Adapting and Writing Language Lessons/Appendix A
APPENDIX A
TO CHAPTER 3
ADAPTING A DIALOG-DRILL FORMAT (SPANISH)
The courses produced for use at the Experiment in International Living, in Putney, Vermont, are variations on a basically audiolingual schema. One of the most widely used of that series is EIL Latin-American Spanish.
The first lesson of this book provides an excellent opportunity to show how the principles of textbook evaluation in Chapter 3 may guide the adaptation of that type of course.
From a socio-topical point of view, Lesson I is based on the situation in which a Latin-American and a young speaker of English discuss the latter's forthcoming trip to Chile. The lesson contains two 'samples of language use' (p57): and a short expository paragraph.
The dialog consists of 12 lines, with a total of 20 sentences which range in length from 2 to 14 syllables.
The Spanish dialog is followed by an English translation, but the paragraph is not.
ANTES DEL VIAJE
Julio: ¡Hola Mario! ¿Cómo estás?
Mario: Bien, gracias. ¿Y tú?
Julio: Muy bien. ¿Sabes gue mañana viajo a Sudamérica?
Mario: ¡Verdad! ¿Estas contento?
Julio: ¡Por supuesto! Tengo muchas ganas de ir a Sudamérica.
Mario: Dónde vas a vivir?
Julio: En Santa Ana. Voy a vivir con una familia.
Mario: ¿Donnde está Santa Ana?
Julio: En el norte de Chile. Es una ciudad bastante grande.
Mario: ¿'Tú hablas español?
Julio: Si, un poco. Bstudio español en la escuela.
Mario: Entonces, buena suerte y buen viaje.
BEFORE THE TRIP
Julio: Hi Mario! How are you?
Mario: Fine, thanks. And you?
Julio: Fine! Do you know that I leave for South America tomorrow?
Mario: Really? Are you excited?
Julio: Of course! I really want to go to South America.
Mario: Where are you going to live?
Julio: In Santa Ana.
Mario: Where is Santa Ana? I'm going to live with a family.
Julio: In the north of Chile.It's a fairly large city.
Lexical exploration (Chapter 3, p.58) beyond the basic dialog is provided principally through a number of short lists of 'related vocabulary,' including both single words and some short, useful expressions.
Structural exploration (Chapter 3, P.61) is both phonetic and grammatical. Phonetic exploration is in terms of lists of words that contain respectively /j, d, gr, b/. In the grammar drills, the student chooses correct forms for person-number agrement in the present tense of -ar verbs, and repeats sentences that exemplify singular and plural articles, the periphrastic future, and the negative no. The same matters, except for the future, are explained succinctly in a 'grammatical synopsis' at the end of the lesson.
The lesson also contains one occasion to do something with Spanish. The expository paragraph and the questions that follow it allow the student to demonstrate that he can comprehend a text that consists of novel utterances, and go on to talk about it with novel utterances of his own. Other opportunities for use of the Spanish of Lesson I can be found, but they are not made explicit in the lesson as it now stands, and may be overlooked by some instructors.
The lesson ends with a 'cultural supplement' which consists of an exposition of El Alfabeto Español, with the suggestion that it 'may provide ideas for cultural inputs into the classroom.'
In its present form, then, Lesson I contains all of the four components (p. 54ff) that we have claimed are necessary for a complete unit, and its general socio-topical content is suitable for almost anyone who would enroll for a Spanish course in the first place. As language lessons go, then, it is excellent. There are, however, reasons why a prospective user might want to reject this lesson, or at least tinker with it. The students may be more interested in Puerto Rico or Spain than in Chile.
They may not be planning on a homestay with a family. They may not expect to leave for Latin America on the following day. More seriously, they may feel strong antipathy toward a lesson that depends on memorizing a dialog, or may find that the dialog is too long for them. Their teacher may dislike some stylistic detail of the wording. There may be objection to some of the superficial inconsistencies in a set of materials which were, after all, produced primarily for in-house use. Accordingly, revision of each of the four components may take the form of replacing what is inappropriate and supplementing what is inadequate for a particular group of students.
