teachers will unite on some general plan for the pupil's improve­ment in all phases of his use of the vernacular, much can be ac­complished. The superintendent or principal should demand the cooperation of every member of his faculty in the solution of the who-le problem of correct English and especially the spelling problem. For example, if every teacher in the school would not only correct all spelling errors but require each pupil to keep a list of all the words he misspells in each branch of study, a basic vocabulary for profitable drills in spelling could be speedily ac­cumulated. Mr. John A. Lester, of Pottstown, Pa., has col­lected a list of 900 words actually misspelled by 1100 boys of the average age of sixteen to seventeen. Other schools could collect similar lists. All the teachers should assist in this, and all the teachers should grade uniformly for misspelled words. In some hfrrh schools the teachers of all branches are required to count off, on the basis of 100, three points for each misspelled word in every composition, exercise, examination, quiz, and note­book handed in by the pupils; but if the pupil will write off each misspelled word twenty times, the teacher will raise the grade two peints for each word. In other high schools a graded system of penalties is attached to each misspelled word. In the eighth grade one point is counted off for each error; in the ninth grade, two points; in the tenth grade, three points; and in the eleventh grade, four points. This definite penalty for misspelled words in all subjects begets care on the part of the student. 
Another device in use in some of the larger high schools is known as the ''spelling hospital.'' This plan is fully described by W. S. Charters in the School Review, vol. XVIII, March, 1910. Professor Charters says that in a high school of 156 stu­dents all those who had an average of more than one misspelled word to the page of all their written work were required to enter a spelling class which met after regular hours once or twice a week. Regular drills on rules and commonly misspelled words were given. If a student showed marked improvement on his written exercises in the regular coiirse, he was permitted to come out of the "hospital." There were twenty-seven students placed -in the ''hospital'' at first; by the end of the term only ten ''in­corrigibles'' remained in the spelling class. This method has a fine effect on the whole school. Professor Charters summarizes the results as follows: ''The advantages of the hospital plan may be enumerated: (1) there is a jocular stigma connected with the hospital idea which, coupled with the necessity of spending one or two extra hours a week upon the work, makes the students anxious to get out of the class as soon as possible; (2) these same conditions encourage the students who are not naturally weak in these subjects to be more careful so that they will not be con­signed to the class; ( 3) as over against making everybody take part in a spelling and writing exercise, it has the advantage of allowing students who are reasonably satisfactory in these re­spects to spend their time doing something else, and not to waste it in doing what they already can do sufficiently well; ( 4) by collecting only those who are poor in these subjects, more indi­vidual attention can be paid to the difficulties of each student, because the number in the class is relatively small: and, lastly, the presence of such a class keeps before the student body and the whole corps of teachers, good standards in the matter of writing and spelling. Indeed, without the cooperation of the whole corps, the value of the work is materially lessened." 
The spelling problem has its difficulties, but its difficulties are not insurmountable. With diligence and persistence and thoughtful effort, any superintendent or teacher can make good spellers of at least 95% of his students. Under the present in­different attitude and haphazard methods in many of our hi1rh schools, about 50 % of the pupils are poor spellers. It goes with­out saying that conditions should be remedied. 
A QUESTIONNAIRE FOR ENGLISH TEACHERS IN 
TEXAS 
Below is given the form of a questionnaire that is now being printed and will soon be sent out to teachers of English in Texas schools. It will be remembered that a committee of seven was appointed at the last meeting of the English Section of the Texas State Teachers' Association for the purpose of camposing and issuing such a questionnaire. Delays for various causes have prevented the earlier issuance of the questions; but probably they will reach the individual teachers about the same time as this number of the Biilletin. In case the questionnaire is not re­ceived, the undersigned would appreciate notification to that effect. 
University of Texas ROBT. A. -k1.w. 
Name of teacher . ... ..... .. ............................... . 
Name and location of school. ........... .. .................. . 
Date of report ............................ ............... . 

A. General Statistics 
1. 
What subject or subjects besides English do you teach? 

2. 
How many periods (45 min. each) do you devote to teach­ing English? 

3. 
How many pupils have you in the first year of high school? The second year? 'l'he third year? The fourth year? What is the average number of pupils to the teacher in the English courses? 

4. 
How many of your students usually go to n@rmal schools or colleges after they have left the high school? 

5. 
What foreign languages are taught in your school? What percentage of your students are studying each of these languag-es ? 

6. 
How many books does your school library possess? How many of these were purchased specially for the work in English? 


B. The Teacher 
1. 
What is your preparation (normal or college degrees)? 

2. 
How many years have you taught? 


iO The University of Texas Bulletin 
3. 
What is your present salary? How does it compare with the salaries of other teachers in your school? 

4. 
What maximum salary can you reasonably expect to reach? 

5. 
What means have you to keep up your interest and your progress in English (reading, summer schools, travel, clubs, etc.) 1 


C. Aim..s and Methods 
1. What proportion of your time spent in English is devoted 
(a) 
To the study of the English classics 1 

(b) 
To the history of literature? 

(
c) To written composition 1 

(d) 
To oral composition? 

(e) 
To grammar? 


2. 
What device or devices do you use to stimulate interest in the study of English 1 

3. 
In what grade or grades do y-0u teach formal grammar? 


(a) 
What text do you use? 

(b) 
Do you have your students diagram sentences? 


4. 
What method do yau use to apply the principles of gram­mar to the pupils' written work? 

5. 
How frequently do you require written compositions in each grade? Average length 1 What is the average number of hours devoted by you each week to reading and correcting written compositions? Do you correct all written exercises? 

6. 
What success have you had in teaching oral English? 

7. 
What value do you place on the student's own writing in making up his grade? 

8. 
In grading test papers, do you take into consideration the student's use of English? Do other teachers ? 

9. 
What percentage of compositions are based on the classics? 

10. 
Do you require your pupils to correct mistakes in their compositions after yau have returned them? 

11. 
What text do you use in English literature 1 American literature? 

12. 
How much parallel reading do y-0u require in each grade? What rep-0rt do you require on it ? 

13. 
Make a list of the classics studied. 

14. 
Do you read aloud to your pupils, and do you require them to read aloud in class ? 

15. 
Do you give any time to personal conferences with your pupils ? 

16. 
Do you exempt any of your pupils from term examina­tions ? If so, under what conditions? 

17. 
What in your opinion should be the chief aims in the teaching of English (correct speaking, reading, grammar, writ­ing, foundation for later work in college, cultural value, practical advantages) ? 


EMMA C. KING, Baylor Female College, Belton, 
(MRS. ) MAMIE DOAK, Taylor High School, 
N INA C. Hn,L, Austin High School, 
CONSTANCE PESSELS, San Antonio High School, 

L. H. RATHER, Bonham High School, 

RoBT. A. LAw, The University of Texas, Committee.