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LIPPINCOTT'S LANGUAGE SERIES

LESSONS IN GRAMMAR

FOR SCHOOLS AND TEACHERS' INSTITUTES

BY

J. N. PATRICK, A.M.

AUTHOR OF LESSONS IN LANGUAGE, PSYCHOLOGY
TEACHERS, AND LIGHT on the Road.

FOR

Inaccurate writing is generally the expression of inaccurate thinking.

Richard Grant White.

PHILADELPHIA
J. B. LIPPINCOTT COMPANY

NO VIMU
AIMBORLIAD

Copyright, 1897, by J. N. PATRICK,

Copyright, 1898, by J. N. PATRICK.

EDUCATION DEPT.

PREFACE.

SCOPE. The purpose of this book is to present the essential facts of English grammar clearly and concisely. The author has endeavored to avoid technical distinctions and discussions that can only baffle and discourage pupils in the grammar grades. No space has been used in making mysterious the simple grammatical facts of our almost grammarless tongue.

VOLUMINOUS TEXT-BOOKS. Many of the text-books on English used in the grammar grades are so voluminous that they discourage the pupil. The modern school grammar, containing three or four hundred pages of learned comment, cannot but embarrass both teacher and pupil. The pupil leaves school with his head full of crude impressions of the structure of the sentence, but without the ability to express his thonghts clearly and concisely.

ONE THING AT A TIME. No attempt has been made to teach literature and grammar at the same time. Every attempt to teach both subjects in the same lesson has been a failure and will ever remain a failure in the grammar grades. The method is opposed by every known law of mind.

TOPICAL METHOD. The plan of the book is so obvious that teachers will discover it at once. It is a departure from the stereotyped past. It substitutes the topical plan of presenting a subject for the usual sprinklings of a subject throughout the book. It is believed that the method will awaken in the pupil a deep interest in the study of grammar. He is required to think grammatical facts and forms into original sentences. Formal recitations of definitions and rules do not interest pupils. The object sought in the study of grammar is facility in the use of language; not a memory crammed with definitions and rules.

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SENTENCE-MAKING.

These exercises are a marked feature. They require the pupil to use his memory facts. Theory .without practice avails little or nothing in the study of English. As the mind has only what it does, correct forms of expression become habit only by the use of them. The exercises make it easy for the teacher to convert what is usually an irksome study into a pleasant one.

The author does not claim that Lessons in Grammar is a perfect text-book. To the over-technical, he fraternally commends the following lines from Carlyle:

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"The critic fly,' if it do but alight on any plinth or single cornice of a brave stately building, shall be able to declare, with its half-inch vision, that here is a speck, and there an inequality; that, in fact, this and the other individual stone are nowise as they should be; for all this the critic fly' will be sufficient: but to take in the fair relations of the Whole, to see the building as one object, to estimate its purpose, the adjustment of its parts, and their harmonious coöperation towards that purpose, will require the eye of a Vitruvius or a Palladio."

This book is divided into two parts. Part I. is designed for use in the seventh grade of graded schools, and during the seventh year of ungraded schools. Part II., for use in the eighth grade of graded schools and in the eighth year of ungraded schools.

The method of presenting the subject especially adapts the book to review work in county institutes and summer schools.

LESSONS IN LANGUAGE, the elementary book of this two-book series, is designed for use in the fourth, fifth, and sixth grades or years.

St. Louis Mo., July, 1897.

J. N. P.

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