Language-study is essentially a habit-forming process, and the important stage in habit-forming is the elementary stage. If we do not secure habits of accurate observation, reproduction, and imitation during the first stage, it is doubtful whether we shall ever secure them subsequently. It is more difficult to unlearn a thing than to learn it. If the elementary stage is gone through without due regard to the principles of study, the student will be caused to do things which he must subsequently undo; he will acquire habits which will have to be eradicated. If his ear-training is neglected during the elementary stage, he will replace foreign sounds by native ones and insert intrusive sounds into the words of the language he is learning; he will become unable to receive any but eye-impressions, and so will become the dupe of unphonetic orthographies. If he has not been trained during the elementary stage to cultivate his powers of unconscious assimilation and reproduction, he will attempt the hopeless task of passing all the language-matter through the channel of full consciousness. If during the elementary stage he forms the 'isolating habit,' he will not be able to use or to build accurate sentences. An abuse of translation during the elementary stage will cause the student to translate mentally everything he hears, reads, says, or writes. Bad habits of articulation will cause him to use language of an artificialized type.
The function of the elementary stage is to inculcate good habits, and once this work is done there is little or no fear of the student going astray in his later work. If we take care of the elementary stage, the advanced stage will take care of itself.
The art of designing a language course appears to be in its infancy. Those arts which have achieved maturity have gradually evolved from a number of distinct primitive efforts which, by a process of gradual convergence towards each other, have resulted in the ideal type. So will it be in the art of composing language courses: the present diverse types will gradually be replaced by more general types, and in the end the ideal type will be evolved. This will come about as a result of a system of collaboration in which each worker will profit by that which has been done in the past and that which is being done by other workers in the present. Unsound methods will gradually be eliminated and will make room for methods which are being evolved slowly and experimentally and which will pass the tests of experience. By this time a series of essential principles will have been discovered, and these will be recognized as standard principles by all whose work is to design language courses.