CHAPTER Ⅲ

GRADATION OF THE LANGUAGE OF TEACHING MATERIALS

Ⅰ. Pedagogica1 Bases of Gradation

１. Student Development and Interest

　It is most important in the teaching of any subject that the level of the content to be taught should accord with the stage of intellectual and emotional development of the learners. It is, therefore, a mistake to imagine that in a subject like English the content of the matter to be taught may be of the level of English or American children just beginning to learn to read. Such a misconception leads to the production of books with both the topography, illustrations, and content matter that are totally unsuitable to children of a much older age. Over-aburdance of fairy tales, Grimm's, Anderson's, and Esop's Fables, not to mention nursery rhymes, in any beginners' textbook designed for children of twelve or older is a sign that the author is unfamiliar with or has over-looked this basic principle of education. It is true that in the case of a foreign language, a few selections writen especially for children may be appreciated by adolescents and even adults because of the freshness of their setting. But this does not mean that matter to be taught in the secondary schools, both oral and written, may be basically that meant for elementary school children. When the contextual matter is above or below the intellectual and emotional level of pupils, they will lose interest, and there is perhaps nothing so serious as loss of interest.

Ｂ. Gradation of Linguistic Matter according to Grade Level

　Unless the language, both oral and written, is properly graded in teaching English the learning process will suffer. For instance, if a student were to come across a dozen or two words or expressions with which he is unfamiliar in a short paragraph, he would naturally resort to deciphering and analyzing and to using the dictionary as if it were a taskmaster. Such a process is frustrating, and that this is so may be seen by the way the great majority of second-hand English books in Japanese stores show how student, after filling up the first dozen or two pages with notes, have left the rest of the book unread, if such a process of deciphering could be called reading. The content in such cases may be of the right level, but the language is not, because the books were written for American or British readers. In order to make the study of a foreign language fruitful and interesting the linguistic matter must be graded, too.

２. Functionary Mastery of Language

　Words take on meaning by being used in context. Consequently meanings may change according to context. For instance:

(1) It was a fine day.

(2) He is a fine fellow.

(3) I want some fine thread.

(4) That's a fine (i.e. poor) excuse to make.

Although one and the same word may mean many things in Eng1ish, because of differences in the semantic coverage of words between one language and another, these four meanings of fine have to be expressed by four entirely different words in Japanese. This fact must be borne in mind in the grading of teaching materials, since students should be taught the more common meanings before the less common. A teacher may imagine that by teaching the common word put, for example, he is teaching just one word; but actually he has introduced a word that has dozens of meanings. Thus, the commoner words are much more of a problem than the rarer words. If a word appears too often under contexts that affect its meaning, it will lead to confusion. Consequently, a teacher must remember

(1) that what is one and the same word in a language as regards its form may be a number of, if not many, words as regards meaning,

(2) that since one and the same word is actually many words according to context, there should be a reasonable grading of the word according to the commonness of its various meanings.

　For further study of the problem the reader is referred to E.L. Thorndike's and I. Lorge's Teacher's Wordbook of 30,000 Words, published by Teachers College, Columbia University, 1944, and Helen Eaton's compilation entitled Semantic Frequency list for English, French, German and Spanish.

Ｂ. Language Learning Subject to Language Situation

　Just as context has bearing on the meaning, and hence on the learning of a language, situation also has bearing. Meanings change according to changes in situation. For example, the sentence,“I was leaning against the wall," if said in reference to the inside of a house, would be taken to mean the wall of a room, while if said in reference to some place out of doors, it would most likely be taken to mean a structure built for purposes of enclosure. To take another kind of example,“How do you do," under one situation is used when one meets a person for the first time, while in other situationts it is another and less familiar way of saying,“Hello!"

