Practical Help
This site attempts to provide a guide for such teachers and students. It aims to be eminently practical. It is intended to help students to improve in speech. It assumes that those who use it are able to speak their language with some facility—at least they can pronounce its usual words.
That and the realization that one is alive, as indicated by a mental openness to ideas and an intellectual alertness about most things in the universe, are all that are absolutely required of a beginner who tries to improve in speaking. Practically all else can be added unto him.
"realization that one is alive, ...mental openness to ideas ... intellectual alertness about most things in the universe,... are absolutely required of a beginner who tries to improve in speaking"
is volume has a definite aim it has a simple practical basis. It will not soar too far above the essentials. It tries not to offer an elaborate explanation of an enthymeme when the embryonic speaker's knees are knocking together so loudly that he can not hear the instructor's correcting pronunciation of the name. It takes into account that when a beginner stands before an audience—and this is true not only the first time—even his body is not under his control.
Lips grow cold and dry; perspiration gushes from every pore of the brow and runs down the face; legs grow weak; eyes see nothing; hands swell to enormous proportions; violent pains shoot across the chest; the breath is confined within the lungs; from the clapper-like tongue comes only a faint click. Is it any wonder that under such physical agonies the mind refuses to respond—rather, is incapable of any action whatever?