Adapting and Writing Language Lessons/Appendix H

by Earl W. Stevick

APPENDIX H TO CHAPTER 4

MUTUAL COMPLEMENTATION OF ENGLISH AND SWAHILI MATERIALS IN TRAINING FOR EAST AFRICA

I.THE PROBLEM

In January, 1971, the East African training staff of the Foreign Service Institute undertook a project the purpose of which was to answer the question 'Can a team of language materials developers be responsive to "specification" in the form of a scholarly article, provided by an area studies specialist who has no connection with the linguistic dimension of training?' In particular, could the response of the language specialists be rapid enough to be economic, and interesting enough to be worthwhile? Favorable answers to this question would in turn point ways to closer integration of the two principal aspects of the training given to Foreign Service Officers bound for East Africa.

II. THE PROCEDURE

The article used for demonstration purposes was R. G. Hollister 'Manpower problems and policies in Sub-Saharan Africa.' (International Labour Review, 1969, pp. 515-32). Miss Ann Reid, African area training specialist at the Foreign Service Institute, suggested it as typical of the articles that she asks her students to become familiar with. The response of the language team was in three phases: (1) to begin collecting materials in Swahili which relate to the content of the article: (2) to show how these materials can become the basis for language study: (3) to list questions arising out. of these materials which might be answered by further English-language resources to be provided by the area specialist.

The objective, then, was not merely to catch the ball, or merely to catch it and run with it, but to catch it, run with it, and return it.

Phase 1: Swahili counterpart materials.

Swahili-language materials to support the English language article were drawn principally from East African newspapers, for four reasons:

1. They are authentic, in the sense that they were written by East Africans for East Africans.

2. They are inexpensive, and dependably available to classes of trainees for East Africa at the Foreign Service Institute.

3. They cover a wide, though not unlimited, range of topics.

4. There is a variety of style: news stories, advertisements, letters to the editor, cartoons, even occasional fiction (There is not in Swahili, as there is in some languages, a drastic difference in vocabulary or syntax between spoken and published styles. If there were, the items might have had to be recast into colloquial style before being used.)

By only scratching the surface of the available newspaper files, the language team quickly assembled 60 items on manpower, ranging in length from 50 to 500 words. About half of these related directly to the major points of the Hollister article; most of the rest had to do with the structure and operation of East African labor unions. The English-language article and the Swahili-language newspaper items complement one another in four respects:

1. An article in a scholarly journal gives a broad and comprehensive view; a newspaper item is a glimpse

of a fragment.

2. An article is the result of organizing data and abstracting from them; a newspaper item is, in a sense, itself a datum.

3. An article may be higher in intelligibility than a single news item, but the news item is often higher in immediacy and interest.

4.Examples given by the author of an article can be expected to illustrate his thesis, and are therefore suspect of being self-serving. A newspaper story that agrees (or disagrees) with the article is in effect a second, unprejudiced witness.

Some of the principal points of the original article, paired with their corresponding newspaper items, are the following:

1. 'There remains the problem of developing adequate indigenous sources to fulfill the natural desire to Africanise the skilled labour force.'

TECHNICAL SKILLS ARE IMPORTANT FOR PROGRESS OF TANZANIA

[The above headline is quoted from a speech by a Junior Minister delivered at the opening of a course to prepare 139 members of the national youth service corps (Jeshi la Kujenga Taifa) to take tests in trades. After 12 months of technical training, they will serve an additional 12 months in factories. The trades include mechanics, weld1ng, plumbing, electricity, and construction.

The special goal of this experiment is to establish standards of competence which will be useful to employers and workers alike. Anyone who does not meet these standards will be denied a certificate. The government now recognizes three levels of examinations. A total of 925 craftsmen have been tested in Dar es Salaam in the last six months. Formerly, tests were given only in Dar, but this worked to the disadvantage of those who could not afford the trip to Dar, and so temporary examining stations were set up at six inland sites.]

UHURU, 11 July 70

KENYANS SHOULD RECEIVE RESPONSIBLE POSITIONS IN HOTELS.

[Mr. J. M. Kariuki, Junior Minister of Tourism and wild Life, reproached the executive committee of the East African Hotel Keepers Association in Nairobi. He charged that they were unwilling to train Africans, and that they had replaced African degree-holders with Europeans. Anyone caught doing So will lose his license. He hopes that efforts to correct this situation are sincere.

Tourism should attract not only Europeans, but people from allover Africa as well. Hotel employees should be given good clothing and living quarters.

The president of the association replied that not all hotels are guilty of discrimination against African employees. He also said that when Africans have time off from their jobs, they prefer farming to travelling. There was discussion of the practice of ordering some items from abroad. Mr. Kariuki said that the practice must stop.]

TAIFA LEO, 5 March 70

[A representative of the Tanzanian Labor Office said that it is important to pllow entrepreneurs to run their businesses without interference, and that many employers had already initiated plans to train Africans for responsible posts, and had hired Africans at lower, middle and higher levels. The government is grateful for this, and intends to help the employers by making available a larger pool of skilled labor, both Tanzanian and foreign.]

