Good English from Good Books

One practical effort to break the boredom of repetitive drill in grammar, spelling, vocabulary and composition has been successfully carried out in a two-year experiment at Purdue University. Called "Project English" and financed by Purdue and the U.S. Office of Education, it ignored the traditional separate classes in these topics for some 4,800 seventh-graders in 14 Midwest cities. Instead, the students were immersed in some relatively difficult but intriguing works of literature, on the theory that reading good writers who have interesting things to say is a more natural way to acquire good English than by attacking it in artificial fragments.

The students listened to records or watched movies that acquainted them with the settings of such works as The Diary of a Young Girl, Hiroshima, Treasure Island and the Bible's Book of Esther. Then they read the books, discussed them, wrote papers about them, acted out some of the roles, prepared newspapers based on the stories. At the end of the project, compared with kids in regular classes, they showed superior ability in reading comprehension, understanding words, effective written expression. They did just as well as the regular students in grammar and spelling.

The only problem the project leaders encountered with the technique was the reaction of fretful parents. Some objected to the "antiwar tone" and "unpatriotism" of Hiroshima, the mention of menstruation in The Diary of a Young Girl. But such niceties failed to bother the kids. More important to them was the discovery that a good book can be fascinating--even if it is educational.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.