Basic in Teaching: East and West

BASIC IN TEACHING:
EAST AND WEST
BY
I. A. Richards, Litt. D.
London: 1935

CONTENTS

1. What is the Theory of Language?	7
2. The Cultural Crisis in China	22
3. Reading or Perusal	49
4. The Nature and Use of Basic	63
5. Some Misunderstandings	91

1 . WHAT IS THE THEORY OF LANGUAGE?

But whatever the difficulties that lie in the way of this inquiry : whatever it be that keeps us so much in the dark to ourselves ; sure I am that all the light we can let in upon our minds, all the acquaintance we can make with our own understandings, will not only be very pleasant, but bring us great advantage I directing our thoughts in the search of other things. LOCKE, Of Human Understanding.

The system (if we may call it such) of human studies shows a number of unfortunate cracks, or gaps. There is a bad one between logic and psychology, another between logic and ethics, another all round epistemology; but the most embarrassing and obstructive of all is that between this group as a whole and semasiology (or the study of linguistic meanings, the inquiry into how words are used.) It is true that at times an exceptional logician will daringly wonder if perhaps the aim of logic (and philosophy) is not to provide the methods by which the meaning of words may be defined -- but there the matter usually ends; he will not thenceforth proceed any more as though it were so. For the detail (and it is from the study of the detail that advances must come) of how words mean, how they change their meanings, how they combine and separate them, is another subject needing another training. And on the other side of the gap, the philologist, though he too sometimes suspects that his subject is ultimately capable of swallowing up philosophy, has learned by grim experience that logic and psychology -- not to mention epistemology -- are awkward things to play with. So he keeps away from the intellectual buzz-saws; and, as both philology and philosophy grow ever more and more technical, the gap between them, if anything, widens.
It is perhaps easier to see why a philologist should be often at a loss when he turns to logic or psychology, than why the psychologist or logician should not at once proceed to help him. A glance at the history of these studies best explains the difficulty. (Stop bottom of page 8 and skip to the end of the chapter, page 20.)
I am concerned here with some of the possibilities of a first practical application of this incipient science -- an application that is the result of the most extensive and prolonged experimental inquiry into substitution that has yet been undertaken -- with some of the uses that may immediately be made of Basic English in teaching both in the East and in the West. I shall begin with an account of the present cultural crisis in China and of the reasons which make an extensive use of some Western Language necessary for the Chinese if they are to take their proper part, undiminished, in the world's future. From the difficulties which Complete English (along with any other Western tongue) presents to them, I shall pass to a consideration of the parallel difficulties which, here and in America, make so many teachers regard our current methods as desperately inadequate to our new conditions. I proceed then to an examination of Basic English and of the reasons for thinking that it provides a valuable, powerful, and practicable corrective for some, at least, of these evils. And finally I discuss some objections that are likely to be advanced against Basic English with a view to showing, if I can, that they spring from misconceptions of its nature, aims, and probable effects.

2 . THE CULTURAL CRISIS IN CHINA

It is with sciences as with trees. If it be our purpose to make some particular use for the tree, you need not concern yourself about the roots. But if you wish to transfer it into another soil, it is then safer to employ the roots than the scions. Thus the mode of teaching most common at present exhibits clearly enough the trucks, as it were, of the sciences, and those too of handsome growth; but nevertheless, without the roots, valuable and convenient as they undoubtedly are to the carpenter, they are useless to the planter. But if you have at heart the advancement of education, as that which proposes to itself the general discipline of the mind for its end and aim, be less anxious concerning trunks, and let it be your care that the roots should be extracted entire, even though a small portion of the soil should adhere to them; so that at all events you may be able by this acquirements, re-measuring as it were the steps of your knowledge for our own satisfaction, and at the same time to transplant it into the minds of others, just as it grew in your own. BACON, De Augments, I. vi. c. ii. Translation by S.T, Coleridge.

