German Composition, with Notes and Vocabularies (1921)

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fbeatbs flDofcern Xanguage Series GERMAN COMPOSITION WITH NOTES AND VOCABULARIES BY HERBERT D. CARRINGTON, Pn. D. INSTRUCTOR IN GERMAN, UNIVERSITY OF MAINE AND CHARLES HOLZWARTH, PH. D. DIRECTOR OF . MODERN LANGUAGE INSTRUCTION IN THE HIGH SCHOOLS, ROCHESTER, N. Y. D. C. HEATH CO., PUBLISHERS BOSTON NEW YOKK CHICAGO COPYRIGHT, 1921, BY D. C. HEATH Co. 2 A i PREFACE The English speaking pupil who is trying to learn a highly inflected language like German often believes that as soon as he has mastered the difficulties of grammar his task will be an easy one, since he can find all the words in the dic tionary. But the dictionary contains many pitfalls for the unwary. It gives for instance tropfen and bol tiimltdj as the German equivalents of drop and popular, but strangely enough the teacher objects to the renderings ie tropftc ifyten anbf nr and Siefer err roar mit ben grauen feljr boIfStiimltd, even though the pupil maintains stoutly enough But I found it in the dictionary Such experiences often lead to a conflict of authorities with the teacher on one side and the dictionary, as the pupil believes, on the other. Consequently confusion reigns in the mind of the pupil. As a result of similar experience in the class room, the authors were convinced that the pupil should be trained from the beginning in the careful choice of words as well as in the proper use of endings. This Composition, Book, planned and begun in the fall of 1913, represents the authors attempt to combine a systematic review of the essentials of grammar with a careful treatment of the com monest of those groups of words which offer difficulty in translation. The authors do not claim to have discovered a new prin ciple norto have invented a new method. They feel sure that hundreds of teachers have called the attention of their iv PREFACE pupils to many of the points that are here presented, but they believe that these very teachers will welcome a set of exercises that furnish material for systematic grammar drill and at the same time demand from the pupil care and thought in the use of the new vocabulary. The text on which the exercises of Part I are founded is taken from the German and consists of anecdotes which are first to be worked through carefully in question and answer orally, then to be memorized and retold in the language of the various characters concerned. The English exercises are based not only on the vocabulary of the new story but also on many of the words and phrases of the earlier lessons, thus insuring a continual review in the hope that the ma terial wiM become a permanent part of the pupils vocabu lary. The Word Studies, which form a part of each lesson, are naturally somewhat simpler than those of the exercises in Part II. The German text of Part II is in letter form and relates the experiences of an American family in Bremen. This method of imparting information about the daily life of the people whose language we are studying is by no means new, but in selecting the subject matter, the authors have tried to avoid the themes that have been treated in other Com position Books. Some of the exercises recommended in the first part have been omitted here in order to make room for more elaborate Word Studies. Thirty-six lessons can hardly be expected to make of a beginner in German an authority on synonyms, nor an expert translator it is hoped, however, that they will strengthen in himthe desire to express himself accurately and show him how good English may by careful thought be turned into good German. PREFACE v The original plan of the book included, in addition to the material here presented, a third and a fourth section. The third gave the pupil some information in the form of anecdotes about the childhood of Goethe, Schiller and Lessing, together with more difficult exercises. The fourth section aimed to prepare the pupil for the treatment of independent themes...