SPEECH TRAINING

Hokitika Guardian, 11 December 1925, Page 1

SPEECH TRAINING

•—-—-————~ OFl'TC'l AF MANUAL PFIII.ISM ED. WELLINGTON. Dec. !). The common faults in the speech of New Zealand school children are carefully analysed in a special booklet on speech training about to be issued by tho Department of Education. This instructional work is intended lor the iiso of teachers’ and it reminds them that it is emphatically the teacher’s duty to leach all his pupils to speakstandard English, and to speak it clearly and with expression. Children acquire language by imitation. Habit strengthens the memory images and the form of utterance. The child's speech, it is pointed out, is moulded by that of the people around him. their speech becoming his pattern. Statistics have proved that most speech delects develop between the ages of live and nine—that is, after tho child lms entered school. “It will he evident, therefore, that the teacher's speech—its correctness ol enunciation and its ireodom Irum vulgarisms—will have it determining influence on the speech habits of his pupils. Indeed, the teacher should constitute himself a model from, which the child can fashion his speech. Phonetic rules are quite out of place with young children. spoken language being the result of imitation, not ol rule.” Some valuable exercises in pronunciation of all the vowels and consonants are given in the booklet, and the current faults are noted, with suggestions for their elimination, ihc writers giving a good deal of attention to what might" lie called the mechanics of speech, but til ways reminding the reader that the children will learn

imitatively. Sir Barnes .Barr. Minister of Education. suggests in a foreward to the booklet that it is the right of everyone to be taught Lo speak in the manaer that marks the educated man. “The fact that faulty accent is here and there beginning to show itself makes it desirable that closer attention should be given to speech training, and the definite and systematic teaching of correct English speech should be given .at the outset in, our schools. "The Department has, therefore, prepared this special report to assist stu-

dents in training colleges and teachers eenerallv in arranging; series of exercises on" this subject. Suggestions are included for the treatment of defective speech, of which unfortunately there is a good deal more in the schools than the public is aware of.”