About This Book
Trippingly on the Tongue has but one purpose: to help teachers, from kindergarten through high school, to teach their pupils to speak distinctly, so that they can be understood in the classroom. Following that achievement, it is to be hoped, they will speak clearly enough anywhere in life so that a listener, with a minimum of effort, will know what they are saying.
The scope of this work is strictly limited. It is not a book for specialists, although specialists may find it useful for the purpose for which it is intended. Neither does it offer help in showing a youngster how to express himself understandably through clear thinking, or by choosing the right words to express his meaning. Nor has it anything to do with listening as a factor in communication, and no attempt is made to give advice on how to deal with even the simplest of functional speech defects.
At the same time it is quite possible that some children in the lower grades may react favorably to the procedures suggested, and "snap out" of some functionally defective speech sound. When this happens, it will be because they have heard and have taken part with the teacher and their classmates in the practicing of distinctness, as they speak together the correctly enunciated phonics.