method of modern language teaching (connected with
observation and practice), an advanced grammar course, and courses in
the phonetics and historical development of the German language. These
courses are indispensable for teachers, but will also be of advantage
to students not intending to teach.

=The elementary group=

The first group is frankly of high school character. It is best to
admit this fully and freely, and to teach these courses accordingly.
Through greater intensity of study (more home work and longer class
periods), the work of three or even four high school years may be
concentrated into two college years, but the method cannot differ
essentially. The way of learning a new language is the same, in
principle, for a child of twelve years and a man of fifty years; in
the latter case, there is merely the difficulty to be overcome that
older persons are less easily inclined to submit to that drill which
is necessary for the establishment of those new habits that constitute
_Sprachgefuehl_. It is a fallacy that the maturer mind of the college
student requires a more synthetic-deductive study of the language than
that of the high school student.

It is sad but true that many college teachers are more reactionary in
questions of method than the better class of high school teachers. The
claim that elementary work in college requires a method different from
that used in the high school is one symptom of this, and another
symptom of the same tendency is the motto of so many college teachers
that there is no "best method," and that a good teacher will secure
good results with any method. At the bottom of such phrases there is
usually not much more than indifference and unwillingness to look for
information on the real character of the method at which they are
generally aimed: the _direct method_. The regrettable superficiality
appearing in the frequent confusion of the "direct" with the "natural"
method is characteristic of this. I am, of course, willing to admit
that what nowadays is termed the "direct method" is not the best way
possible, but that it may and will be improved upon. However, it is
not one of many methods that, according to circumstances, might be
equally good, but it represents the application of the present results
of psychological and linguistic research to the teaching of languages
and distinctly deserves the preference over older ways.

The first demand of the direct method is the developmen