　Such differences are very important when teaching a foreign language, since a Japanese student cannot be expected to know the various meanings a word or an expression may take on according to changes in situation and he cannot be expected to realize that what requires two or three different words or expressions in one language can be said with the use of one word or expression in another. In fact, a teacher must realize that by introducing a word or expression in one teaching situation, he has taught the meaning of the word or expression which it would have in that particular situation. A conscientious teacher would do well to note down which of the meanings he has taught, and to try and teach the commoner meanings first, leaving any rare meanings alone till a more advanced stage is reached.

　Since a learning situation is limited, there is a limit to the number and kinds of words and expressions that can be taught in one situation. A teacher, for example, teaching English through actions to beginners would not introduce such actions as, skip, hop, and jump, while teaching words and expressions connected with the opening and closing of a door．In another learning situation a teacher may call the students' attention to a box. In such a case, the teacher may introduce such words as inside, outside, on top of ;wooden(or made of wood), hard ,square ; open ,shut , open again shut again ,put...inside ,take ont ...,fill, empty. He could not, however, introduce with effect such words as, hit, bang, grab, or in fact any word that would not fit the situation or object of attention.

　Consequently, in grading the language in teaching, a mere grading would be insufficient, especially in teaching through direct association. The teacher should select those words and expressions that are likely to be taught with the greatest effect in a learning situation, and keep on adding to this list those words and expressions which he hopes to teach or has taught in subsequent learning situations.

Ⅱ. Gradable Elements of Language

１. Letters of the Alphabet and spelling

Ａ. Letters of the Alphabet

　Michael West gives a tab1e showing the relative commonness of the letters of the alphabet in the commonest English words:¹

First hundred works

A, M, S, D, B,

E, 0, T, H, N, R, W, I, L, Y, U, G, C, K, V, P

(Not found, j, q, x, z)

First two hundred words

B, P,

E, O, A, T, H, N, L, R, I, S, W, U, D, M, Y, F, G, C, K, V, J

(Not found, q, x, z)

First five hundred words

B, K, Q,

E, O, A, R, T, N, L, I, S, H, D, U, W, M, G, C, F, Y, P, V，X, J

(Not found, z)

This factor would not apply to children who are familiar with all or nearly all the letters of the alphabet, which would be the case with those who have studied Romaji.

Ｂ. Spelling

　Another gradable element is spelling,—beginning with the more common and going on to less common combinations of letters. But the wisdom of laying emphasis on this factor at any sacrifice of gradation of vocabulary is very questionable. In fact, if one began with more common words and went on to less common words, one would naturally teach the more common forms of spelling, at least from the point of frequency lists.

２. Vocabulary

　Vocabulary is not only gradable, but forms one of the main factors in gradation.

３. Construction Types

　Construction types are gradable, and E.L. Thorndike's list published in 1927 in the Columbia University publication, The Teachers' College Record, has the relative frequency of the constructions marked from 9 to 1 according to the degree of frequency, 9 showing the highest and 1 the lowest rate.²

　A few illustrations may show what construction types are. A participial phrase, for example, is a construction type:“Looking out of the window, Henry caught sight of his little brother climbing a tree." In the preceding sentence, Henry caught sight of his little brother climbing a tree is not only the main sentence but a construction type, that is to say, it follows a particular type of construction, which might be further divided into Henry caught sight of his little brother and climbing a tree. What is expressed by means of a participia phrase may be expressed by another construction type: Looking out of the window by As Henry was looking out of the window . Construction types in the form of phrases or clauses may be classified into noun, adjective, and adverb phrases and clauses, according to their functions in particular contexts.

４. Sounds of speech

It is possible to grade the sounds of speech according to the degree of difficulty, according to their relative frequency of occurrence, or by taking the sounds that can be taught by analogy with those occurring in Japanese first and then going on to those that cannot be so taught. Another consideration would be to take single sounds first and then to study sound clusters, beginning with easier and going on to more difficult sounds. Sound clusters are combinations of sounds that are adjacent to each other. For example: cluster，breathes.

