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Junior Course of English Composition

 
15

The purpose or purposes for which, this "Junior Course of English Composition" has been prepared can be seen partly from the title and partly from the table of contents. In Chapter I., headed the Reproduction of Extracts, we give examples of the kind of composition prescribed for the upper classes at Board Schools, for the Local Examinations held by Oxford and Cambridge respectively in their "Preliminary" standard, and for the Government Examinations of Pupil-teachers at - Training Schools.

Footnote 1: If this book should at all come into use in India, we take this opportunity of saying that the method which has been found most suitable in England for examining candidates in English composition up to the " Preliminary " standard prescribed by Oxford and Cambridge, would be found equally suitable for the "Middle Class Examination in the different provinces of India. Perhaps, however, this method has been adopted already in some of them.

These exercises all consist in requiring the student to reproduce, from memory, but in his own words, the substance of extracts, which he has either studied in class, or has heard read out to him without any such previous study, immediately before he begins to write.
Such exercises presuppose, as we need scarcely add, that he has been already grounded in the main principles and inflections of English Grammar, and has gone through an earlier course of composition especially of that into elementary kind which consists in the forming of Simple sentences and the combining of them longer sentences either Compound or Complex.2

Footnote: 2. A great deal of practice in the composition of Simple, Compound, and Complex sentences, and in applying the grammatical rules that bear upon it, has been provided in Chapters I.-IV of a book by the same author, called Oral Exercises in English Composition. Oral practice, as distinct from written, is there recommended-(1) because it effects a very great saving in time, enabling the student to get more than four times as much practice as he could get by putting all the exercises into writing; and (2) because it stimulates quickness on the part of the student, a ready use of words, and a facility in saying what he has to say impromptu.

Before introducing the student to the more difficult subjects of essay-writing and letter-writing, we have in Chapter II. attempted to show him by a few cardinal rules and examples how to write clearly and effectively, what errors are most common and therefore most to be guarded against in the use of common words and constructions, and what is the proper structure of sentences and paragraphs. In Chapter III we have gone rather fully into the subject of punctuation, to which a great deal of importance is attached in the Local Examinations held by Oxford and Cambridge, in the examinations held by the College of Preceptors, and in the matriculation examinations of some Indian Universities. A large number of examples to be worked out by the student is attached to both chapters. In Chapter IV., which is headed "Expansion of Outlines," we introduce the student for the first time to the subject of Essay-writing. As the first attempts in essay-writing are very difficult to a beginner, we have in all cases given him an outline to be expanded.

 

The outlines have been arranged in the order of increasing difficulty, the first set consisting of outlines of Esop's Fables, the second of object-lessons taught in class (for it is assumed that object-lessons form part of the curriculum), and the third of miscellaneous subjects descriptive or reflective. To this chapter we have appended a valuable note by Mr. Battersby on the teaching of essay-writing, which appeared in the School World in September 1899, and a list of subjects for composition set by Cambridge for the "Junior" Local Examination, and by Indian Universities for matriculation. In Chapter V, the last, we have dealt with the subject of Letter-writing,-private, official, and commercial: and to the kind of letter last named we have appended a list of trade terms in common use. We have given this list, partly because we thought it might be useful to lads who are leaving school and about to take up employment in some business office, and partly because "Letter-writing and Use of Commercial Terms" is prescribed in the Oxford Syllabus for the Junior Examination as an alternative to the composition of an essay.




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