1800 Thomas Dilworth’s New Guide to the English Dialogue was being widely used to teach reading in the United States. Dilworth's primer, unlike earlier ones, stressed the importance of children’s understanding what they read. While it is in fact unlikely that children would have recognized all the vocabulary Dilworth used, that was at least his stated goal. Dilworth recognized that primers should enable children to decode words from print with the form of language they already knew: speech. In contrast, many earlier authors assumed that, just as introductory Latin texts taught children an unknown language, introductory English texts should teach English as if it, too, were an unknown language—such their esoteric choice of vocabulary, it in effect became unknown.
1. According to the passage, the “earlier authors” adopted a model for English instruction that
A. mirrored the practice used in Latin instruction
B. was originally formulated by Dilworth
C. was less esoteric than that adopted by Dilworth
D. stressed familiarity with the peculiarities of English spelling
E. emphasized the importance of fluent and articulate speech
2. The author of the passage would probably agree with which of the following criticisms of English primers predating Dilworth’s?
A. Their Latinate grammatical terms poorly described the structures of English.
B. They failed to make effective use of the knowledge of language a child already possessed.
C. Their texts typically focused on subject matter that held little intrinsic interest for their readers.
D. They neglected to teach the language in a sufficiently systematic way.
E. They required a pedagogical method that few American teachers of the era possessed.
答案：
A B
