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James Henry Worman: Erstes Deutsches Buch |
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with the auxiliaries of tense and mood, because their kinship with the English makes them easily intelligible. Next follow the declensions of nouns, because alongside of them can be taught the declension of the articles, attributive adjectives, possessive and demonstrative pronouns, and indefinite numerals. The division into four declensions is used because the object is to give the simplest classification possible to the great variety of noun inflections. The personal pronouns are introduced early in the course to insure a proper address to superiors and inferiors, and to show the relation of the possessive to the genitive of the personal pronouns. In short, this little book contains within its few pages all the essentials of German grammar so presented that their mastery is easy, and the student prepared, upon its completion, to enter upon the study of the more recondite, complicated, and irregular principles of the language, which are treated in the Second German Book.
The author recommends, from his own experience, as the most successful
Proper use of
the book in
schools.
method of using the First German Book:
1. Each lesson should be first read by the teacher to the class, and then in concert by teacher and pupils.
2. One pupil should next read by paragraphs, and after the reading of a paragraph a series of conversations should be developed out of the sentences read by the pupil.
3. The paradigms should be committed to memory.
4. The advance lesson should always be read before it is assigned for study. It is, therefore, far better to spend two recitations on one lesson.
5. Objects near at hand, or brought to the class for the purpose, may be taken by the well-prepared teacher to enliven the pupil’s interest and to insure greater speed in his progress.
6. Reviews should be had on Monday of each week, if the class have daily recitation.
7. The Complete German Grammar (for colleges and seminaries) or the Elementary German Grammar (for common schools) should be used as a book of reference as soon as the pupil is ready (not later than the 15th lesson) to take up the Elementary Reader, and as a book of exercise for the translation of English themes into German. The Reading Exercises in the Grammars should only form the basis of conversation. The rules should invariably be translated by the pupil.
The book may be used for self-instruction as a companion to
For self-
instruction.
Worman’s Complete German Grammar. The first 44 pages of the Grammar must, however, have been mastered before the First Book is taken up. The Elementary Reader should be used as soon as the first 96 pages[1] of the Complete Grammar shall have been studied, or even sooner.
It is hoped that this little book will prove as useful to the school and the home as it has proved to the learners at Chautauqua, and that it may help to quicken the already lively interest of Americans in the language and literature of the Germans, whom Bayard Taylor calls the Greeks of modern civilization.
- ↑ [*] The beginner should only use Lesson X of the Complete Grammar, as a reference lesson and should divide Lesson V.
James Henry Worman: Erstes Deutsches Buch. A. S. Barnes & Co., New York [u. a.] 1880, Seite NN. Digitale Volltext-Ausgabe bei Wikisource, URL: https://de.wikisource.org/w/index.php?title=Seite:Erstes_Deutsches_Buch.djvu/13&oldid=- (Version vom 26.1.2024)
