The former is wholly ignored.

Many teachers seem to have entirely forgotten that the desire and the ability to talk are part of the normal equipment of every healthy child.

There was, indeed, a time when children were taught to answer questions in complete sentences even when one-word answers would have amply sufficed.

For example, when a child was asked how many pence there were in a shilling, he was expected to answer, "There are twelve pence in a shilling"; when he was asked what was the colour of snow, he was expected to answer, "The colour of snow is white "; and so on.
And both he and his teacher flattered themselves that this waste of words was oral composition! In point of fact the sentence in each of these cases was worth no more, as an effort of self-expression, than its one important word--_twelve_, _white_, or whatever it might be; and the child, who was allowed to think that he had produced a real sentence, had in effect done no more than envelop one real word in a hollow formula.

There are still many schools in which this ridiculous practice lingers, and in which it constitutes the only attempt at oral composition that the child is allowed to make.