Page:Adapting and Writing Language Lessons.pdf/237

CHAPTER 4

Freedom for a language teacher may mean not following someone else's structural sequence, or following it. Of the materials which a writer can place at the disposal of a teacher, the Learner's Synopsis (Chapter 4, p. 144; and Chapter 5) should flow as smoothly as possible from the beginning to end. The subject of this appendix, however, is the presentation of structural points not as continuity but as chunks, so that they are maximally independent of each other in two ways: in their wording, and in their physical existence on paper or cardboard.

The material which follows illustrates the second point made in"the directions for writing an adaptable Sarkhanese course (Chapter 4, p.144ff). It is based on cards numbered 1, 2, 3 and 5 in a series of 62 5"×8" cards. This series has been used for two years, by four different instructors, in presenting the rudiments of Swahili grammar to beginning students. To emphasize mutual independence, however, the cards are given here in an order different from the one in which they have been used in the past. As in Chapter 4, p. 145, the suggestions for presentation are placed before the explanation, but the cards need not be used in that order. (The students with whom these cards have been used have in fact not seen the explanations in this form at all.)