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in which I found out how much they knew about the construction of German sentences, I began to discuss with them the subject-matter of the articles we were reading. By selecting subjects with which they were more or less familiar, and operations which some of the members of the class were, perhaps, working on in the laboratory, the exercise became a chemical conference on recent German literature. By holding to this idea throughout the remainder of the year the students lost sight of the language in the matter, and during the Senior year there were very few students of chemistry who did not consult German books in the library with ease and confidence.

Another suggestion may be offered in this connection which I have found very helpful and which I owe to Dr. Wolcott Gibbs, who made it to me in my student days. It is that that the student should read by himself a brief, illustrated, elementary text-book on chemistry or engineering, as the case may be. The similarity of many technical words in French and German with the English, the reference in the text to illustrations and diagrams, the usual simplicity of the construction of the sentences, combined with the reader's general knowledge of the subject treated, will enable him to read the book with comparatively little reference to the dictionary.

In a word, I would recommend that the modern languages should be taught to students who have had one year's preparation in the grammar, by the instructors in the department in which they are studying. To have this professional reading under the charge of the language department will not answer

the same purpose. It is necessary that engineering German should be taught by one who has at the same time a knowledge of both German and engineering.

The use of "scientific readers" in French or German-a collection of scientific and technical articles by well-known authors-is an attempt to do this work within the department of modern languages. But in reading these the student does not ordinarily lose the idea of drudgery in getting out his lesson and he does not feel that he is making any progress in his professional work. These books seem to me to have no advantage for the technical student over general classical literature, and the latter is usually more interesting and profitable reading from the standpoint of general culture.

Again, let me say that, in advocating this method of teaching German and French in technical schools, I am merely aiming to accomplish an important practical end in the shortest possible time. The instruction in modern languages and literature, with the object of interesting students in the humanities and broadening their views of life and its activities, is an entirely different matter. This instruction should, of course, remain with the department of languages, and the more time that can be devoted to it the better it will be for the student of engineering.

DISCUSSION.

PROFESSOR DEVOLSON WOOD wrote that our courses of instruction are becoming so crowded that we should adopt the best text-book upon any subject and not use an inferior grade for the sake of foreign technics.

Many years ago he used a French work on hydraulics partly to get the results of the latest experiments and partly for the technics. It worked well, but he had seen no necessity since for so doing. The Professor of Modern Languages at the Stevens Institute of Technology uses in the class room technical works in French and German.

PROFESSOR STORM BULL said that he was very much interested in the paper. What specially pleased him was that the author emphasized the fact that the German and French which should be learned by engineering students is not the classical German, not the grammar part especially, but the useful language. The way in which these languages have ordinarily been taught in most engineering schools has been the way in which they have been taught to the general student; they have been taught as if the students were to become linguists. That is, they have been drowned, you might say, in a sea of grammar and they have been disgusted long before the first year is over. If it is possible, as was stated in the paper, to make students read scientific German after one year's work, it is very good. The speaker had his doubts about it. But if it is possible to succeed with it in the manner described in the paper he would be very glad to have it carried out. Then, again, the suggestion that this scientific and technical German should be taught by the men who are interested in engineering, or by engineers themselves, is a very good one. At the University of Wisconsin the use of German engineering text-books has been tried. The students are supposed to have a two years' preparation; they are supposed to have had this in

the high school; yet when they come to the University they are hardly prepared to read these German engineering text-books, because of incompetent instruction, and as a result, even after one year's work at the University they do not read engineering textbooks fluently.

PROFESSOR E. A. FUERTES remarked that in arranging the curriculum the subject of languages for an engineer was one to which he had given a great deal of thought. Cornell University formerly required its students to take languages within the University, believing that in this way they could be taught better. But the growing necessities of the case made it desirable at first by degrees, and finally suddenly, to crowd out the languages and require that the students should enter from the schools with linguistic training, because there seemed to be absolutely no difference in their lack of readiness to translate French or German, especially German, whether the men were taught at Cornell University, whether they came from Harvard, Yale or Columbia, or from the public schools. The speaker had become convinced that the trouble and inefficiency in this direction lies in the methods pursued by language teachers. The men are not taught languages for the purpose of reading technical works, the purely literary tendency being the aim of this kind of teaching. The teachers in the public schools, where the work of preparation is mainly done, are monuments of patience and faithfulness and deserve an immense amount of recognition from everybody. But in the public schools they are overworked and underpaid and have a great many disadvantages

to contend with. They have not been educated for the purpose of teaching languages so that it may be of use to the engineer. Usually all these teachers are graduates of classical colleges; they are steeped in the theories and especially the prejudices of the classical graduate; he desired to speak of this very respectfully.

The speaker had tried all manner of ways to obtain, to foster better teaching for his purposes, even having a subsidiary course within the college of engineering, and requiring students to have three exercises a week, during one term, in what was called, in the curriculum, "technical reading in foreign languages." This language teaching within the college gave so much trouble, required such an amount of labor and yielded so little in results that it had died of neglect and had been absolutely abandoned. There is much uncertainty, under existing conditions, as to how this evil may be remedied. The speaker is conscious of the necessity the engineer has of knowing more than one or two languages; and there is much of value, daily written in other languages, that becomes old when it reaches a translation, so that it is quite desirable that the young engineer should be familiar with more than one language in order to keep in quick touch with professional progress. It is suggested that the teaching of languages should be put in the hands of the engineer; but though there are a great many engineers who have had a classical education, and even are natural linguists, the speaker knows of but few of them who would undertake such a task or be good language teachers. It is not only the utilitarian side of this question that commends it as a part of

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