Colloquium on English - Research Institute for Waldorf Education

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“substantiating” verbs. In English, a verb is often formed by changing a noun into a gerund, or “verbal
noun,” for example, by adding “ing.”] I know a woman who makes a verb out of everything that she hears.
For instance, if someone says “Ah” she then says that he “ahed.” Faculty Meetings with Rudolf Steiner II
(488)
Working with the Pictorial Element in Grammar
It should not be too difficult to present these matters pictorially in a language, if one thinks it is
worthwhile to bring out the pictorial element in lessons. Really one ought not to miss a single opportunity
to show even 10, 11 and 12-year-olds how sentences are built up by, let us say, a main clause, a relative
clause and a conditional clause. The actual grammar involved is not what matters most—it should only be
a means of arriving at a picture. We should not miss the opportunity of giving the child what one could call
a spatial picture of a main and a relative clause. Naturally this can be done in the most varied ways.
Without wanting to theorize one could represent the main clause as a large circle and the relative clause as
a small one, perhaps an eccentric circle. The conditional clause, the “if-sentence,” could now be shown by
lines drawn towards the circle like rays indicating the conditioning factors….It is really necessary, after
preparation of one’s material, to come back to these matters again and again, and even with 10, 11, and 12year-olds
to go into the moral-characterological aspect of style made visible by pictures. This does not
imply teaching syntax, for the pupil should grasp these matters in a more intuitive way. One can really go
a long way here. For instance one can introduce a short story from the point of view of the temperaments,
having thoroughly prepared beforehand. One can talk—not about the content, but about the style—
about a melancholy or a choleric style quite apart from the content, even from the practical content. I am
referring to sentence construction. There is not need to dissect sentences—this should be avoided—but
one should cultivate this transformation into the pictorial element showing the moral and characteristic
quality. One will find that it is possible to teach children aged 10, 11, 12 and 13 in a stimulating way if one
struggles hard enough with the necessary preparation. Erziehungsfrage im Reifealter translated in Karl
Stockmeyer’s Rudolf Steiner’s Curriculum for Waldorf Schools (26)
Enlivening the Study of Grammar and Punctuation
The main problem now is that if the children go to their final examinations with the punctuation
they now know, it could be very bad. They use no punctuation at all in the 9b class. Teaching them
punctuation depends upon discussing the structure of a sentence in an interesting way. That is something
you can do well in the course of teaching them literature.
For example, if you begin with older German language forms, you can show them in an intriguing
way how relative clauses arose slowly through the transformation of writing into Latin structure. That
could provide the basis for studying commas. You can teach the use of commas when you first show the
children that they need to enclose every relative clause within commas. It is interesting to discuss relative
clauses because they did not exist in older German. They also do not exist in dialect. You could go back to
the Song of the Niebelungs and so forth and show how relative clauses began to come into the language and
how it then became necessary to bring this logic into the language. After you have shown how relative
clauses are enclosed with commas, you can go into a more thorough discussion of the concept of clauses.
The children then need to learn that every kind of clause is set off by some sort of punctuation. The other
things are not so terribly important.
From there, you can go on to show how elements of thought developed in language, and thus arrive
at the semicolon, which is simply a stronger comma and indicates a greater break. They already use periods.
There is certainly sufficient time to begin that in the ninth grade. You need to develop it through a
positive structuring of language, by going into the intent. It is something that you especially need to do