|
||||||||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||||||||
- Chauveau, Pierre-Joseph-Olivier. Rapport du surintendant de l'éducation dans le Bas-Canada, pour l'année 1858. Toronto, John Lovell, 1859. 186 p.
"Les obstacles à vaincre sont toujours:
[...]
4° . Le manque de cartes, tableaux, globes, livres et autres objets nécessaires et l'ameublement insuffisant d'un grand nombre de maisons d'école.
5° . L'absence d'uniformité dans le choix des livres d'écoles. (p. 7).
[...]
Extrait d'un Rapport de M. l'Inspecteur Lanctot.
[...]
Une autre mesure à laquelle j'attache beaucoup d'importance c'est l'adoption d'une série de livres de lectures [sic] pour nos écoles. On peut dire qu'il n'y a aujourd'hui qu'un seul livre de lecture c'est le Devoir du Chrétien. Ce livre est excellent, il est même indispensable pour ce qui concerne l'éducation religieuse. Mais outre que l'on doit songer à l'éducation séculière, après deux ou trois ans d'école il n'y a pas un éléve [sic] qui ne l'ait lu et relu dix fois, il perd donc ainsi de son intérêt et l'élève cesse d'éprouver de l'attrait pour la lecture. Il lit non plus dans l'espoir de satisfaire sa curiosité naturelle, d'apprendre quelque chose de nouveau, mais uniquement par routine et pour s'acquitter de la tâche qu'on lui impose. Comment peut-il de cette manière acquérir le goût de la lecture et de l'instruction? Il ne peut que le perdre. Et en effet on voit très peu de jeunes gens qui après être sortis des écoles s'occupent de s'instruire, et se procurent des livres ou des journaux. La plupart semblent être contents de pouvoir dire adieu impunément à leurs livres. M. Lanctot recommande ensuite la publication d'une série de livres de lecture en français semblable à la série des écoles nationales d'Irlande." (p.174).
- xxx. "Notices of Books", Journal of education, 3, 10(oct. 1859):162.
"The french genders taught in six fables: being a plain and easy art of memory, by which the genders of 15,548 french nouns may be learned in a few hours, by Mrs Blackwood: 55 p. in-32. John Lovell. Montreal.
It is difficult to understand how any one who is not of french parents and has not from his infancy learnt to distinguish masculine from feminine words, in a language where there is no neuter gender, should be able to master this great difficulty. This book before us contains a very ingenious scheme to get over this stumbling block. Whether any plan of the kind can be altogether successful, mus be left to experience. We are rather inclined to believe that the French, like every other language, requires constant practice, to be spoken even tolerably, and the difficulty about the genders is certainly one of the most obvious reasons why it should be so. The great drawback to english pupils who are trying to learn French in this country, is that they will insist on learning it as an accomplishment only: that they will not set to work in earnest and adopt the only real mode of improving which is frequent and habitual conversation. Having recorded this caveat, we must speak without any other restrictions of the utility of the small volume before us, and we shall add that Mrs. Blackwood deserves great credit for placing it before the Anglo-Canadian public. It has besides the recommendation of one who having given the greatest part of his life to the tuition of French, in english communities, is perfectly competent to pronounce of its merits, we mean Professor Fronteau. The following extract, from the introduction, shall give a better idea of the book:
«The system by which the gender of the French nouns may be most readily and firmly fixed in the memory, begins by classing them by their final syllables. Thus there are 643 nouns in er, which are all masculine, except two; there are 144 ending in oir, all masculine without a single exception; 70 in al, 24 in ais, and 83 in ard, all masculine without exception; and 305 in et, all masculine except one word. Therefore, if these six endings can be fixed in the memory, as masculines, the learner will know the genders of 1269 nouns.
But the difficulty is to remember long lists of terminations, and to fix in the mind the gender of each. There are many grammars where whole pages are filed with terminations and exceptions; but they contain nothing to assist the memory, - no clue by which the ending is connected to its own particular gender. Those who learn from these books may perhaps remember all nouns ending in ais are of the same gender; but there being no guide or catchword to assign ais to the masculines, they must be continually in doubt.
My plan to help the memory is this: I have introduced the masculine endings in three Fables, the actors in which fables are masculine. Every noun in these three fables is masculine and no nouns are admitted into them but such as give the rules. Thus the endings mentioned above are given in the first for lines of the first fable, which a pupil can easily learn in half an hour, and thus acquire the genders of five thousands seven hundred and ten French nouns.»
There is at the end a list of words the meaning of which is different by making them masculine or feminine. We subjoin a few of them, to show what very awful misnomers one can make for want of attention to the genders, when speaking French: un cartouche, an ornament in designing, une cartouche, a cartridge; le greffe, the office of the clerk of a court, or the register of a notary, la greffe, a graft; un livre, a book; une livre, a pound-weight; un mémoire, a bill or a memoir, la mémoire, the memory; un mode, a mood or accident, la mode, the fashion or custom; un moule, a model or pattern, une moule, a shell fish; un mousse, a ship boy, la mousse, moss or froth; un page, an attendant, une page, a page of a book; un paillasse, a theatrical clown, une paillasse, a mattrass; un poêle, a stove, a coffin-pal, une poêle, a frying-pan; un poste, a situation or office, la poste, the post-office, the mail; un somme, a sleep, a nap, une somme, a sum of money; un souris [sic], a smile, une souris, a mouse; un trompette, a trumpeter, une trompette, a trumpet; le vague, the vacant space, something which is vague, la vague, a wave; un voile, a veil, a cover, une voile, a sail.
Provancher - Traité de botanique à l'usage des écoles, par M. Provancher, curé de St. Joachim; 118 p. in -12. St-Michel et Darveau, Québec.
This is, we believe, the first work of the kind ever published in Canada. It contains many useful references to the Canadian Flora and is illustrated by 84 wood cuts."
Page modifiée le :
17-05-2016
|
|