7 Laws of Teaching: The Law of the Language

Law of the Language — The language used as a medium between teacher and learner must be common to both.

Show Notes

Gregory speaks in this chapter of language as a vehicle of instruction, an instrument of learning, and a storehouse of knowledge. Briefly, he means that through common language we communicate experience, by speaking we appropriate what we perceive, that without adequate words we cannot think through ideas clearly, and that what we know we will name. Beware, he warns, words with multiple meanings or homophones — children easily pick up confused meanings, unaware that their perception is inaccurate. It is what the student interprets in his mind, not what the teacher intends, that matters:

Not what the speaker expresses from his own mind, but what the hearer understands and reproduces in his mind, measures the communicating power of the language used.

Remember that children do not yet have nuanced and weighty vocabularies:

Men’s words are like ships laden with the riches of every shore of knowledge which their owner has visited; while the words of the child are but toy boats on which are loaded the simple notions he has picked up in his brief experience.

Thus,

It is as necessary for the teacher fully to understand the child, as for the child to understand the teacher. Oftentimes a pupil will load ordinary words with some strange, false, or distorted meanings, and the mistakes may remain uncorrected for years. Children are often compelled by their very poverty of speech to use words with other than their correct meanings. The teacher must learn the needs of the pupil from his words.

So, choose your own words carefully when you are teaching. There is a place for broadening and deepening the child’s vocabulary through exposure, but a lesson is not that place. Listen to the child’s words as well, correcting and honing his speech gently. The very process of thinking it fitting an idea into words. We master truth by expressing it, so the pupil himself should do much of the talking. Lecture should be given a small place in instruction. In doing the talking himself (through narration or discussion), the child must make the knowledge his own by putting words to thoughts and through his speech, the teacher sees what the child sees and knows where to lead him and what correction and strengthening he needs. Moreover, language gives us the very categories we use for thinking and perceiving. The language at the student’s disposal is no small matter. One cannot think about something one does not have the words for. Giving children words is a vital part of teaching.

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