Adapting and Writing Language Lessons/Chapter 7
CHAPTER 7
MICROTEXTS
WHAT ' MICROTEXTS' ARE
A nineteenth-century German, Gabelentz, observed that for elementary instruction the best language teacher is a ;talkative person with a limited range of ideas;. (in Jespersen 1904, p. 74) If a student meets too many words and too many new grammar structures too soon, he is overwhelmed. Yet students are motivated best by genuine use of the new language, and genuine use, by definition, can place no restrictions on vocabulary or on grammar. Gabelentz handled this dilemma by the way he chose teachers. How can this formula be applied to the development of textbooks and other teaching materials? One answer to this question is found in a device which we may call the 'microtext'. Although the term is new and slightly modish, microtexts probably go back at least to the time of Gabelentz himself. This writer first encountered them as a student in second-year German in the United States in 1942 and began to use them in 1956, as one expedient in the teaching of Shona in Zimbabwe. He has also used them in courses in Swahili, Luganda, Yoruba, French, Mauritian Creole, and English as a Foreign Language, and in his own learning of Portuguese, and has demonstrated their use in other people's courses in Hindi, Sotho, Chinyanja and other languages. Language teachers and students from other parts of the world have independently reported similar devices, always with enthusiasm. Earlier drafts of this chapter have been discussed with language teachers in Micronesia, Korea, western Europe and Chile, as well as the United States.
'Microtexts' are actually a family of devices, all of which begin by presenting to the student a very small amount of monolog material on a subject in which he is already interested; they then go on to guide him in immediate use of the material in a series of different ways, progressing from tighter to looser control by the teacher and leading to genuinely communicative use of the language, all within an hour or less. The most important points of this chapter, however, lie outside of the listing of procedures. They are: (1) that microtexts may be developed on very short notice, even by a teacher with only modest qualifications in the language, and (2) that microtexts are therefore valuable in making a language course more responsive to the needs and interests of each class (Chapter 2, Assumption 3), and in thus sharing with the students much more initiative and responsibility than teachers can usually manage to delegate (Assumption 4). They are also highly useful to the individual student who is learning a foreign language from a non-professional teacher.
JUDGING INDIVIDUAL MICROTEXTS
The teacher may either select texts from the work of other people, or he may originate his own. In either case, he should keep in mind four criteria, some of which are easier to apply than others. The first and second criteria have to do with 'lightness' (Chapter 3, p. 47):
1. Is the text of suitable length? Students should be able to comprehend it, and practice it according to whatever format is being used, within 15-45 minutes. In the less advanced classes, this may mean that a printed text will be 50 words or less in length, or that an oral text will not be longer than 20-30 seconds.
2. Are the sentences short and uncomplicated?
The limitation on length of text is of course the source of the 'micro' in 'microtexts'. Its effect, however, seems to be qualitative as well as quantitative: there are differences between what students can do with a passage that they can take in as a whole almost immediately, and a passage which their minds must break up into subsections. Experience in collecting prospective microtexts in a dozen languages indicates strongly that a 30-second limit is empirically a good one to place on oral texts.
The third criterion measures 'strength' (Chapter 3, p. 46):
3. Will the text be either real or realistic for the class with which it is to be used? 'Real' in this sense means that the students need and want the information at the time. An example would be today's menu in the cafeteria, or news about a forthcoming field trip. Humor is also a 'real' goal in this sense, and amusing anecdotes often make good microtexts.
A 'realistic' passage is one that contains information for which the students anticipate a future need.
Here the range of topics is broad: descriptions of places and things, games, processes like changing a tire or cooking beans, brief biographical statements about prominent persons, these and many others. The degree to which a given text is realistic of course depends on the students with whom it is to be used. Recipes will be more realistic for (unliberated!) girls than for (unliberated!) boys; texts on animal husbandry will be very realistic for a few groups of students, but unrealistic for most. Folk stories are comparatively unrealistic for everyone, except insofar as listening to and telling such stories constitutes an essential social grace or an intrinsic pleasure.
The fourth criterion relates to 'transparency' (p. 48):
4. How many new words does the text contain? How easy will it be to explain the meanings of new words, either by gesture,or by paraphrasing in words that the students already know? Will unfamiliar grammatical constructions cause trouble?
SOURCES OF MICROTEXTS
Microtexts may be taken from outside sources: cookbooks, radio broadcasts, etc. newspapers, A simple example, useful with students who expect to discuss food and nutrition in Shona, is the following (Muswe et al., 1956):
Apo mukaka unoregerwa uchirara, mangwana unofuma une mafuta awo ese ari pamusoro. Kuti mukabvisa mafuta aya, unosara wacho, ndiwo mukaka unonzi skim milk. Kune mashini inobvisa mafuta mumukaka nenzira yekugaya. Mukaka unosara, tinoudayidza kuti mukaka wakagayiwa, kana usina mafuta.
