an integral part of the new presentation which distinguishes the modern method of teaching a language.
Welsh gives scope for many such exercises and, when wisely related to the general work, they not only accelerate the study of the language, but furnish children with a mode of activity from which they are by no means averse. Drill practice for five or ten minutes should occur in most Welsh lessons during the first two years.
(e) The development of the ability to write idiomatic Welsh will depend on the extent to which the teaching of grammar is correlated with the reading. There should be regular occasions when the pupil is set written exercises whose sole purpose is to ensure accuracy and idiomatic usage. These latter exercises need not take the form of translation, although translation, discreetly used, can be an effective instrument for this purpose, and has a legitimate place in the practice of modern methods.
Care should be taken to choose suitable topics for written exercises, and the material should be carefully prepared beforehand. The exercises should follow more or less directly on oral work, whether a conversation lesson or the discussion of reading matter, and there should be a purposive effort on the teacher's part to induce pupils to draw increasingly on their passive vocabulary in these essays. New words or imperfectly understood words should be thoroughly discussed, and at the beginning it will be useful if teacher and class combine in deciding broadly beforehand what shall be said, and the respective place and importance to be assigned to the various components of the whole. Although the essay as a literary form has not been cultivated in Welsh to a degree comparable with the development of the English essay, adequate models are not wanting and some of the later Welsh essays deserve careful study.
It is difficult, and would probably be futile, to offer suggestions with regard to the acquisition of that individual distinctiveness and distinction in writing that is called style. There is, however, a standard of lucid, relevant writing which gives pleasure when read that most pupils can acquire as the result of intelligent teaching. If attentive reading of the best models, accompanied by suitable prose exercises, produces this latter result with the majority, very good work is being done. Beyond that, skill in writing becomes a highly individual matter, influenced and determined by incalculable personal factors.
(f) Nevertheless it is of the utmost importance that the pupil in the secondary school should not come to regard the study of the mother tongue as a series of formal exercises, under whatever variety of names these may be presented. If his attitude towards language after leaving school is to be lively, inquiring and critical rather than passive and indifferent, the secondary schools, grammar and modern, must emphasise and develop that creative approach to language study which in these days is characteristic of infant and primary school method. It is singular that while we are accustomed to expect and encourage creative work in art, in the crafts and in music, we should
