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A

SCHOOL GRAMMAR

OF THE

ENGLISH LANGUAGE

BY

EDWARD A. ALLEN

PROFESSOR OF ENGLISH LANGUAGE AND LITERATURE IN THE
UNIVERSITY OF MISSOURI

BOSTON, U.S.A.

D. C. HEATH & CO., PUBLISHERS

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PREFACE

IN preparing this book it has been the purpose of the author to make a concise school grammar of English, designed for use in schools in which there is need of a brief, systematic course in the subject. No attempt is made to tell everything. In the exercises will be found abundant material for elaboration; and where grammatical terms are introduced in advance of later treatment, the teacher will give such oral explanation as may be deemed necessary.

From the first exercise the pupil is introduced to the sentence as a whole, but no definition or classification of the sentence is attempted until the subject is reached in regular order. So, too, under Case, the various uses of the cases are shown, but no definition of case is attempted. The author agrees with Matthew Arnold that, if you wish the class to know what an apple is, the best way is to show them an apple rather than try to give an idea of it after the manner of the books: "An apple has a stalk, peel, pulp, core, pips, and juice; it is odorous and opaque, and is used for making a pleasant drink called cider."

Part I. is intended to provide a rapid review of the parts of speech, and may be omitted, at the discretion of the teacher, with more advanced classes.

The illustrations of analysis (151) are designed to be suggestive rather than to serve as models. The teacher will doubtless prefer, in many instances, to begin with

simpler examples. The author is firm in his belief that exercises in analysis should be oral rather than written, and hence he has found no use for diagrams or keys to diagrams.

The book is an attempt to present the essentials of English grammar in a form suitable for instruction in the schools as they are to-day. The pupil who follows the course, under an intelligent teacher, may lay the foundations of a rational knowledge of English idiom, which, to be made effective in his own use of language, must be accompanied by practice in composition and by acquaintance with good models of expression as exhibited in the literature that should form a part of every year's work in English.

In the making of this book the author has had the hearty coöperation of one of his colleagues in the English department, Dr. H. M. Belden, whose sound scholarship has contributed no little to greater conciseness and accuracy of statement.

This little book, the outgrowth of interest in secondary education, and especially of interest in English instruction, is put forth with diffidence, the greater because of a keen sense of the difficulties encountered, in the hope that it may prove useful to teachers of this much-abused and neglected subject.

E. A. A.

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