The phrase 'The Chinese Renaissance' has passed into general use as a description of the modern intellectual movement in China; but the parallels to be drawn with our own Renaissance are few. China is not today renewing contact with a past phase of her tradition, though a few scholars have set this as their program; she is being violently and reluctantly torn from it. (Stopped top of page 23. Skipping to end of chapter, page 46)
A better medium should, from the beginning, recognize that disparity (due to differences between Chinese and Western intellectual) between Chinese and Western attitudes to language and its meanings which was discussed above. It should aim at giving the Chinese learner of English what his own language does not (and perhaps never will) provide hi with, an instrument of analytical discrimination between meanings. It should be, from the outset, pre-eminently a medium inviting and enforcing a clear and explicit definition of the matter that it conveys. This not only because the lack of such a medium and the corresponding lack of habits of critical reflection are the worst disabilities of the Chinese student -- but because the Western ideas, feelings, desires, and attitudes which the medium is to introduce differ from Chinese ideas, feelings, desires, and attitudes chiefly in their different articulation with one another in more complex sentiments. to use a hand metaphor, the atoms in the two cases may be the same but the molecules of meaning with which language operates are for the most part not the same. The only way in which false and misleading approximations to Western units of meaning with Chinese 'equivalents' can be avoided is by giving these meanings through, and together with, an apparatus for comparing complex meanings -- through an explicit analytic language.
Such a language is Basic English. But to judge of its capacities a Western reader will do best to consider it in connection with those aspects of our own problem -- the teaching of English at home, in our schools and universities -- which show most analogy with the troubles of the Chinese student. Montesquieu, Voltaire, and Goldsmith knew one way of using the East to display the West. but there are others. And though this is no fable, the reader will have noticed that only a part of the Chinese student's difficulties with English are peculiarly Chinese. Inability to consider meanings critically, lack of training in systematic comparison and discrimination, a tendency to accommodate a passage to a pre-formed view rather than to examine it for itself, these are not unknown anywhere. Let us then examine them in the field in which we can most hope to understand them thoroughly.

3 . READING OR PERUSAL.

Cicero in his second Booke de Oratore, bringeth in one Lucilius, a pleasant and merie conceipted man, who saith, that he would not have such things as he wrote to be read, either of those that were execellently learned, or of them that were altogether ignoraunt. For, that the one would think more of his doings, and have a farther meaning with him, then ever the authour selfe thought: the other taking the booke in his hand, would understand nothing at all, being as meete to reade Authours, as an Asse to play on the Organnes. SIR THOMAS WILSON, The Arte of Rhetorique, 1560.

I write now no longer as a Visiting Professor of a Chinese University recalling the conditions under which he worked out there, but as a teacher of English at Cambridge, with experience of similar conditions at Harvard. And I feel some confidence that no one with the same experience will accuse me of exaggeration in saying that our most careful and expensive methods of teaching people how to read are, judged by their results, at present almost ludicrously inefficient. this is no place to present evidence in quantity to show that a large proportion of Candidates for Honors in English have not learnt to read. The fact can, however, be demonstrated without the least difficulty. I printed a large collection of representative evidence some years ago in Practical Criticism; and Mr. F.L. Lucas, on the basis of his extensive examination experience, has recently added valuable corroboration in his essay in Cambridge University Studies. (Stopped at page 50, pick up towards the end of the chapter at page 61.)
The way of describing the familiar situation may confuse it with a relatively minor problem of vocabulary. But the peril that the breakdown of the traditional channels has exposed us to is no mere matter of impoverishment, corruption, or blurring of vocabulary -- serious though those are. It threatens our values still more deeply, deranging the apprehension of syntax, for metaphoric and literal modes alike. Nearly all our possibilities of experience today are offered us first in imagination through words. Even when this is not so, the experience is illuminated for us and placed in some perspective for us, through words. We judge this experience; we choose to pursue it or to avoid it, because of words that have influenced us in the past. All our intellectual and most of our emotional discriminations keep their order and clarity through words. The whole abstract world of moral values is held for us by a framework of words. Still more important, our skill in sorting and manipulating these values in imagination is chiefly a skill with words. Our forms of thinking are verbal. Our modes of purpose and feeling, if they are not verbal, can at least only be examined and compared by means of words. A decline in our sensitiveness and discrimination with words must be followed soon by a decline in the quality of our living also.
In this situation any technique, any innovation, however odd or novel, which offers any hope of improvement in our training in the use of words deserves attention.

