What we _say_ we fix, by the very act of saying it, in the mind.

Hence, reading aloud, though a slower, is a far more thorough method of acquiring knowledge than reading silently, and it is better, in almost all cases, whether in the family, or in Sabbath or common schools, when general instructions are given, to have the leading points fixed in the mind by questions answered simultaneously.
But we are wandering a little from our subject, which is, in this part of our chapter, the methods of _examining_ a class, not of giving or fixing instructions.
Another mode of examining classes, which it is important to describe, consists in requiring _written answers_ to the questions asked.

The form and manner in which this plan may be adopted is various.

The class may bring their slates to the recitation, and the teacher may propose questions successively, the answers to which all the class may write, numbering them carefully.

After a dozen answers are written, the teacher may call at random for them, or he may repeat a question, and ask each pupil to read the answer he had written, or he may examine the slates.
Perhaps this method may be very successfully employed in reviews by dictating to the class a list of questions relating to the ground they have gone over for a week, and then instructing them to prepare answers written out at length, and to bring them in at the next exercise.