Colloquium on English - Research Institute for Waldorf Education

Diary”? To whom are they writing and for what purpose? Many still are encouraged to write “thank you
notes” and a few might still write hand written letters to a variety of audiences for a variety of purposes.
There might be a school or class “Newsletter”. They may have written or be encouraged to write accounts
of recent class trips for such publications. Some may even have engaged in political activity such as writing
to a company or to a politician or letters to the editor of local papers. Many will be e-mailing friends and
will be eager to talk about the purpose of such exchanges as well as the conventions used. They can easily be
lead to understand that choices in spoken and written English are determined by the speaker’s or writer’s perception
of purpose.
4. Additional Elements In Spoken English: Close observation of “body language” can be the basis for
valuable discussions in language choice. Is gesture arbitrary? What about the gestures for “Come here”, for
“Stay there”, for “Bless you”, or attitudes of prayer in various religions? This can easily lead into a discussion
about whether the words humans have used to name things are arbitrary. Would “a rose by any other name
… small as sweet”? (see Adam Makkai “Rudolf Steiner on Language: A View from Modern Linguistics”, an
Afterword to The Genius of Language,1995 edition)
By Grade 10, students have enough understanding of other languages to talk about the varieties of
ways by which human beings have named things that we differentiate every day, such as tree, dog, sun, star,
wind. Such discussion should have moved out of the realm of “one way is better than another” and into an
interest in comparison. They need to know that every language has as complex a history as the English
language has, and that every word has a history. Such discussions can also move into conversations about
the “gestures” of nature. An interesting side path into the wonders of “onomatopoeia” could be tempting.
(for excellent exercises in sound, see Mary Oliver’s Rules of the Dance and Paul Matthews Sing Me the
Creation). In Grade 10, it seems essential to give a main lesson on the history of the English language.
Through this, we can read Caxton’s own account of not knowing which form of English to use in his
printing. Thus, the idea of a dictionary arose. The biographies of Sir William Jones, Jacob Grimm, and the
dictionary makers like Samuel Johnson, Noah Webster, and Sir James Murray who undertook the compiling
of the Oxford English Dictionary are wonderful stories to share with students. Steiner was fascinated by
Grimm’s law, because it was true research.
5. Standard English: Once students are aware that there are a variety of codes and that they are constantly
switching codes, they can be led into a journal writing assignment and then a discussion of “value judgments”
which they or others make based on the way that people speak. A useful preliminary discussion
might revolve around judgments they might make about the way people dress. Some students might even
be able to articulate moments when they themselves feel or have felt “judged” by their language.
Grade 10 seems the appropriate year for students to acquire a basic understanding of the evolution
of English into the current “Standard English”, although before then, students can certainly understand
that their choice of language for audience and purpose varies and that there is a “preferred code” for spoken
and written English in a school setting. An understanding of the remarkable blend of Germanic and Romance
elements in the English language allows students to become consciously aware of the concreteness of
many Anglo-Saxon derivations and the abstractness of many Romance derivations, where we choose to use
each, and the effect this has on listener or reader.
Such a block on the development of the language can also introduce students to the development of
the study of linguistics. Giving students practice in tracing the history of words (see American Heritage
Dictionary especially the Indo-European appendix) can lead to the question: Do all words come originally
from a “concrete” beginning? Words such as “calculate,” “language,” “curfew” can spark such a question.
Steiner gives some excellent examples in The Genius of Language: (“lord”, “lady”.) He says, “ …it is extraordinarily
stimulating to point out…bits of language history occasionally to the children right in the middle
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