4 . THE NATURE AND USE OF BASIC

The analytic structure of many modern languages has given opportunities for expressing in language shades of thought, feelings, and idea which are not found or only imperfectly expressed in synthetic languages of more rigid structure. PROFESSOR ALLEN MAWER, The Problem of Grammar in the Light of Modern Linguistic Thought.

Although Basic was in the first instance designed as an International Auxiliary Language, its use to improve the reading and writing of peoples who already speak English is by no means an accidental, extrinsic, or superadded employment. Its clarifying powers derive directly from its capacities as an auxiliary language. They come from its peculiar relation to Complete English and from the techniques of analysis and definition to which the joint economy and range of its Word-list are due. The aims which governed the invention and perfecting of Basic as an auxiliary language explain its aptness as an instrument in teaching.
The aims were four:

It was to be such that everything that anyone wishes to say might be said -- so far as the plain sense goes -- as clearly and explicitly in Basic as in Complete English.
It was to be acceptable to the eyes and ears and minds of users of Complete English; to be a selection from Complete English allowing nothing in vocabulary, phrase-building, or syntax contrary or foreign to what we often, somewhat obscurely, call the 'genius' of English.
It was to be capable of being learned with the minimum of labor by speakers of other tongues -- including Far Eastern and African tongues as well as those Indo-European tongues for which other proposed auxiliary languages (Esperanto, Ido, Novial, etc.) have been framed.
It was designed to give automatically as much insight into the structure and articulations of our meanings as could be contrived.