[When milk is left to stand, the next morning all its fat is on top. If you then remove this fat, what remains is milk which is called skim milk. There is a machine which removes fat from the milk by means of separation. The milk that is left behind, we call 'separated,' or 'fat-free' milk.]
One advantage in texts taken from such sources is that students know that they are working with something which was intended as communication among speakers of the language, and which therefore carries an unquestionable authenticity. Another advantage is that these sources can be used even by a teacher whose personal command of the target language is limited. Such teachers are less common in the seldom-taught languages, where most teaching is done by native speakers. They are much more common in the frequently taught languages: French in the united states, English in Korea, etc. But any teacher who is able to make questions, simple paraphrases, and other routine manipulations of a text can work as effectively with this sort of microtext as he can with a reading selection in the printed textbook. Such a teacher of German can find in the following entry in a one-volume encyclopedia (Der VolksBrockhaus, 1938) the basis for discussing chess problems with a class:
Schachspiel [ist ein] aus Indien stammendes altes Brettspiel zwischen zwei Spielern , gespielt auf dem Damebrett, mit 16 weissen, 16 schwarzen Figuren: je 1 König, 1 Dame, 2 Türme, 2 Läufer, 2 Springer, 8 Bauern. Das Ziel ist, den König des Gegners matt zu setzen.
[Chess is an old board game, which originated in India, between two players, played on a chessboard with 16 white and 16 black pieces: each player has one king, one queen, two castles, two bishops, two knights, and eight pawns. The goal of the game is to checkmate the opponent's king.]
If the students have had some hand in selecting the topic, and possibly the text itself, then even a prosaic text that is totally unsuited for inclusion in a published language textbook may be exciting and effective.
It is important to exploit the facts in a text, as well as its purely linguistic content. For students who have at lease a potential interest in international affairs, or in the place of Quebec in the world, the following story from a random issue of the Montreal Gazette can lead into a genuine discussion:
Paul Emile victor, a French explorer who has journeyed to the North Pole, will undertake explorations of Northern Quebec next spring as part of a Franco-Quebec agreement. At a press conference yesterday he called Quebec's north a gigantic reservoir of natural riches. The month-long mining exploration will be followed by another in 1971.
The same issue contains numerous articles that cast light on some aspects of life in Montreal:
The Montreal Soldiers' Wives League is holding a gaslight era party and fun auction on Friday evening, November 21, at eight o'clock, in the Officers' Mess of the Canadian Grenadier Guards by kind permission of the Commanding Officer, Lt. Col. R.I. W______ , C.D., A.D.C. Music and refreshments will be provided. Parking space has been arranged for that evening. Mrs. J_____ W______ and Mrs. A______D______ are conveners.
Students can point out differences between this story and the customs that they are familiar with; they may also compare their inferences about this event and the people who will participate in it.
There are numerous ways to originate a microtext. The most dramatic is to allow the class to suggest a topic at the beginning of the same hour in which the text is to be used. The instructor is asked to speak on this topic, completely impromptu, for about 30 seconds. He is told that someone will signal him at the end of that time. He then begins to speak. There may be a fair number of hesitations and false starts, but most people seem to be able to do it. He then goes on and tells the story two or three more times, working out a stable form of it and at the same time giving the students genuine practice in oral comprehension.
Originating microtexts on the spot is dramatic, but it is not always practicable. Some instructors find that having to improvise aloud in front of a class is too much of a strain on them. Dwight Strawn (personal communication) reports that one of his own language tutors simply didn't like to try to say 'the same thing' so many times. But even when these objections do not exist, a group of two or more instructors teaching in the same program cannot make frequent use of impromptu microtexts, since the vocabulary given to one class would soon be quite different from that given to another class. Under these circumstances, a committee of instructors can originate a text in written form. The following day, this text is given to all the instructors, who use it in class the day after that. The purpose of the written text is to keep the instructors more or less together. It should not be distributed to the students. Each instructor should supply his own impromptu oral paraphrase of it in class.
In a school system, or in a group of neighboring school systems, where most of the teachers of a given language are non-natives, the telephone could enable a single native speaker to provide on 24 hours notice microtexts on topics requested by several different classes.
No matter how a microtext is originated, it should be natural and in an appropriate style. within this general restriction, sentences should be kept rather short. The speaker should attempt to communicate with his hearers, rather than to amaze or baffle them.
Judith Beinstein, in a paper prepared for the united states Peace Corps and directed at Volunteers learning languages in a host country without professional supervision, outlined methods for eliciting simple microtexts. Informants can produce suitable texts on the basis of a picture, or their own associations with key words, or requests for information about processes, places, people, etc.
