Teaching Language arTs in The WaLdorf schooL

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Language Arts Compendium
how much they know of grammar and syntax. But in the foreign
language lessons, please avoid first working through a reading passage
and subsequently pulling the language to pieces. Make every effort
to develop the grammatical side independently. There was a time
when foreign language textbooks contained fantastic sentences that
took account only of the proper application of grammatical rules.
Gradually this came to be regarded as ridiculous, and sentences taken
more from life were included in foreign language textbooks instead.
But here, too, the middle path is better than the two extremes. If you
use only sentences from ordinary life, you will not be able to teach
pronunciation very well unless you also use sentences like the ones
we spoke yesterday as an exercise, for instance:
Lulling leader limply
Liplessly laughing loppety
Lumpety lackety lout.
[See beginning of Discussion 8 in Discussions with Teachers. This version was adapted
for English speakers from the original: “Lalle Lieder lieblich, / Lipplicher Laffe, / Lappiger,
lumpiger, / Laichiger Lurch.”]
These sentences consider only the essence of language. When you
develop grammar and syntax with the children, you will have to make
up sentences specifically to illustrate this or that grammatical rule.
But you will have to see to it that the children do not write down
these sentences illustrating grammatical rules. Instead of being written
down in their notebooks, they should be worked on; they come
into being, but they are not preserved. This procedure contributes
enormously to the economical use of your lessons, particularly foreign
language lessons, for in this way the children absorb the rules in their
feelings and after a while drop the examples.
If they are allowed to write down the examples, they absorb the
form of the example too strongly. In terms of teaching grammar, the
examples ought to be dispensable; they should not be carefully written
down in notebooks, for only the rule should finally remain. It is
beneficial to use exercises and reading passages for the living language,
for actual speech, and, on the other hand, to let the children formulate