Earl W. Stevick

“ Foreigners seem to be very curious about the matter of titles, and so the task is also stimulating. Students very quickly recognize busy work, so a useful, specific, open-ended but nonstimulating task will probably be non-productive.
We have discussed 'occasions for use' before the other three components because writers and teachers so often slight them, or ignore them altogether. It is true that the student normally performs them at the end of a lesson, if at all, but a writer or adapter would be wise to begin thinking about them as soon as he has chosen a lesson. ”

“ To add them at the whim of the teacher or for the convenience of the materials writer would result in a spurious matrix, invalid from the point of view of the student, and a source of weakness rather than strength.
The same principle applies to the training of adults who expect to go immediately to jobs where they will use the language. The roles that make up the social dimension will be more numerous, and the prospects will be more clearly defined, but care in selecting and defining the roles can still make the difference between strength and weakness. ”

“ The four essential components,whether for speech or for writing or for both, are: occasions for use, a sample of the language in use, exploration of vocabulary, and exploration of (phonetic, orthographic or grammatical) form. To make this assertion is not, however, to prescribe a method or a format. Each of the four components may take any of countless shapes, and the student may meet them in any of several orders. It should also be pointed out that the order in which the components are written need not be that in which they are placed before the student. ”

“ Most writers give some attention to the social dimension when they are writing dialog material, although there have been some exceptions. Drill materials, on the other hand, are usually treated as socially neutral. They are not always completely so, of course. Any German, French, Russian or Spanish sentence in the second person must necessarily imply choice as to level of respect, and the same is even more true for many other languages. Some drills may in fact concentrate on the contrast between tu- forms and vous-forms. ”

“ Adaptation of rate may take the form of added materials to make more gradual the transition from one part of the existing materials and another. It may also take the form of more complete instructions for the teacher, or detailed checklists to show the student what he should get out of each part of the lesson. Changes in the means employed will depend on what the adapter and the, prospective users find mutually congenial. ”

“ Every lesson should contain a number of clear suggestions for using the language. Each of these suggestions should embody a purpose outside of the language itself, which is valid in terms of the student's needs and interests. Insofar as these purposes relate to the external world (see Chapter 1, p.21f) , most of them will fall under one or more of the following rubrics:
Establishing or further developing real social relationships with real people, including classmates. ”

“ Some topics are of interest to trainees of almost all kinds, while others are highly specialized. The problem, for the writer who wants to produce strong materials, is that the trainees' most specialized interests are often the very ones that are most vivid for them. Even for a generally useful topic like street and road directions, the actual locales that excite most interest will vary from one class to another. ”

“ With respect to lightness, 'Your horse had been old' and 'I need a taxi' are approximately equal. Heaviness in this sense may vary with the language background of the learner: many would find 'I need a hinge' to be noticeably heavier than 'I need a label,' depending on whether the native language has initial/hi (German has, French and Spanish have not) , or final voiced stops (French has, German and Spanish have not) .
In general, of course, we try to make early lessons rather light. ”

“ Furthermore, the three criteria will often conflict with one another: a line may be very strong but also heavy, or transparent but also weak. Even so, they may be worth the attention of anyone who is writing or evaluating language lessons. Lightness and transparency can conceivably be made permanent attributes of permanent lessons, but only constant adaptation will keep strength from deteriorating.
EVALUATION: THREE DIMENSIONS
The content of a textbook, or a lesson, or a drill, or a single line may be plotted in each of three dimensions: linguistic, social and topical. ”

“ To put the same thing in another way, they focus their attention either on the original textbook or on the rewards and relevancies of the project at hand, and slight the other. In the original sense of the word 'focus,' the first kind of adapter seems to be working his way out from the warmth and comfort of a hearth (the printed lesson) toward a perimeter (the end of the lesson) beyond which lies darkness. He sees his task as providing additional activities (dialogs, drills, games, or whatever) that lie not too far beyond the perimeter, and which may help to extend it. ”

“ In the same way, 'I need a taxi' is stronger for most students than 'I need a hinge. But other things being equal, strength is always relative to the needs and interests of the students: some people talk about hinges every day and never see a taxi. For this reason, we cannot build strength as a permanent and absolute quality into any fixed set of materials.
It is impossible to give simple directions for determining what would make materials strong for any given class. ”

“ In this book, we suggest that a prospective adapter begin by making a careful survey of both sides of the gap he is trying to bridge. Once he has done so, he can connect the two sides by using whatever devices he is most comfortable with. The point is that he is working with two basic documents and not just one. Certainly he must take account of the lessons that he has set out to adapt, but just as certainly he must exploit the sociotopical matrix that summarizes his students' interests. ”

“ Many teachers prefer to operate on the principle of 'now now and later later:' stick to present realities while the students are coping with the rudiments of the language, and begin to use more distant ones in the intermediate stage. Policemen, taxi drivers, landlords and many others may thus be added to the matrix. ”

“ Nor do the descriptions of the qualities, dimensions and components provide a blueprint for writing or adapting. Rather, the three terms stand for ways of looking at materials, and these ways are not merely restatements of one another. We have said that strength is often derived from appropriate sociotopical resources in a lesson, but a socio-topically relevant lesson that is poorly organized may still be weak, and some teachers know how to make lessons amply rewarding and strong with almost no relation to external reality. ”

“ It would be a mistake, therefore, to assume that strength, lightness and transparency are absolute virtues, or that an increase in one of these values necessarily means an improvement in the lesson. Nevertheles, weakness, heaviness and opacity are in general warning signs, and their presence calls for special justification in terms of the lesson or the textbook as a whole. Strength
'Does it carry its own weight by means of the rewards that it makes available?' As we pointed out in Chapter 1 (p. 23f) , rewards may be of at least five different kinds ”

“ As many occasions for use as possible should be written in the form of 'behavioral objectives:' what students are to do should be described so clearly that there can be no question as to whether anyone student's performance meets the requirements. ”

“ If this adapter were a plant, he would be a morning glory vine in the springtime, putting out its tendrils in search of anything at all to which it can attach itself. The second kind of adapter warms himself by a portable hearth wherever the interests of the students seem to lie, and may forget where home was ”

“ Learning to make culturally relevant judgments:distinguishing ripe from unripe fruit, candling eggs, predicting the weather, estimating water depth. Doing things for fun:humor, garnes, singing, relaxation Some of the 'occasions for use' should involve muscular activity: playing, pointing, handling, writing, etc. ”