As to the success with which these aims have been achieved; that of the third is now being verified in many parts of the world; that the first, second and fourth may be tested at will by anyone who is prepared to take the trouble to learn to write in Basic. And this trouble is not excessive.
A word of warning is, however, in place here. Experience has shown that there is a general expectation that learning to write or speak easily in basic must be extremely difficult for users of Complete English. It has even been said that to learn Basic must be harder for those to whom Complete English is their native tongue than for foreigners. This, as has now been demonstrated overwhelmingly by the experience of many, is simply a mistake. An English speaker can learn to write in Basic in a day. But, as in other kinds of learning, he must set about his work in the right way. If he merely take the Basic Word-list and attempts virtually to re-invent for himself the whole technique of its use, he is very likely to be defeated and to become discourage. Basic cannot be easily learned from the Word-list or from a rapid perusal of a few specimens. But it can be both quickly and easily learned by anyone who takes The Basic Dictionary (a collection of the most useful phrases for rendering the 7,500 commonest English words in terms of the Basic 850), The Basic Words and The ABC of Basic (the books of the Rules) and works for a short while under their guidance.
In such matters personal experience is alone convincing. When I decided to write a book in Basic, I anticipated that at least some weeks of persistent effort would be needed before Basic became for me a rapid, natural, and supple medium of expression. The first morning's work seemed to confirm this prospect. I had barely the first paragraph of my book to show for it and I was by no means satisfied with what I had written. I seemed to have been forced to say what I could rather than what I thought. I felt what all novices in Basic feel -- that there ought to be some other words in the Word-list. The irritation and strain that attends this stage should be noted. It is felt in all novel exercises whether of the body or of the mind; and in learning to ride, to play the flute, or to do sums, it is recognized as a healthy symptom. Resuming work after lunch, I became suddenly aware that the whole position had altered. It was as though a threshold had been passed; the trick was learned; I finished the day with some 3,000 words on the paper that could stand, and a few days later found that I could write 6,000 in one sitting -- which is considerably more than I have ever managed to do in complete English. The analogy that suggested itself throughout this learning process was with verse-writing. There is a stage in writing verses when the metrical and rhyme schemes are obstacles to composition: there is a later stage when they become a prompting influence in composition suggesting possibilities of development which without them would not occur. Similarly with Basic; the forms of sentence which it allows come into the mind as alternative possibilities offering rival developments to the thought. They soon lose their coercive power and become merely a supply of technical opportunities.
I make this personal record here because the impression that Basic must be hard to learn is so widespread. No doubt the fact that I had been theoretically interested in Basic for years and acquainted with its principles made learning to write it easier for me. But this was the first time that I sat down to use the language seriously, and this experience is inevitably a large part of the grounds for my belief both in its powers and in their general availability.
The principles underlying Basic -- they are at the same time the technique of its use -- are extremely simple. They derive from the observation that the number of ideas we actually use in explaining or defining any meaning is a surprisingly small one. Their exact number cannot be settled unless we first settle how we are to count them. This is partly an arbitrary matter depending upon convenience and upon the degree of generality we give them. But the importance point is that our general ideas are not many, though the rich variety of our vocabulary makes us suppose that they are innumerable. To take an analogy which is useful if not pressed too far, the chemist is prepared to give in terms of a very small number of elements an exact description of innumerable compounds for which any ordinary language requires an indefinitely large vocabulary. So Basic, with a small apparatus of terms, is prepared to give an account, as exact as our knowledge of them will allow, of innumerable meanings which in Complete English have their separate and usually unconnected symbols. (Stopped at top of page 69. Start again on bottom page 87 to give a feel for the book.)
The value of translation into Basic varies very definitely with the type of passage translated. Apart from its use for the normal needs of international communications, travel, business, etc. -- translation is most instructive with passages of expository or argumentative prose dealing with semi-abstract subjects. And it is least helpful with passages of emotional evocation concerned with special local objects and activities which employ large numbers of specialized names.¹ Thus a sentimental reverie over a cricket-match would be about the worst example we could choose, and it put even a simple remark about a linnet fluting in a myrtle-bush into Basic would not be a profitable exercise. It could be done, but the effect of the Basic version on the bird-lover's ear would not be that of the original remark. Descriptions of local activities, however, belong to a type of writing in less need of improvement as regards either composition or interpretation than any other. The spoken descriptions and narratives of children are often admirable; and their written accounts would be good too if artificial departures from speech were prevented. Unluckily, many of the exercises which are recommended as 'using the children's interests in their practice in composition' do often tend directly to foist these artificialities upon them. Correspondingly, no one runs much risk of misunderstanding descriptions -- if he has had the necessary experience -- and without it he will fail to understand in any case. But we all run some risk of misreading any semi-abstract argument. And the breakdown will not, commonly, be due to the difficulty of the thought as thought. It will come from the indefiniteness, the embarrassing richness and variety of the possible meanings that may be borne by the medium, and our lack of practice in taking conscious account of them in interpretation. No educational instrument can be equally effective in all fields. Basic is aimed to assist at the weakest points, at the points where interpretation most needs to discriminate, to clarify, and to increase control and order.
I have attempted in this section to state some of the reasons for thinking that Basic has a peculiarly important future before it both as a medium by which Western thought may be introduced to Chinese and other Eastern students more successfully than at present, and as an instrument in improving the clarity of transmission of thinking in the West. These two fields may be taken together because the essential problem is the same in them both: how to induce and to maintain a critical and discriminating examination of meanings. Local conditions in China, the circumstances touched on in Section Two, enormously magnify the difficulty of this problem, but they do not fundamentally change its nature. The juxtaposition of the two, I believe, illuminated them both. We shall not see the perils that come from the increasing and inevitable breakdown of traditional Chinese culture, and the powers of the possible remedies, unless we make every effort to see them in terms of our own problems and our own experience at home. And to see our own troubles enlarged and exaggerated in the Chinese scene may help us in turn.
I pass on now to consider briefly some of the doubts or objections that may have arisen in the reader's mind and some of the misconceptions which experience has shown are frequently formed by those who have no close practical acquaintance with Basic.
- - -
1. For international purposes, on occasions when such specialized, local, or emotional topics are involved, Basic can legitimately employ specialized vocabularies, the standardized scientific nomenclatures, descriptive phrases, and (when the sense is made clear) the normal English word ad hoc.

