Transcribed from the 1895 Thomas Brown pamphlet by DavidPrice,
[Entered at Stationer’sHall.]
THE AURAL SYSTEM;
being
the mostdirect,
THE STRAIGHT-LINE METHOD
forthe
SIMULTANEOUS FOURFOLD MASTERY
of a
FOREIGN LANGUAGE
teachingsimultaneously to
SPEAK, UNDERSTAND, READ, ANDWRITE,
by
A Linguist of nearly 40 yearsstanding, and nearly 20 years resident abroad.
Bradford:
Thos. Brown, Printer, 311, ManchesterRoad.
1895.
p.2Respecting the time required to learn a language,the writer ventures to recommend the way he himself took whena boy to solve this question. Having made choice ofa known grammar, the exercises of which promise asatisfactory degree of proficiency, let the student affixto each and all of the lessons at the outset, the dateswhen they are to be done and observe them. Someweeks a little perseverance and determination may benecessary, but let him be inflexible with himself,curtail his indulgences if required and his task will be donewith ease.
Subsequent studies are pleasant and easy.
p.3Some time ago, a Mr. Wm. Rodger came down from Glasgowfor the purpose of showing how foreign languages should betaught. He brought on a gentleman, a clergyman from Leeds,who had gone through Otto’s German Grammar without beingable either to speak or understand German; this gentleman wasable to bear testimony to the merit of Mr. Rodger’s systembecause by it he had learnt to do both. Of course histestimony rested on one assumption. It assumed that havinggone through Otto’s Grammar all learnt from it had beenforgotten, and that the whole merit of his success was due to Mr.Rodger’s method.
Mr. Rodger was of opinion, that foreign languages should belearnt as a child learns its mother tongue. It seemed to mea strange use to make of the reason and intelligence of theadult, to cast it aside as useless and to ask the youth and manto become a child again. It appeared to me the mostwasteful of methods. Is language a science, and if so, whatwould be thought of a similar proposal for acquiring any otherscience? But are the cases parallel? Is there anysimilarity of circumstance? Can the youth and man againplace themselves in the circumstances of the child?
The child is constantly hearing the language spoken, everyonearound it is teaching it to speak, everything around itstimulates it to do so. Nearly everything it learns, comesto it through its mother tongue; at play it hears, itspeaks. At five years of age it begins to go to school, andfrom that time until its fourteenth or sixteenth year, whateverelse it studies, it must study its mother tongue. All otherknowledge reaches it through this medium. Every other studycompels the study and practice of its mother tongue and allowingten hours per day for sleep, by the time it is fourteen years ofage seventy-one thousand six hundred hours have been spent ins