Microtexts can help to make the course livelier, and more responsive to the needs of the class. To the extent that a class participates in selecting topics, they also raise the level of responsibility, and allow the students to.feel that they, too, have an ego-investment in what is going on. They can thus make language study 'stronger' (p. 46) and also healthier as a total experience. Even from the point of view of language pedagogy in a narrower sense, Rivers (1968, p. 200) advises that 'for sheer practice in selection, the student should be given the opportunity to chatter on subjects of his own choice, where the production of ideas is effortless and most of his attention is on the process of selection.'
PREPARING A WRITTEN TEXT FOR USE
Once a written text has been selected, it may be edited in a number of different ways. From the least to the most drastic, they are:
1. Correction of typographical errors. Even this much editing is not always desirable: students must become accustomed sometime to making their own adjustments as they read.
2. Partial rewriting of one or two sentences which, though quite correct and idiomatic, nevertheless contain more than their share of difficult constructions.
3. Rewriting the entire original, using shorter, simpler sentences but retaining the same vocabulary.
Here is an example of complete rewriting. The original text is a single sentence:
'In 1919, under the post-world War I Treaty of Saint Germain the Italian frontier was established along the "natural" and strategic boundary, the Alpine watershed.'
Rivers (1968, p. 210) has said that the student 'must try...to express...meaning...with correct use of uncomplicated structural patterns and a basic general-purpose vocabulary.' The above sentence is neither extremely long nor extremely complicated, but it is still too long and complicated to be manageable for any but advanced students. If it is to serve as a basis for drills, it may be broken up into very short, very simple sentences that use the same vocabulary to say the same thing:
The nations signed the treaty of Saint Germain.
The treaty was signed in 1919.
The treaty was signed after World War I.
The treaty established the frontier of Italy.
The frontier followed a strategic boundary.
Some people said the boundary was natural.
The boundary was the Alpine watershed.
If, on the other hand, the text is to be used only for comprehension and as a general model for writing, these very short sentences may be recombined[1] into a more graceful version which is still much easier than the original:
The Treaty of St. Germain, which was signed in 1919 after World War I, established the frontier of Italy. The boundary that the frontier followed was the Alpine watershed. This was a strategic boundary, and some people said that it was also a natural one.
With each text, the student's goal is to assimilate it, so that its contents—its words, and the structures that they exemplify—will be available to him for future use. Before he can assimilate it, he must digest it, and before food can be digested it must be chewed. Just how long digestion will take and just how much chewing is necessary of course depend on each student's ability and on his prior knowledge of the target language. Nevertheless, with beginning students the materials developer will want to supply a certain amount of 'apparatus', the purpose of which is to chop the text up so that the process of mastication can begin.
WAYS OF USING MICROTEXTS IN CLASS
Recent issues of Neuere Sprachen have included a series of exchanges which began with K. Hepfer's 'Zur Frage der Eignung der Nacherzahlung als Form der sprachlichen Übung in Englischunterricht' ['On the question of the suitability of retelling as a form of linguistic exercise in the teaching of English'] (1968). Hepfer's examples indicate that for him 'retelling' applies to texts somewhat longer and more complex than what we are here calling microtexts, but the article and the ensuing discussion by Hohmann (1968) and Herfurth (1968) are still relevant to the present topic. Hepfer had concluded that in retelling, the original text is badly diluted and distorted by students. Hohmann conceded that this is the case, but argued that it was not sufficient ground for rejecting this type of lesson entirely. Herfurth distinguished between correctness of content and correctness of language, and also between retelling as 'Klassenarbeit' (writing in class) and 'Übungsform' (kind of practice). The former depends on the latter. In Herfurth's opinion the 'Übungsform' is usually slighted in teaching, and impossible results are then demanded of the 'Klassenarbeit.' In this section of this chapter, we shall outline some of the classroom procedures which have proved useful in turning microtexts into effective 'Übung.'
One basic procedure which has had considerable use over the years is the following:
1. Students listen to the text three to four times. For them, this is an opportunity to practice comprehension, and the quicker ones may notice certain variations in successive retellings. For the teacher, if he is originating the text on the spot, this is a way of settling in a fairly stable version that he will be using in later steps.
2. Students ask questions in the target language, in order to clarify the meaning of new words. It is important at this stage that they not try to go further with their questions into interesting matters that may be related to the text but which are not included in it.
3. The instructor warns the class that after repeating the text once more, he will ask the questions. It is essential at this stage that he try to choose his questions in such a way that students will give the right answer on the first try.
The first questions may suggest alternative answers, so that the student can reply by simply repeating part of what he has just heard: Q. Did he go home, or to the market? A. (He went) to the market. As the student answers the questions, he is reproducing parts of the original text.
