nguage will be built up more certainly if
students seek to make a record in the mastery of some hundreds or
thousands of words during a given period, rather than merely to do the
work which is assigned from day to day. A group of boys in a
continuation school have little difficulty in mastering the habits which
are required in order to handle the formal processes in arithmetic, or
to apply the formula of algebra or trigonometry, if the application of
these habitual responses to their everyday work has been made clear.
Wherever we seek to secure an habitual response we should attempt to
have children understand the use to which the given response is to be
put, or, if this is not possible, to introduce some extraneous motive
which will give satisfaction.

We cannot be too careful in the habits which we seek to have children
form to see to it that the first response is correct. It is well on many
occasions, if we have any doubt as to the knowledge of children, to
anticipate the response which they should give, and to make them
acquainted with it, rather than to allow them to engage in random
guessing. The boy who in writing his composition wishes to use a word
which he does not know how to spell, should feel entirely free to ask
the teacher for the correct spelling, unless there is a dictionary at
hand which he knows how to use. It is very much better for a boy to ask
for a particular form in a foreign language, or to refer to his grammar,
than it is for him to use in his oral or written composition a form
concerning which he is not certain. A mistake made in a formula in
algebra, or in physics, may persist, even after many repetitions might
seem to have rendered the correct form entirely automatic.

In matters of habit it does not pay to take it for granted that all have
mastered the particular forms which have supposedly been taught, and it
never pays to attempt to present too much at any one time. More
satisfactory work in habit formation would commonly be done were we to
_teach_ fewer words in any one spelling lesson, or attempt to fix fewer
combinations in any particular drill lesson in arithmetic, or assign a
part of a declension or conjugation in a foreign language, or to be
absolutely certain that one or two formulas were fixed in algebra or in
chemistry, rather than in attempting to master several on the same day.
Teachers ought constantly to ask themselves whether every member of the
class is absolutely sure and