New Practical English for High Schools

Good composition is no mystery. It is produced by welldefined and well-understood methods, and these methods can be learned. Few people, it is true, ever attain to superlative excellence in either speaking or writing. Nevertheless, all continue to express themselves in words, just as thousands continue to sing, even though they cannot equal Caruso, and to make speeches, although they cannot rival Webster or Calhoun. One thing they may confidently expect; namely, that by means of judicious study and practice they will improve. So will you.

Improvement in English composition depends, first of all, on knowing precisely what it is you have to learn. What is composition? How does one compose? What are the features and qualities of a good composition? How does a fine speaker proceed? How does a great writer? What advice would he give you? What stages does a composition pass through on the way from its inception to its delivery or publication? How does the author decide what to speak or write about? How does he determine what to say and in what way to say it? How does he judge that one idea or expression is good and should be retained, whereas another is bad or inadequate and should be left out or revised?

These and other similar questions this book will undertake to help you to answer. First, you will define a problem and find its solution. Next, you will practice applying that solution until you have attained a reasonable degree of skill in

doing so. Then you will go on to another problem, and so continue until you have dealt with the chief problems of composition that your life, in school and out, presents to you. At each step you should try to see just what you are to learn and what you must do in order to learn it.

How Stevenson Learned to Write

Robert Louis Stevenson early determined to learn to write. His account of how he set about doing this is very interesting and is often mentioned. Read the part of this account which follows, keeping in mind as you do so two questions. What did Stevenson do? How did he do it?

All through my boyhood and youth, I was known and pointed out for the pattern of an idler; and yet I was always busy on my own private end, which was to learn to write. I kept always two books in my pocket, one to read, one to write in. As I walked, my mind was busy fitting what I saw with appropriate words; when I sat by the roadside, I would either read, or a pencil and a penny version-book would be in my hand, to note down the features of the scene or commemorate some halting stanzas. Thus I lived with words. And what I thus wrote was for no ulterior use; it was written consciously for practice. It was not so much that I wished to be an author (though I wished that too) as that I had vowed that I would learn to write. That was a proficiency that tempted me; and I practiced to acquire it, as men learn to whittle, in a wager with myself. Description was the principal field of my exercise; for to any one with senses there is always something worth describing, and town and country are but one continuous subject. But I worked in other ways also; often accompanied my walks with dramatic dialogues, in which I played many parts; and often exercised myself in writing down conversations from memory.

This was all excellent, no doubt; so were the diaries I sometimes tried to keep, but always and very speedily discarded, finding them a school of posturing and melancholy self-deception. And yet this was not the most efficient part of my training. Good though it

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New Practical English for High Schools: Second Course