4. Students take turns in telling things that they remember from the text. They are still reproducing parts of the text, but now the parts may be longer, and there is no question from the teacher to suggest form or content.
5. Students try to retell the entire original in their own words, until one of them can do it with no mistakes. Then they try to tell it in the length of time that the instructor used, still without mistakes. With a small class, (six to eight students) the first five steps of this procedure are normally completed in about 20 minutes. Because virtually all of the time is spent either in repeating the text or in asking questions about it, the time needed for these steps is directly proportional to the length of the text itself. This is an additional reason for being fairly strict about the 30-second limit.
6. After this basic procedure has been completed, the class may move in one or more of several directions. For example:
a. students write the text down, either by dictation or from memory, and read it back. Now they have a permanent record of the text, for later review.
b. Students ask two or three additional questions, to expand the scope of the text, or to get new details. (This is precisely the kind of questioning that should be discouraged at Step 2, above.) They then retell the amplified version.
c.Students and teacher discuss the content of the text. With the first story quoted above from the Montreal Gazette for example, this is the time to talk about the implications of an agreement between a nation and one province of another nation.
d. Students may be asked to relate comparable experiences from their own lives.
e. The content of the text may be used for roleplaying. The second story from the Gazette, for example, provides a starting point for two students, as Mrs. J____W_____ and her husband, to plan for a social event like the one described in the text.
7. A microtext may serve as the basis for ordinary drills. Thus, the construction 'month-long exploration,' found in the first Gazette story (above, p. 370) might lead to a transformation drill which would produce sentences containing 'day-long tour,' 'week—long conference,' etc.
GROUPS OF MICROTEXTS
What has been said up to this point applies to single texts. But there are often advantages in presenting texts in groups. From a linguistic point of view, a set of texts on the same or closely related subjects will share much of their vocabulary, so that the average number of new items per 100 running words of text is reduced. This of course means that many words characteristic of the topic will be reintroduced in a number of different texts. A smal1—scale example, in a commonly taught language and from a readily available source, consists of the entries for the inert gases in Nouveau Petit Larousse (1968):
argon Corps simple gazeux, incolore, qui constitue environ le centième de 1'atmosphère terrestre.
[A colorless gaseous element, which constitutes about 1% of the earth's atmosphere.]
hélium Corps simple gazeux, de numéro atomique 2 ... découvert dans l'atmosphere solaire, et qui existe en trés petite quantité dans l'air.
[A gaseous element, atomic number 2, discovered in the sun's atmosphere, and which exists in minute quantities in the air.]
krypton Un des gaz rares qui existent dans l'atmosphère. (Numero atomique 36.)
[One of the rare gases found in the atmosphere. Atomic number 36. ]
neon Gaz rare de l'atmosphere, de numéro atomique 10, employé dans l'eclairage par tubes luminescents à lumière rouge.
[Rare atmospheric gas, atomic number 10, used in illumination by red luminescent tubes.]
radon Element gazeux radio-actif, de numero atomique 86.
[Radioactive gaseous element, atomic number 86.]
From the point of view of content, families of microtexts allow for presentation of larger amounts of real information, comparison among a number of partially similar incidents, or the making of generalizations.
From the pedagogical point of view, one text of a group may be treated in one way, and other texts in other ways. These principles are illustrated in Appendix S.
In an experiment with groups of microtexts, the instructor selected from Swahili newspapers a large number of very short news items, each of which told about some local activity in the general area of 'nation-building' (kujenga taifa). These include construction of schools and roads, making of bricks, clearing of land, etc. The class was divided into two groups, three students in Group I, and the rest in Group II. Each member of Group I had his own news item to prepare.
The classroom procedure was as follows:
1. One member of Group I answers questions from Group II concerning his story. The other members of Group I listen. The teacher listens and makes necessary corrections.
2. The members of Group II ask the same questions of the other members of Group I.
3. The teacher asks the same questions of members of Group II.
Division into two unequal groups allows the stronger students, as members of Group I, to do more challenging work while using the same material as their classmates.
SUMMARY
Chapter 3 called for four 'basic components' in a language lesson: (1) reward(s) outside of language acquisition itself, (2) a sample of language in use, (3) structural and (4) lexical exploration moving from the sample and toward the extralinguistic goals. Chapter 6 dealt primarily with lexical exploration; Chapter 5 dealt with one way of presenting structure, and Chapter 8 will describe another. Chapter 7 has concerned itself with how to obtain or create,and use,a stable 'sample' relevant to the unstable but all the more potent readinesses of a 'them' in a here and a now.
- ↑ For guided practice in preparing parallel versions of a single text, see Stevick (1963, pp. 59 - 68 ).