Ⅲ. Factors Involved in Gradation

１. Vocabulary selection or Control

Ａ. Frequency Lists

　Anyone trying to approach the subject of English teaching efficiently and scientifically would readily arrive at the need of teaching words which would be of the greatest practical use to the students. What then are the most useful words? Obviously those words which the students would come in contact with most frequently. A frequency list, therefore, is a list of words showing which words in a certain language occur most frequently, which less frequently, and which still less frequently, and so on, as a result of examining written matter of various types. The purpose of such a list is to work toward elimination of meaning less or wasteful effort in the teaching and learning processes.

(1) Methods of Compilation

　Frequency lists are compiled by means of the laborious task of going through enormous amounts of literature of various types and by taking counts of the number of times a word occurs and by tabulating them according to the order of frequency in which they occur. However, the method may differ in some respects according to the one undertaking such statistical research. In the case of Thorndike, for instance, derivatives and head words are counted together as if they constituted the same thing. That is to say, the derivatives of accumulate, such as accumulation, ac-cumulative, accumulatively are counted under the head word accumu-late, as if they were the same thing. In Horn's list, on the other hand, derivatives are given separate counts. At all events, wordcounts are made by finding out the number of times a word occurs in a mass of literature and by designating to which group of hundred, two hundred, or five hundred words they belong as regards their order of frequency of use. Thorndike's list shows to which group of 100, 200, 500 words, etc. a word belongs in the following manner:

1a, a word in the 1—500 word zone

1b, a word in the 501—1,000 word zone

2a, a word in the 1,001—1,500 word zone

etc.

1al, a word in the 1—100 word zone

1a2, a word in the 101—200 word zone

etc.

　Method of designation matters little. What matters is the validity of word-counts and the usability of such lists from the point of view of teacher and student.

(2) Weaknesses in Compilation

　There are a numher of weaknesses in word counts. The first of these is that the different meanings of any word were not taken into account in making the counts, so that the word sound, for instance, is entered as la, or as belonging to the first 500 commonest words in disregard of the many meanings in which it is used. Entering the counts according to the separate meanings of words would be a tremendous undertaking, and such research has now been completed, and it is hoped that such a list will be made use of in this country.

　The second of these weaknesses is that the counts are necessarily made on an examination of written matter. Consequently, even if some of the material contained matter of a colloquial nature, the result would still be on the basis of written matter. Moreover,“it was not the intention of Thorndike or Horn to make a detailed study of the vocabulary of spoken English."³ However, it is believed that the differences between the spoken and the written vocabulary in English are more in the nature of contracted and non-contracted forms, word-order, etc., such as: between don’t and do not, Had I been here(literary) and If I had been here (colloquial or normal), rather, than in the nature of the vocabulary used, so that such a weakness is considered not serious for a foreign student of English.⁴

　The third of these weaknesses is that the findings are made on vocabulary used and written by English-speaking peoples, so that some of the commonest words listed belong to a society or world to which the foreign student is and may continue to be a stranger. A Japanese boy or girl would have less use for such words as fur, honey, lanb, orchard, than an American or an English boy or girl. Yet, these very words are among the 2,000 commonest words listed hy Thorndike. If the students are to be introduced to the life, customs, and manners of English-speaking peoples, they will naturally come across such words, but from a purely utilitarian point of view, they are of comparatively little value to them. The teacher of a foreign language must therefore use his judgment and note such points.

　A fourth weakness is found in the fact that phrases are not entered in the counts. Some phases such as, of course, for instance, as a matter of fact, comprise units of meaning, so that one could not break them up into words without destroying the sense. Their omission is regrettable, but difficulties in the way of entering such phrases are very great.

(3) Case of Japan

　One of the differences between an English-speaking boy or girl learning French, Spanish, or German, and a Japanese boy or girl learning English, French, or German lies in the fact that while the former is confronted with the mastery of a cognate language, a language of common origin, the latter is confonted with that of a non-cognate language. In the case of those studying a congnate language, it is common practice to provide such students with texts in the foreign language so designed that the majority of the words are congnates, whose meanings can be gathered, accurately or fairly accurately because of their common origin and recognizable similarity.