BARAZA, 11 August 66

DISCRIMINATION [A full-length editorial describing and condemning wage differentials between Asian and African employees who do the same work. A six-man commission is looking into this problem.]

UHURU, 15 August 70

2. 'The development of a modern sector has generally been accompanied by an increasing drift of the population from rural areas to urban centres.'

'ZAMBIANS SHOULD NOT RUN OFF TO THE CITIES.'

[The annual report of the Bank of zambia states that the practice of moving from rural areas to urban centres in search of work is endangering the progress of Zambia. This hurts agriculture, on which the country depends. If the government does not take steps, this danger will soon become critical.]

UHURU, 9 July 70

RETURNED TO THEIR HOMES

[Thirty unemployed young men were rounded up in Mwanza and returned to their homes. They had been loitering around, and were reported to have robbed people in the area, including bus passengers.]

UHURU, 1 September 70

ROUNDUP OF UNEMPLOYED TO BEGIN ON MONDAY

[An announcement by the head of Dar es Salaam region in remarks addressed to 195 people who were leaving to begin agricultural work in a bush area. 'These were some of 600 people who had enrolled for this work because they were unable to find work in 'the city. Some of the people who will be rounded up have no land or parents, and it is for this reason that the government has prepared the new settlement at Mkata.]

UHURU 30 March 68

Phase 2: Use of newspaper materials for language acquisition. A number of ways to develop language skills based on short newspaper stories had already been illustrated in the Foreign Service Institute's unpublished Active Introduction to Newspaper Swahili (Appendix T, pp. 387-390). These included such ordinary devices as sentence translation, blank filling (to focus attention on various classes of features), substitution and transformation drills, and instructions to use certain words in sentences. The same devices could obviously have been applied to the items that had been collected for this project, but to have done S9 would have only partly met the objective of Phase 2. It remains to be demonstrated:

(1) that these materials can lend themselves to dealing with day-to-day needs that arise in the linguistic dimension, particularly with regard to structural problems.

(2)that they are a suitable basis for further exploration of the lexicon.

(3)that their linguistic content can be used in ways that appeal to the student's interests other than his interest in language mastery per see

(4) that keeping materials of this kind up to date does not require a prohibitive amount of time.

The team attempted to demonstrate these four propositions in relation to one rather routine item which reported the results of a local union election:

The Eldoret Branch of the Transport and Allied Workers Union has elected its officers. The following were elected: Mr. ______: assistant chairman, Mr. ______: secretary, Mr.______ assistant secretary, Mr.______; treasurer, Mr.______: assistant treasurer, Mr._______

It seems clear that if favorable results could be obtained with this item, then longer and more interesting stories, or groups of stories, would a fortiori pass the tests.

As a test of adaptability to unforeseen structural drills, the team first made two inventories of the news item:

Inventory of nouns:

chama (KI-VI class)	association, union, party
tawi (LI-MA class)	branch
afisa (MA personal class)	officer
bwana (MA personal class)	gentleman
katibu ( " " " )	secretary
makamu ( " " " )	assistant, vice-
mwenye kiti (MU-WA class)	chairman
mtunza hazina ( " " )	treasurer

Inventory of simple sentences:

Chama hiki kina matawi mengi.	This union has many branches.
Tawi hili limewachagua maafisa wapya.	This branch has elected new officers.
Wafuatao walichaguliwa.	The following were elected.
Bw _____ alichaguliwa kuwa mwenyekiti.	Mr._____ was chosen to be chairman.

Next, the team selected at random three units from Swahili Basic Course (Units 32, 60, 75), noted the structure drills in each, and tried to write new drills on the same points as the existing ones. Content was drawn either from the two inventories, or from other closely-related vocabulary that the students could be counted on to know.

This proved to be possible for all drills except those on very minor and specialized points.

Two examples will suffice. The first, from Unit 32, is a completely ordinary substitution-correlation drill involving concords with the adjective stem -zuri 'good':

muhogo	Mkulima huyu apanda muhogo (or: .. anapanda ... )	This farmer plants very good cassava.
mimea	Mkulima huyu apanda mimea mizuri sana.	This farmer plants very good plants.
m̀punga	Mkulima huyu apanda m̀punga mzuri sana	This farmer plants very good rice.
vitunguu	Mkulima huyu apanda vitunguu vizuri sana.	This farmer plants very good onions.

The adapted drill is as follows:

chama	chama hiki ni kizuri.	This union is good.
vyama	Vyama hivi ni vizuri.	These unions are good.
tawi	Tawi hili ni zuri.	This branch is good.
matawi	Matawi haya ni mazuri.	These branches are good.
mwenyekiti	Mwenyekiti huyu ni mzuri.	This chairman is good.
wenyeviti	Wenyeviti hawa ni wazuri.	These chairmen are good.
afisa	Afisa huyu ni mzuri.	This officer is good.
maafisa	Maafisa hawa ni wazuri.	These officers are good.

