Designing an Efficient Teaching Program

1) The first exercise is to teach the student to hear and begin to become accustomed to hearing the different overall rhythms of sound and silence: -

a) Character rhythm: Character - space - character - space ...

b) Group rhythm: Letter-group - space - Letter-group - space ...

 

From the very first, to get the student accustomed to overall rhythms, he is supplied with "copying" sheets having several sets of five-column groups of little squares like graph paper, as shown below. They will also be used for all subsequent regular copying practice.
__ __ __ __ __ __ __ __ __ __ __ __ __ __ __
|__|__|__|__|__| |__|__|__|__|__| |__|__|__|__|__|
|__|__|__|__|__| |__|__|__|__|__| |__|__|__|__|__|
|__|__|__|__|__| |__|__|__|__|__| |__|__|__|__|__|
|__|__|__|__|__| |__|__|__|__|__| |__|__|__|__|__|

 

Five letter random groups are then to be sent. At first these will all be unknown letters. As he hears each acoustic pattern of a letter in a five-letter group, he is to place a dot in the square, which corresponds to the position of that sound pattern within its group.

 

Thus he works along across the five-space line, becoming used to hearing each letter-rhythm pattern and then writing a dot for it in the appropriate square. (At this stage he only recognizes the sound patterns as entities, nothing more.) He continues to work line by line down the column as each new group is heard. In this way he begins the practice of focusing:

 

a) on the coherent acoustic forms and
b) on the associated rhythm, letter by letter, of the writing hand, and
c) on recognizing the pause after each group.

A relatively short initial session (10 minutes or so) of this will begin to accustom him to these overall and detail patterns of sound as entities.

 

2) The second exercise is to start him on the way
a) to recognize the differences in rhythm-pattern between two quite different-sounding letters, and b) become familiar with the sound patterns of each character, and to become accustomed to them. (All sending to be machine precise.)

 

A) This begins by introducing the two first characters just as sound patterns - without identifying what letters they are. They are to be sent separately and at random until the student definitely recognizes and distinguishes their individual patterns (pattern one and pattern two, or whatever). At this time they are not yet to be identified with their printed letters: they are simply recognized as different patterns of sound.

 

B) Only after he has become accustomed to distinguishing the first two letter patterns from each other, and to the rhythm groups as they are, and writing dots in the little squares, is he to be told the names of these first two characters. He should from then on have no difficulty in writing their letters down in the little squares whenever and as he hears them.

 

This is to train him during these early stages and later on that he is to recognize and react to the presence of each and every acoustic pattern, either by identifying it or by a dot in the square, and of the larger groupings of letters identified by the longer space.

 

Is is obvious that, especially in the learning stages, there are going to be acoustic patterns passing by which he may or will not be able to recognize immediately and automatically. He must get accustomed to giving such signals no thought at all (except to put down a dot), so that he can give his undistracted attention to the next incoming sound pattern.

 

Otherwise, during the all-too-short pause after each signal which he does not immediately identify and before the next one is heard, he is going to try to think about what signal it was. But while he is thinking about it the next signal arrives, tending to upset him and cause him to lose the flow of the rhythm. This interruption must from the very first be stopped. His teacher must insist that whenever the student does not immediately and automatically recognize a sound pattern, just to put a dot in the corresponding square, then immediately let it go, and continue on with the rhythm. This action must become habitual, and this technique has been devised to develop it from the very first.

 

Now as he identifies the acoustic patterns he will write their corresponding letters in the little squares. If the teacher chooses to mix into the 5-letter groups code characters which the student has not been taught, there should be dots to correspond with them.

 

After one or two short (about 10 min.) practice periods this way, the relationships between the acoustic impression and the letters they represent should have become so closely knit together that there is an immediate transition from the acoustic sound pattern to the letter (or a dot). Only when this point is reached is a third letter to be added to the first two.

 

3) Only one new letter at a time is to be introduced and added to those already known. The criterion for adding a new letter is: when at least 90% of the letters already well known are correctly identified. Each new letter is added to the group of recognized sound patterns in the same way as the first two were:

first by simple recognition of the pattern without knowing what letter it is, and in contrast with the previously known ones, and only when he readily recognizes it its individual sound pattern is he to be told what letter it is.

 

As an example of the introduction of characters and the five-letter groups used, if the sequence of letters taught were h - f - a - g - etc.: for the initial two-character lesson, groups were like:

l) hfhhf fhfhfh ....
2) Next character: aahfh fahfh ...
3) Next: ggbaf ghfah ...
4) Next: ccgaf gcafh ..., etc. (In this example he did not begin with the more frequently "troublesome" letters.)

Chapter 30

The Candler System

 

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