A few examples of French sentences full of English cognates prepared for English-speaking pupils are given by way of illustration, followed by their English equivalents:

La premiere lecon de fracais est difficile et interessante.

The first (premier) French lesson is difficult but (and) interesting.

Le groupe prefere rester dans le restautant mais les classes commencent.

The group prefer to (take a) rest in the restautant but the classes are beginning.

This makes it possible for the students to guess the meanings of whole passages and sentences without the teacher's assistance or the use of a dictionary. In the case of the Japanese student, however, such a process is out of the question, because he is confronted with the study of a non-cognate language whose vocabulary as well as the structural processes are strange to him.

　However, there are many foreign words, including many English words, that have found their way into the Japanese language. Lists of such words are found at the end of most Japanese-English dictionaries. Such words, even if outside of a vocabulary range considered as suitable for the grade level, can be generally brought in and taught without much difficulty, especially in view of the fact that the Japanese older child or adolescent learning English is intellectually of a higher level than the English-speaking child of approximately 5-6 years of age who is just entering school with a small vocabulary range. The only danger the Japanese teacher must guard against is that in the case of a number of imported words the meanings have become changed; for instance, the use of the word cunning for cheating in the examination or the use of sofa for a comfortable chair.

　Also, as has been mentioned in a previous paragraph, some words, for example, fur ,honey, lamb, orchard, can be regarded as outside of the vocabulary range to which those words belong.

　In spite of a number of weaknesses in vocabulary counts, it would be wrong to imagine that they are therefore no good. There is much more to say for them than against them. It has been established, through a comparative study of various vocabulary counts, that the reliability decreases with the decrease in the counts. This is highly important, because the more common the word the surer one can be of its usefulness.

　Mention should be made of works specially prepared with a view to meeting the special needs of the Japanese student. The first of these, done by Harold Palmer, appeared in 1930 under the title, Interim Report on Vocabulary. This was followed in 1932 by the second Interim Report on Vocabulary Selection, published by the Institute for Research in English Teaching. This second attempt was a revision of the vocabulary counts made by Thorndike, Horn, and Dewey. Its importance and value may be judged by the fact that it was published also in England following a conference among such noted figures as Michael West, Lawrence Faucett, not to mention Palmer himself. There is, furthermore, a current Japanese edition edited by Naoe Naganuma entitled, Stand-ard English Vocabulary of 3,000 Basic Words. The words are indexed into plateaus of 600 words each, and the book contains examples of what are loosely called“idioms".

Ｂ. Types of Gradation

(1) Progressive Gradation

Progressive gradation may be illustrated by the following dia-gram:

　　

　In such a system of grading one begins with the word with the biggest word-count, takes the next commonest, and then the next commonest, and so forth. In practice such a progression is quite impossible.

(2) Plateau or Zonal Gradation

Plateau or zonal gradation may be illustrated by the following diagrams:

　　

　In such a system of grading the commonest 500, 600 (or whatever the number might be) words words are taken from a vocabulary count, and the vocabulary taught is limited, though not with absolute strictness, to the particular range. In the next stage, another 500 or 600 words are added, the process continuing until the student has reached a stage, after five or six years, in which he can dispose himself of such a process without loss in the learning proceaa.

　In the view of Harold Palmer, Basic English“is nothing other than an exceptionally long plateau containing exceptionally little material."⁵ He adds:“The scheme of Basic English suggests that the long plateau, instead of being unwelcome or accidental, or even tolerated as a disagreeable necessity, is a thing to be designed, to be aimed at, to be looked upon as a necessary phase".

