The main idea is that all, or nearly all, sentences should be self-interpreting, the meaning of new words being in each case readily understood without any possible doubt from the context, in the beginning aided here and there by a simple drawing, so that a translation is never necessary.

In accordance with a wise old rule the author has not been afraid of repeating the same thing over and over again, especially in the beginning, so that words and phrases are as it were hammered into the brains of the student so as to be his possessions for ever.

The most necessary grammatical forms are from the very first imparted in a natural way without using any technical terms; later some very elementary grammatical instruction is given with simple theoretical explanations.

It is my conviction that the student who has conscientiously worked his way through the course will with a minimum of effort have acquired a fair knowledge of the English language and will be familiar with the most necessary words and phrases so as to feel at home in the language.

This result 1s obtained by the systematic use of the so-called direct method of teaching languages. The basic principle of that method, as every one knows, is to teach a foreign language without the help of the learner’s mother-tongue, except for occasional explanations. This can be done firstly by connecting as many words as possible directly with the objects, ideas, and actions they denote, and secondly by introducing new words, idioms, and grammatical facts in such a way that there can be no hesitation whatever in the pupil’s mind as to what they mean.

It would be necessary to pass from the phonetic transcription of isolated examples to a running transcription; to associate with pictures all words capable of being so represented, to present the material progressively in such a way that every new element would be explained by a context made up of elements already acquired, and finally systematically to base the acquisition of knowledge on complete sentence forms, passing gradually from the simplest to the most complex types. It should thus be possible to build up a language without having recourse either to dictionary or grammar-book, those lifeless collections of forms divorced from their context.

Provided one enters fully into the spirit of the method, namely never to make a step forward without having consolidated all that went before by the repetition of complete idiomatic sentences, one will be capable, by the end of the book, of immediate and spontaneous expression. It will only be necessary to make different combinations of the elements in the type sentence-patterns firmly imprinted on the nervous system, in order to speak with ease. The vocabulary, built up round centres of interest and always having a context, will be more readily recalled because of the network of associations in which it grew up from the start. This method can be called truly natural be- cause it takes the fullest account of the organic nature of language.