5 . SOME MISUNDERSTANDINGS

It is not only possible, but necessary to make children understand their tasks, from their very first entrance into learning; seeing they must everyone bear his own burden, and not rely upon their fellows altogether. CHARLES HOOLE, New Discovery of the Old Art of Teaching School, 1660.

The claims advanced in the preceding section are remarkably high -- so high that they must awaken suspicion and opposition in many. It will be well then to attempt to state again just what these claims are, and to distinguish them carefully from other claims with which they are sometimes confused, claims self-refuting and outrageous.
I will waste little time over one objection, though it is raised more often than would be expected. It is not proposed to sweep away or abolish normal, literary Complete English in favor of Basic. Similarly, it is not claimed that Basic is for all purpose a better or more suitable language. I would not allude to these suggestions if serious-seeming persons did not sometimes pretend to dismiss Basic on thee grounds. I well remember how an eminent British Civil servant, when it was suggested that a passage from a report of his might be translated into Basic as an experiment, replied, "I am satisfied with my own prose, thank you!" And no explanations, in his case, sufficed to smooth the ruffled plumes.
A slightly less ludicrous misconception takes the suggestion to be that in England and America elementary teaching be conducted in Basic. This too is not part of the proposal. Basic, for English-speaking countries, is an auxiliary instrument only, with definitely limited functions. It service is to clarify and improve the use of Complete English, not at any point to replace it. It can clarify by providing a medium with special qualities, between which and Complete English translation exercises can be conducted. And it is with regard to the nature and purpose of these exercises in translation that the rally dangerous misconceptions are likely to arise, those that are worth close study and discussion.
What have chiefly to be guarded against are certain excessive simplifications and assurance as regards all translation exercises -- Latin or French as much as Basic. When their purpose is primarily to teach the elementary part of a foreign syntax, the teacher shows his skill in choosing passages which are as free from ambiguity as possible. This not only makes corrections easier but avoids unnecessary distraction from the pupil. Thus, at the onset, a 'one-for-one' conception of meanings is encouraged. With more advanced exercises, when ambiguity is a merit in the original, to reproduce the ambiguity as closely as possible will be a merit in the translations. Here again a skillful teacher, if he takes himself to be primarily teaching the foreign language rather than training his pupils in interpretation, will choose passages containing only good ambiguity.
From this justified practice to a persuasion that the prime aim of translation exercises must be a reproduction or imitation of the original is the step, which is likely to be misleading. There exists in fact a very widespread assumption (not, unfortunately, easy to state fairly) that for every well written passage in one language, there will be, in another, a translation which is the best that the difference between the languages allows, and that the aim of the exercise is achieved if the pupil is able to give this translation. The assumption is, from one point of view, quite proper an useful. If our purpose is to teach a foreign language we may follow it, at least in translation from English into that language. But it is not so clearly right for translations from that language into English. I have in mind here some extremely skillful translations from the ancient Chinese into English. The feat has been to triumph over the differences between early Chinese and 19th Century English thought; the light thrown upon and the help given in understanding what the Chinese authors were doing is correspondingly small. These translations leap with amazing agility over all the points at which meditation would be profitable and all the problems whose explanation would be instructive. The parallel that may be drawn with many school exercises will bear pressing. What the pupil needs to know is not what 'the English for that' is, but what 'that' says. Every schoolmaster who wonders why his best pupils are not really as intelligent as they sometimes seem, will, I think, take my point here. (Skipping from the top of page 95 to page 99)
I will leave the subject of Basic versions of poetry with a few remarks on the poetic value of the auxiliary. A prejudice exits, which is perhaps of 18th Century origin, against auxiliary verbs as 'weakening the sentence.' Their increased use was part of Wordworth's and Coleridge's youthful revolt against 'poetic theory -- to the 18th Century showed itself in eliminating them. Professour de Selincourt in this Preface remarks :--

Magnificent

The morning was, in memorable pomp,
More glorious than I ever had beheld.
The Sea was laughing at a distance ; all
The solid Mountains were as bright as clouds

Magnificent

The morning was, in memorable pomp,
Glorious as e'er I had beheld--in front.
The Sea lay laughing at a distance ; near
The solid mountains shone, bright as the clouds.

