Page:Adapting and Writing Language Lessons.pdf/151

CHAPTER 4 The goal which we have set for this chapter is more delicate than for any of the other chapters. We are attempting to tell others how they can do something (write adaptable materials) without telling them how they must do it. To put the same dilemma in another way, if suggestions are to be helpful they must be fairly concrete, yet the whole purpose of these suggestions will be defeated if they are taken as prescriptions for yet one more ultimate format. This chapter therefore presents a somewhat idealized scheme for materials development, which will be partly exemplified and partly contradicted in the appendices which follow it. Like, it is supposed to fill the reader's head with indefinite ideas; unlike , it is supposed to help the reader to produce very definite ideas when he applies it to any specific problem in materials development.

A WAY

One of the most noteworthy (and least noted) attempts to view the writing of materials for seldom-taught languages is John Francis' (1969). Using Francis' analysis as a point of departure, we may say that the writing team must provide for three 'functions' (specification, presentation, articulation) on each of two 'scales' (coarse-grained, fine-grained). The flow chart (Fig. 1) shows how these are related to one another: