Publisher's Synopsis
Excerpt from Secondary Lessons, or the Improved Reader: Intended as a Sequel to the Franklin Primer
It is the Opinion of some, who have speculated much on the subject, and who are entitled to great respect, that reading should commence with the pronunciation of sentences, while spelling is made a subsequent busi ness. That this theory is incomparably better than that, which has come down from our fathers, and which has hitherto controlled our raetics, there is perhaps no reasonable doubt. But til it is proved by thorough experiments, the author must be allowed to believe that there is an intermediate course far better than either. For him it is hard to conceive, how the child is to arrive at such a ready distinction of one word from another, as even tolerable reading must require, with out meeting and surmounting the principal labors and difficulties of spelling. To distinguish cat from rat, for instance, he must observe the diversity of the letters c and r in the two words to distinguish eat from ate, he must observe the different arrangements of the letters; that is, he must spell mentally, if he does not do it orally. Beside, it is too evident from experience, that it is a very tedious thing even for those, who have an ordinary degree of acquaintance with the orthography of words, to read their first exercises in composition; and that those who have read volumes and libraries, without first learning to spell, are generally bad 8 llers and bad readers through the whole of their lives, owever much they may excel in information, or natural understand mg. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.
