Educational screen & audio-visual guide (c1956-1971])

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The Verb Teacher by Edith Brockway /X N ingenuous device called the "verb teacher" has been introduced to the teaching machine field this past year at Lakeview High School in the Decatur, Illinois, public school system. An invention of Karl Pansch, a native of Germany and now an engineer for the A. E. Staley Mfg. Co. of Decatur, it was created to fill a need for a visual aid in teaching the irregular verb to a night school class of foreign bom students taught by Mr. Pansch. Since the conjugation of irregular verbs is one of the hardest parts of English grammar to remember, this device was of considerable help to him in his class. Mr. Pansch lent the verb teacher to Lakeview High School last September for experimental work in the English courses. It proved most effective in visuahzing verbs for freshman and sophomore classes, particularly with the slower English groups. Out of the 200 categoried irregular verbs, 150 of the most commonly used were placed in the machine. The words were lettered on a long role of paper in three columns, one for each of the verb forms— present, past and past participle. The roll was then mounted in a case having three windows, one for each column. In classroom demonstration the students are first shown the present tense of a verb. The other two tenses are not visible because the windows for these two columns are at a higher level. After the students tell what they think the next tense is, the roll is turned up one notch, revealing the past tense, then on through the same procedure for the past participle as it makes its appearance. The machine stimulates anticipation, also competition in being able to guess what the correct verb form will be. Instructors have used the machine in various forms of learning. Miss Edna Mae Christian of the Lakeview English department used it to stimulate her students to use the correct verb forms in writing compositions and in spelling. If a student used the wrong verb or was uncertain which was correct they could go to the machine and quickly find the right answer. It was also used in grammar drills, working to perfect the student's comprehension of and memorization of the correct forms. It was also helpful in building bigger vocabularies by adding new verb forms to the students' everyday word usage. Students were allowed to manipulate the machine for drilling and correcting their own work whenever they felt a need, thus correcting quickly what they might not have been willing to look up in a text. The English teachers who used the machine agreed that its worth was invaluable in putting across this difficult phase of English grammar, particularly with students who jyere slow to grasp new concepts and whose retention span was short. They also suggested it could be used effectively in the junior high school grades as well as the fifth and sixth for teaching verb forms. Although the machine has been patented it has not as yet been duplicated for widespread distribution. 308 Educational Screen and Audiovisual Guide — June, 1962