The authors of the text have themselves made a first step toward greater flexibility in the 'sample' component by underlining approximately half of the lines of the dialog. They suggest that only the underlined sentences be used if an abbreviated version is preferred.
It will be instructive to take a closer look at this dialog. The underlined portion (we shall call it Part A) contains 13 of the 20 sentences, including most of the short, very frequent, and relatively invariable phrases such as greetings, 'really?' and 'of course.' It also contains the two longest and 'heaviest' sentences. All of the second-person verbs, all of the exclamation points, and all expressions of emotion are in the underlined sentences.
The sentences that are not underlined (Part B) are more nearly uniform in 'weight.' Except for the last, they consist of factual questions and answers. Part B will therefore be relatively more susceptible to 'lexical exploration,' through Cummings devices (Chapter 3, p.59, and Chapter 6) or in other ways.
Adaptation of the dialog itself is likely to be slight and superficial. Some teachers will feel that if only one form of the second person is to be taught in the opening lesson, it should be the formal rather than the informal one. Most students will have destinations other than Santa Ana, Chile. Some will expect to live in hotels or dormitories rather than with a family. All of these changes can be made without disturbing the basic structure of the dialog.
For purposes of lexical exploration, the entire dialog lend itself to the writing of Cummings devices:
From Part A:
¿Adónde viajas? Viajo a (Sudamérica, Chile, etc.)
¿Cuándo viajas a (Sudamérica)? Viajo a Sudamérica (en julio, mañana, etc.)From Part B:
¿Dónde vas a vivir? Voy a vivir (en un apartamento, etc.).
¿Qué vas a hacer (en Chile)? Voy a (estudiar, vivir con una familia, etc.).
¿Dónde está (Argentina, Santa Ana, etc.)? Está en el (norte, etc.) de (Sudamérica, Chile, etc.).
¿Cómo es (Santa Ana, etc.)? La ciudad es (grande, etc.).In exploration of structure, many of the existing drills require the student either simply to repeat families of sentences, or to substitute a word without making related changes elsewhere in the sentence. An example of the first kind is:
Voy a comer en casa.'I'm going to eat at home.'
Vas a comer en casa.
Va a comer en casa.
etc.An example of the latter is:
The rest of the drills require the student to supply appropriate person-number forms of certain verbs, as he changes the subject pronouns:
Tú _______________.
Nosotros _________.
etc.
A teacher who is concerned about courtesy levels may
want to add a constant-change drill in which the student
subtitutes formal for informal second-person forms, and
vice versa:
| Tú estas en la clase. | Usted esta en la clase. |
| Tú viajas a Bogota. | Usted viaja a Bogota. |
| Tú hablas español. | Usted habla espanol. |
| etc. | etc. |
Such a drill might involve the use of non-verbal cues (e.g.,pictures, gestures) to dramatize the difference, since it does not exist in English on the level of verb inflection. Looking ahead to occasions for use which involve questions, one might also explore briefly the changes in word order that are found in the formation of questions like those that appear from place to place in this lesson:
| question | cf. Statment: |
| ¿Es pequeña la ciudad? | La ciudad es pequeña. |
| ¿Viajan ustedes hoy? | Ustedes viajan hoy. |
| but: | |
| ¿La tía habla español? | La tía habla español. |
With changes and additions like these, this lesson may lead to the fulfillment of a number of rewarding occasions for use:
- Talk fluently for 15 seconds (or less fluently for 30 seconds) about your travel plans.
- Converse with a Spanish speaker other than your own instructor about your travel plans. Try to make a good impression.
- Tell where each person in the class is going, and say something factual about the city where he expects to stay.
- Using a map, give a lecture on the geography of the country that you expect to visit.
Once the lesson has been adapted in these ways, its center of gravity in the linguistic dimension has moved outside of the basic dialog. To put the same point into a different metaphor, the dialog remains but is no longer basic. Those users who prefer to start with drills or with Cummings devices are free to do so. The dialog may then become, to the student, a culmination rather than a commencement—a happy concentration of elements that he had met earlier, one or two lines at a time. Or the dialog may remain as the starting point. In any case, the social and topical dimensions of the lesson have been 'customized' in an orderly way, and all three dimensions converge on a set of demonstrable non-linguistic objectives.