Présentation de l'éditeur
Pee FACE. WHATEVER other office a reading-book should serve in a school-room, we believe all are agreed that one of its main purposes is to teach articulation and pronunciation the utterance of language. We have local faults and peculiarities of pronunciation, or provincialisms, in every section of the land. Besides these, the constant influx into this country of foreigners from every nation upon the earth has a tendency to corrupt our speech. Foreign adults learn the language imperfectly, and speak it with a brogue or accent. Where they form a large proportion of the population as is the case in many localities their blemishes and defects are copied by children, until in whole communities the language becomes perverted. The school-room is almost the only place where a remedy can be applied. We have presented, therefore, in the Introduction to this book, the best means of which we have any knowledge for correcting these defects, and stemming the tide which would drift our noble language from its moorings. A guide is given for the formation of every vowel and consonant, by figures and diagrams illustrating the position of the organs of speech required for each. In carrying out this idea, we have been fortunate in securing the cooperation of Mr. A. Graham Bell, whose wonderful success in teaching deaf-mutes to speak has afforded the most striking demonsiration of the merits of this physiological system of instruction. Educators who may wish to study the subject still more closely, and learn all the possibilities of the organs, are referred to the volume entitled Visible Speech, by Prof. A. Melville Bell. We trust that the method of teaching the meaning of words through the exercises at the end of the lessons will commend itself to teachers, and that they will enlarge very much upon the plan thus indicated. The repetition of formal definitions rarely leaves any
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