Ｃ. Ranges of Degrees of Utility

　Faucett and Maki's book, A study of English Word-Values Statistically Determined, already referred to, classifies words into four categories, and regards

(1) words from 1 to 500 as indispensable

(2) words from 501 to 2000 as essential

(3) words from 2001 to 5000 as useful

(4) words from 5001 up as special

This description is not to be taken too precisely, since vocabulary is not watertight.

　It is interesting to note that over 75% of the words studied as regards frequency of occurrence comprise the 2,000 commonest words, according to the same source.

　Michael West tells us that Bengali boys in an average class can acquire a vocabulary of 5,000 words within about six years or less and that within this vocabulary practically all non-technical matter can be written by rewording a few phrases.⁶ West tells us further that“with a vocabulary of 100 words it is possible to begin to tell stories; with 300 words story-telling is easy, and with 400 words it is possible to tell long stories without introducing any new words outside the 400".⁷

　Harold Palmer says on the basis of research and experimentation that“of all possible radii that might be selected to form the basis of some sort of‘standardized text-simplification', the 3000 word radius is likely to prove the most suitable”.

He adds,“It provides a liberal vocabulary meeting with all ordinary requirements, without however being unduly voluminous. It proved to be almost ideally suitable for the simplifying of The Gold Bug”.⁸ In the footnote be says,“This same radius was used subsequently as the basis of simplifying other texts of a very different nature, and it proved equally suitable for these."

It is interesting to note that Longmans Simplified English Series ⁹ is a collection of well-known English novels and stories done within a word-range of merely 1,500 to 2,000 words. According to Palmer it is possible to simplify stories within a mere 1,200-word radius, but the results hardly justified the effort. At any rate, it is significant that vocabulary selection or control has come to be accepted as an essential part of a foreign language program, and that it has a very important role. If students, on reading a story in a simplified form, should wish to read the original, that is no reason for running down vocabulary control—a thing that has been done by a few teachers. Rather, that is all the more reason why they should be introduced to simplified matter, because such matter may and does act as a stimulus for further reading.

２. Non-Collocational and Collocational word Groups

Ａ. Non-Collocational Word Groups

　No-collocational word groups are composed of words which are independent units of meaning. Such word groups as, in this place after a few days, on the table, are not in the nature of collocations, an explanation of which follows in the next section. In the case of non-collocational word groups, the individual words may be checked with word counts and with plateaus the teacher may wish to keep to. That a group of words is non-collocational can be proved by substituting those words that can be substituted. For example: in this place, in that place, in this room, in that garden; after a few days, within a few days, after many days, after a few months; on the table, under the table, on the piano etc. Since such word groups are composed of words whose meanings can be regarded as independent of the group in which they are used, the teacher may do well to check the component words with a word count.

Ｂ. Collocational Word Groups

　A collocation (or a collocational word group) is a group of words which together comprise a unit of meaning. While at once is a collocation, its equivalent, immediately, is a word. Such groups of words as, the House of Commons, the United States, get hold of, take account of, come across, How do you do, thank you, are a few examples of collocations. There is no count of collocations up to date, and such a count is practically impossible. The only thing to do with collocations is to treat them as wholes, and to teach those types first which, in the teacher's judgment, are in very common use. This is sound pedagogy.

　Perhaps the most dependable study of collocations up to now is the Second Interim Report on English Collocations¹⁰ submitted by Dr, H. E. Palmer to the Tenth Annual Conference of English Teachers. The Interim Report on Vocabulary Selection published in England contains collocations suitable for the level of vocabularies selected.

Ⅳ．Pitfalls in Gradation

１. over-Simplification

　It is possible to go too far in the matter of simplification. If carried too far, it may result in unnatural or unidiomatic English or in making the matter more difficult through lack of words.

Ａ．Unnatural English

　Text Simplification entails something more than the substitution of a word or phrase for another word or. phrase. If badly done, a simplified text may sound awkward and un-English. A text simplifier must take into account the fact that an expression, though composed of common words within a certain vocabulary range, may in itself be akward and unnatural.

