"The teaching of English plays a very important part in the curriculum of the Burmese school, and whatever political developments there may be in the future its importance is not likely to be diminished. Burma will always have need of a medium of communication, for business and scientific purposes, with the rest of the world ; and English will always be taught, for the same reasons s it is being taught in France and Germany, China and Japan and all the most important countries outside the British Empire.
. . . (more) . . .U MAUNG GYEE
PREFACE
This book is based on numerous lectures I have given to large concourses of teachers in various centres in India and Burma.
By 'lectures' I mean not only my own formal expositions but the hundreds of questions which I have been asked and the prolonged informal discussions which they have invariably provoked. Indeed, my own original expositions has been continuously shaped and reshaped by the questions and discussions following all the lectures gone before, so that no two courses have ever been quite alike. It was only when I found that no new questions were being asked and no new points raised in discussion that I sat down to write.
. . . (more) . . .A. M.
Rangoon, October, 1938.
| CHAPTER | PAGE | ||
| 1 . | THE IMPORTANCE OF WORD - SELECTION | 17 | |
| The Burmese child cannot learn all the words the English child learns. How many can he learn? Which should they be ? | |||
| 2 . | SELECTION BY COUNTING | 53 | |
| The defects of the word-counting systems now in common use. | |||
| 3. | SELECTION BY ELIMINATION | 73 | |
| How Mr. Ogden made his selection of 850 words. | |||
| 4 . | SELECTION -- GRAMMAR AND IDIOM | 109 | |
| Why was the idea of word-selection extended to grammar and idiom ? | |||
| 5 . | BUILDING UP | 127 | |
| What do we mean by 'laying a sound foundation'? | |||
| PART TWO | |||
|---|---|---|---|
| TEACHING PROBLEMS -- THE BASIC APPROACH | |||
| 6 . | ENGLISH -- TEACHING-MEDIUM OR SECOND LANGUAGE | 145 | |
| The demand for vernacularization. Can the time devoted to English be reduced without lowering the standard? | |||
| 7 . | AIM -- UNDERSTANDING OR EXPRESSION | 156 | |
| Should Burmese children be taught only to read English or to Speak and write English as well? | |||
| 8 . | METHOD -- DIRECT OR INDIRECT? | 162 | |
| English through English or English through the Vernacular? Is translation necessary? | |||
| 9 . | BALANCE -- SHAKESPEARE OR SHOP? | 189 | |
| What sort of English do Burmese children need? Must culture be sacrificed to earning-capacity? | |||
| 10. | PRONUNCIATION -- SOUND OR SENSE? | 195 | |
| How the teaching of English is needlessly dominated by phonetic considerations. | |||
| 11. | GRAMMAR -- CONSCIOUS OR UNCONSCIOUS? | 201 | |
| The place of grammar in the teaching of English cannot be decided without reference to word-selection. | |||
| 12. | GRAMMAR -- FORMAL OR FUNCTIONAL? | 212 | |
| A new way of giving the child an insight into the working of language -- 'for its own sake'! | |||
| 13. | READING -- AMUSEMENT OR INSTRUCTIONS? | 219 | |
| Is it possible for the child to establish a reading habit while he is at school? | |||
| 14. | READING -- WORD-MAGIC OR WORD-CONTROL? | 230 | |
| It has been said that 90 per cent of the reading public do not read intelligently. Is this true? How can we test understanding?. | |||
| 15. | COMPOSITION -- LICENCE OR LIBERTY? | 244 | |
| The relation between thought and language. | |||
| 16. | POETRY -- APATHY OR AFFECTATION? | 250 | |
| Why poetry is unpopular; Basic as a new method of interpretation. | |||
| 17. | SCIENCE -- THOUGHT OR LANGUAGE ? | 258 | |
| Science students with ten years of English behind them can barely follow university lectures. Can this be remedied? | |||
| PART THREE | |||
| CONCLUSION | |||
| 18 . | BASIC AND THE NATIONS | 267 | |
| How the use of Basic as an international language grows out of its advantages as a 'first step' to English. | |||
| 19. | BASIC AND ITS CRITICS | 287 | |
| A complete answer to West, Ballard, French and other critics of Basic, showing why the 'Critical Examination of Basic English' was withdrawn and destroyed. | |||
| 20. | The Future of Basic | 333 | |
| Will Basic be affected by the gradual changes to which all languages are subject? | |||
| APPENDIX | 341 | ||
| An account in Basic English, of all the Basic books already published and now being published. | |||
| 1 . School Books | 345 | ||
| 2 . Books about Basic | 355 | ||
| 3 . Books in Basic (General) | 361 | ||
| 4 . More Basic Science. | 367 | ||
| 5 . Books in other Languages. | 368 | ||
| 6 . Learning of Other Languages | 370 | ||
| Basic Representatives, 1938 | 370 | ||
| INDEX | 373 | ||
| ILLUSTRATIONS | ||
|---|---|---|
| FIGURE | PAGE | |
| 1 . | The Word-Gap (i) | 18 |
| 2 . | The Word-Gap (ii) | 21 |
| 3 . | Covering-Words | 24 |
| . . . | ||
| 26. | The Basic Scheme (outline) | 133 |
| 27. | Friends, Acquaintances and Strangers. | 137 |
| . . . | ||
| 33. | The 'Three Voices' | 283 |
| 34. | The Basic Scheme (detail) | 289 |