The second example, from Unit 75, requires the student to respond to an affirmative question with a negative answer (Formation of negatives is one of the most troublesome habits for beginning Swahili students to get into.) The original drill consists of pairs of sentences:

kupalilia	Umepalilia mahindi yako?	Have you weeded your maize?
	Bado sijapalilia.	Not yet, I haven't.
kupanda	Umepanda muhogo wako?	Have you planted your cassava?
	Bado sijapanda.	Not yet, I haven't.
kupeleka	Umepeleka kalamu yako kwa fundi?	Have you taken your pen to the repairman?
	Bado sijapeleka.	Not yet, I haven't.

The replacement begins:

Mwenyekiti amechaguliwa?	Has the chairman been elected?
Bado hajachaguliwa.	He hasn't been elected yet.

The team concluded that, while the new drills are not particularly brilliant, they at least are no less so than the originals were. There appears, then, to be no reason at this point why the newspaper items should not be suitable for dealing with a random series of structure points. Further exploration of Swahili vocabulary may be carried out using such questions as:

Viongozi wa chama ni nani?

Who are the officers of the organization?

This question will elicit answers like the words for president, committee member, public relations man.

(Mwenyekiti) hufanya nini?

What does the (chairman) do?

Answers to this question will enable the student to talk about the principal duties of the various officers.

Inafaa kuchagua mtu gani kuwa (mwenyekiti)?

What kind of person should be chosen to be (chairman)?

Answers to this question will elicit words and phrases of a generally 'adjectival' nature.

This news item thus fulfills the second desideratum (p. 195) by serving as a suitable basis for lexical exploration. The content of these materials may be related to the student's extralinguistic interests in at least three areas:

(1) A Foreign Service Officer is concerned to show common courtesy to all people with whom he deals. One aspect of courtesy is getting people's names right. The following exercises provide experience in remembering and handling names:

(a) Students quiz one another on what position is occupied by each person mentioned in the article, competing to see who can be first to get all six pieces of information right.

(b) As above, except that the students give personal names to match position titles.

(c) Simulated social function. Students practice introducing themselves, or one another, mentioning both name and position. The instructor should of course pay attention to linguistic correctness, but should also coach them in non-linguistic matters such as when, how, and how long to shake hands.

(2) Foreign Service Officers need to be alert to more than the superficial information contained in what they read and hear. A surname is a partial guide to the ethnic background of its bearer.

(d) Find out from the instructor what might be the ethnic origin of each of the six elected officers.

(e) Discuss such questions as: Are the officers from a single ethnic group, or do they represent a cross-section of Kenya? How do the origins of the officers correspond to the geographical location of their branch of the union?

(3) A Foreign Service Officer is often called on to deal tactfully with a wide variety of questions, where he is in fact, though perhaps not officially, representing his country.

(f) Students and instructor pose to one another questions that they think can be answered briefly with the Swahili at their disposal. For example, one of the team members was asked by a Nairobi taxi driver, 'What do Americans think of Tom Mboya?'

Since the new materials were not in actual classroom use, there was no direct way of demonstrating how much time would be required in order to update the file.

There are however reasons to believe that this time would be very short if we can assume that the teacher is reasonably adept at improvising routine manipulative drill if he is given the principle of the drill (e.g. present affirmative changed to present negative, or singular changed to plural) and a set of content words and sentences. (For more on this process, see Appendix U, p.403ff.)

All that remains is to find the article, cut it out, mount it, place it in a looseleaf binder, decide what lexical areas to explore, and devise ways of relating its content to the extralinguistic interests of the student. All of these steps except the last are highly mechanical.

It appears, therefore, that the four questions of Phase 2 (p.194f) can all be answered favorably with respect to the very pedestrian news item chosen. Items that are more interesting ought to be even easier to handle.

Phase 3: Questions that arise from the Swahili items.

The questions raised by the 60 news items that were assembled for this project are innumerable. A few, taken from the stories cited in this paper, are following:

What is a new settlement, or 'ujamaa village'?

When were the 'new settlements' begun, and why?

How does the statement that entrepreneurs should be able to run their businesses without interference conform to other actions of the Tanzanian government?

To what extent have USAID and Peace Corps contributed directly toward training East Africans in technical skills? What is US Government policy in this respect?

III. SUMMARY.

The results of this project tend to increase the plausibility of the following assertions:

1. It is possible to find recent, authentic and plentiful Swahili-language materials on an arbitrarily selected non-linguistic theme.
2. These materials lend themselves to grammatical drill, lexical exploration, and realistic communication.
3. Work with Swahili-language materials in turn generates initiatives to which an area studies expert can respond.

In the project, Swahili was not reduced to translation of ideas from the area studies curriculum, and the English language materials were not limited to trivia.

Rather, the two languages played different and complementary roles. It therefore appears that technical or mechanical obstacles to integrated area training are not insuperable.