can give all comers a good working knowledge of grammar without the need of studying its rules or using its technique or terminology, just as a child learns to express itself correctly without any knowledge of grammar. To advanced students the teacher will impart a knowledge of the general principles of Irish grammar, and students who wish to pursue the subject can then read the grammars for themselves.
VI. Just as the sentence is the all-important element of speech and not the isolated word, so the verb is the soul of the sentence, the element around which the idea is grouped. If the teacher should doubt this, let him select the verbs from any of the following series and repeat them to himself, and if he has already conceived the general idea of the lesson, the verbs will suggest almost the whole meaning of the sentences. No selection of nouns or other words will have the same effect. On this matter we are at issue with another well-known oral method.
VII. The Gouin lessons are the language of real life and the language of truth. No false or absurd thing is ever said, so that the mind of the student is not demoralised by fictitious, absurd and obviously false and impossible statements. The student is merely carried through one of his own experiences, or through a fact with which he is first made familiar. This is a powerful help to assimilation and memory.
Here are some further advantages of the Gouin method, and more will be noted incidentally as our lesson proceeds:—
(1) It trains the ear and the imagination from the start, and teaches a knowledge of Ireland and Irish life at the same time that the language is taught.