Opinions will, however, I think, be divided over teach of these changes. 'Lay' is certainly open to charges of awkwardness, of inaptness, and of overdoing the personification ; and 'shone' seems to interfere with the peculiar interaction between 'solid' and 'clouds.' The collective effect is to make the man and his passion recede in favour of a picture as the subject of the lines.
However, I have not cited this passage in order to discuss these points but as an example with which to suggest a moral. Namely, that no general rule, such as, that a sentence containing an auxiliary is weaker than one with areal verb, is worth a straw. Everything obviously depends upon what the sentence is trying to do. I think that Professour de Selincourth's own sentence would have been stronger, not weaker, if he had written 'is' or 'runs' -- especially if it is to be followed by 'stood' rather than 'were.' The opinion, then, that Basic, being limited to auxiliaries, must thereby be 'weak' has, I suggest, nothing but an obsolete 18th Century grammatical whimsy behind it. (Skipping from the top of page 101 to middle of page 103) The peculiarity of Basic is that, as an analytic instrument, it forces us to consider contexts and connections so insistently. Its 850 words are not a haphazard collection. They are those which experiment has shown are most capable, in combination with one another, of taking the place of other words in a fashion which will sensitively and accurately reflect what the other words are doing from context to context. Basic is not a set of phrases which may, mechanically or by rote, be jotted down in place of other words not in the Basic list, regardless of the context of the other word. it works only by taking account of that context and following its lead. Criticism of Basic 'equivalents' most often misfires by overlooking this point. There are no invariable Basic equivalents for non-Basic words taken in isolation. A word taken in isolation is only a mark or a noise and can be called 'a word' only in a different sense from that in which a word in use is a word ; and Basic is concerned only with words in use. Thus to ask what is the Basic for horrible or conflict without giving the context is to ask a type of question which supporters of Basic will do well not to reply to. They should point out instead that the questioner's conception of language is in need of improvement. (Skipping from the middle of page 104 to page 110) From all this Basic offers us relief. Instead of being challenged to show himself off as an exquisitely sensitive being, a true and proper audience for a poet, the victim can be set a definitely limited technical task which will prove whether he can perceive in a passage those elements and that structure, perception of which is a necessary preliminary, but no more, to reading it aright. Whether it is a good passage, how good, and why, are not matters for the examination hall and the classroom. If, when understood, it does not show its own value, praise of it there will not do so. Silence and leisure will be more favorable conditions.
But no one nowadays doubts this. What will be doubted is whether enough pupils can acquire enough dexterity in Basic to make useful versions, without taking up school-time desperately needed for other purposes. To which doubt there are two replies, I think. One is to point to the amount of time which is at present wasted in reading which is not adequately understood. It would be worthwhile to sacrifice a good deal of this in return for even a small improvement in the capacity to read intelligently. But I do not believe either that the improvement would small or that the time required would be great. Teachers, for whom the years are best left uncounted since they themselves learned or tired to learn something new, may find a decent Basic version hard to compose; but their pupils are busy learning more difficult new tricks every day!
Between the recommendation broadly outlined here and its trial, several steps obviously intervene. Basic is not to be judged, as a language, by anyone's efforts in it. Nor, as an educational instrument, can it be fairly judged by the first experimental trials that may be made. Its use is a teaching matter and the best methods of teaching it and of teaching with it will have to be patiently worked out -- as has been the case with all the instruments of education. Much of the above, therefore, should be taken as but provisional speculation. This, however, I take to be certain: that, parallel to the complete change in the prospects of a World Auxiliary International Language that the invention of Basic has already effected, another change, hardly less important in the long view, in the technique of linguistic training, has been made possible. With this change the hope for some sort of adequate unity in the procedure of interpretation in different parts of the world grows less dim. 112
< texts books >

Provided and Thanks to ZbEnglish.net