Earl W. Stevick

“ Sometimes, the materials-writing 'team' consists of one person, who is biologically coextensive with the only student. It is for this situation that we have Gudschinsky's How to Learn an Unwritten Language (1967: cf. also Ward [1937] and Bloomfield [1942] ) . Most frequently, however, the materials writers directly represent neither the student nor his future audience. All too often, they have begun and completed their work without even seeing either the students (because they have not yet been enrolled) or the audience (because they are remote either geographically or socially or both) . ”

“ The trainee must learn to participate effectively in all general conversation; he must be able to discuss leprosy control and health education with reasonable ease; comprehension must be quite complete for a normal rate of speech; his vocabulary must be broad enough so that he rarely has to grope for a word; his accent may still be foreign, but his control of the grammar must be good enough so that his errors never interfere with understanding, and rarely disturb a native speaker. ”

“ Students in seldom-taught languages are likely to be more mature, and many have already in mind some imminent and very definite use to which they hope to put the language. Yet in the development of language study materials, writers are only rarely qualified to speak for the public among whom the prospective students are to live and work. ”

“ Whoever rejects what is at hand and writes his own lessons assumes a double responsibility: to produce something that really is better for his purposes than what existed before, and to reduce the likelihood that those who come after him will feel that they in turn have to write their own courses. ”

“ Fine-grained specification is the domain -- and the only domain -- over which the outside specialists hold unchallenged hegemony. Given that a trainee will be operating within some general setting, an anthropologist or other cross-cultural specialist is needed to preside over the drawing up of a 'role model' (Wight and Hammons, 1970) , which lists the kinds of people with whom the trainee will interact, and also shows how the culture preconditions his relationships with each of them. ”

“ You can give to teachers and students an example of how they can complete the course for themselves.
As you begin to complete the course, follow your own convictions and the needs of some moment. Aim more at effectiveness than at permanence. It is more important that your lessons should work than that they should last (or sell!) ”

“ Furthermore, it fails to tap the enthusiasm that comes when the users of a course feel that something of themselves is invested in its creation. This is one reason why some pedagogical monstrosities have produced good results, and why some well-constructed materials have fallen flat. ”

“ Given that a trainee will be expected to help others learn to drill wells or raise chickens, or that he will have to arrange for getting his laundry done, someone with authoritative knowledge must provide details of each of these matters. Given that the trainee should have a particular level of competence in a particular socio-cultural setting, the professional linguistic scientist can provide lists of verb tenses, noun cases, stylistic levels, clause types, and grammatical relationships that are indispensable. ”

“ Most writers take it for granted that they are called on to layout for the student some path which he is to follow, and which will lead to the desired goal. The path may consist of conventional lessons or a self-instructional program or a combination of live and canned instruction, and a self-instructional program may be linear, branching, or cyclical. ”

“ On the other hand, too much flexibility may be just as disastrous as too little. For those who want to follow, materials must give firm guidance; for those who want to tamper, there must be clear indications of how to select, rearrange, and complement without destroying. ”

“ One hundred and twenty three-by-five inch cards were prepared, one to a lesson. On the face of each was written a phrase or sentence illustrating the structure for that lesson. No other formal lesson plan was prepared. (Last year in Ottawa the principal had written out a series of 120 fully detailed lesson plans: on arrival in Rankin Inlet he discarded them as being too restrictive and inflexible.) Instead of written lessons plans the instructor preferred to rely on his own teaching experience, on the material at hand, and on the spontaneous reactions of informants and students. ”

“ The users of your lessons will be able to modify or replace any item. Whatever items they choose, they can use in any of several orders: one will want to begin with memorization of a dialog or an exchange sequence; another will want to build up to the dialog or exchange sequence through drills and Cummings devices, and then memorize it; a third will want to eschew dialog memorization altogether. The same class may handle one such 'cluster' in one way, and another in another way. ”

“ At the same time, they must remember that the potential audience for a student going to Greece is not just undifferentiated 'Greeks.' Potential audiences for different trainees interested in the same country will be partly alike and partly different, even within a series of programs sponsored by a single sending agency. ”

“ You may also decide:
e. that the 'dry bones' of structure should be stacked near the beginning of the course; or
f. that they should be scattered throughout the course as a whole.
6. Before you begin each lesson, list a number of things that the student will be able to do in Sarkhanese at the end of it. These may take any of several forms.
a. things to learn through eliciting further information from instructors or from fellow students;
b. games (including free conversation!) that are fun in themselves;
c. role playing situations that the student can imagine himself being in someday ”

“ In the 1970's, however, we can no longer afford to invest many thousands of dollars in a course which embodies the theories, needs or prejudices of its own writers, but which may then be rejected by most other prospective users. ”

“ Seen in another way, the same activities we have described in this chapter are concentric: each successive procedure establishes a nucleus around which to fit what may be produced by later procedures. Writers of lessons may provide one layer of inner structure, or many. It would be a mistake, however, for them to assume that they can supply the final outer layer; only the users of the lessons can do that. ”

“ It should be emphasized that the above example of 'fine specification' is to be taken seriously only with regard to its size, and not in its details, even for Portuguese. For other languages, a comparable specification of major grammar points might vary greatly in its content, but probably somewhat less in its length. ”

“ The remaining chapters of this book are about devices that we have mentioned as particularly useful in adapting materials or in making them adaptable: learners' synopses, Cummings devices, one kind of sample of language in use, and routine drills. ”

“ You may have taught the student to speak the language a little, but you have not taught him to learn it for himself.
5. Although steps 1-4 will produce only an incomplete course, yet what they do produce will be useful to almost anyone who undertakes to teach or learn Sarkhanese. If there is still money in the budget (and there should be) , begin to complete the course for one reason, but also for a second:
a. You can give to teachers and students something to use in their work together. ”