Ｂ．Difficulty Caused through Lack of Words

　If one tried to do with a vocabulary that was too limited for expressing certain things, it might result in making the text more difficult to understand, is a warning note sounded by Palmer in the book already quoted, namely, The Grading and Simplifying of Literary Material. It would be foolish to try and express within a 300-word vocabulary radius what one could barely express with a vocabulary range of 2,000 words. For instance, it would be unwise to say, put on a broad smile, which contains only those words found among the commonest 1,000 words in Thorndike's list, in order to avoid grin, which belongs to the 3、501-4,000 radius, if by so doing the meaning is obscured.

２．Unpsychological Simplification

Ａ．Introduction on Basis of Regularity of Grammatical Forms.

　It is a fallacy to think that in grading the language of teach-ing materials one should begin with more regular and go on to less regular grammatical forms. For instance, it is a fallacy to imagine that because commence and start are regular verbs whose past and past participial forms are commenced and started respectively, the teacher should teach these verbs rather than begin, whose past and past participial forms are irregular. Similarly, it is unsound pedagogy to give preference to adverbs ending in ly on the assumption that such adverbs are regular. The order should be from more common to less common. Otherwise, the 24 anomalous finites, which are so called because they are irregular, would have to be taught after verb forms of a more regular category have been taught first. That such a thing is impossible in practice is quite evident by the fact that without am, is, are, was, were, have, has, had, do, does, did, shall, should, will, would, can, could, may, might, must, ought, need, dare, used, which are the highly important 24 anomalous finites, (anomalous meaning irregular), one could not even make a statement in the negative, at least in present-day English. In fact, without the use of anomalous finites one could not even begin to talk.¹¹

　The fallacy applies to any extreme phonetic approach, too, in which the program might be designed to start with the easiest English sounds and go on to more difficult sounds. A certain amount of phonetic grading may be expedient, but it would be foolish to sacrifice other pedagogic factors, except in matter or textbook specially designed to teach pronunciation, by parading the pages with matter such as: he sees bees eating honey; hats and caps can be carried by hand; let’s leave this lad alone; I think he is thoroughly thoughtless.

Ｂ．Introduction of Abstract before Concrete Grammatical Categories

　The degree of concreteness or abstractness of any word or expression is a matter that cannot be readily decided. What matters, as far as the teacher is concerned, is to teach things of a concrete nature first. It is easier to teach something is something than something can do something, especially in the direct method, because ability is a rather abstract quality. Thus, in general, it

is considered unwise to teach matter with abstract meanings before the student has acquired a fairly good knowledge of matter that can be understood more readily.

1 Michael West,“The Construction of New Reading Books," Learning to Read a foreign Language, Longmans, Green & Co., London, N. Y., Toronto, 1941, p. 46

2 See Tsuneta Takehara, Thorndike’s English Constructions, Taishu-Kan Shoten, Tokyo, Copyright, 1941, pp. i-ii

3 Faucett and Maki, Introduction, A Study of English Word-Values Statisti-cally Determined from the Latest Extensive Word-Counts, Matsumura San-shodo, Tokyo, Copyright, 1932, p 13

4 See Ibid . p. 14

5 Harold E. Palmer, The Grading and Simplifying of Literary Material, Institute for Research in English Teaching, Tokyo, 1934, p. 9

6 See Michael West, Learning to Read A Foreign Language, Longmans, Green & Co., London, N.Y., Toronto, 1941, p. 24

7 Ibid. p.25

8 Harold E. Palmer, The Grading and simplifying of Literary Material, Institute for Research in English Teaching, Tokyo, 1934, p. 60 (The Gold Bug is by Edgar Allan Poe.)

9 Longmans, Green & Co., Ltd., 6 & 7 Clifford St., London, W. 1

10 Published by the Institute for Research in English Teaching, Tokyo, 1933

11 See under Anomalous finite in The Dictionary of English Philology, Kenkysha, Tokyo. 1949