H. V. Haight, class of 1896, on John Galbraith's French class.

H. V. Haight, class of 1896, on John Galbraith's French class.

Text reads:
"In my fourth year about half a dozen of us chose French for our language option, and were taught by "Johnny" Galbraith himself in his big office. He knew French well, and he knew how to teach, though his methods were original, and we did really learn some French, but had considerable fun in the process. We had been over some article in the "Competes Rendus" pretty thoroughly till we knew both the French and the English by heart. Prof. Galbraith read a sentence in French and asked Bert Angus to translate. Bert had been talking to Charlie Macbeth and hadn't heard the sentence, but glibly gave the English of a sentence about a paragraph farther on. Prof Galbraith said, "Oh, Mr. Angus, we haven't come to that yet." Prof Galbraith's assignment of home work was to tell us to take any French article we liked, translate it into English and bring the translation. He read the translation to make sure it wasn't "Frenchy" but didn't compare it with the French. This seemed to leave a loophole, so once, I think I was the guilty one to suggest the experiment, we all decided to copy out some English article that never had been in French. It worked. Bert Angus was commended for his very free translation."

The Engineering Society; H. V. Haight

Engineering Society, University of Toronto. Transactions and Yearbook. (1923), p. 89. Digitized by the University of Toronto Archives & Records Management Services.

University of Toronto Engineering Society

1923

Public Domain

Textual Document