Page:Adapting and Writing Language Lessons.pdf/248

Rh More recently, as we noted in Chapter 1, there has been a revival of willingness to appeal directly to the full range of the student's intellectual powers. Teachers who are of this persuasion believe that they may properly explain structure on any scale or any level of abstractness.that suits their purposes, and that they may do so before, during, or after the student's direct experience with examples, and that they may expect the student to make some deductive application of the rules.

The fifth assumption that underlies the modular approach is 'pluralism': 'If a thing is worth doing at all, it is worth doing in at least two ways.' In fact, it seems to be the case that if a word or a sound or a grammatical relationship is to be retained at all, it must be met with and studied from at least two points of of view. The coherent picture of structure afforded by a reference grammar, and the immediate linkage of individual qrammar points with individual instances in meaningful discourse, both should be available. The problem is how to combine them.

One solution to this problem may lie in a 'learner's synopsis' of the language. Like a reference grammar, a learner's synopsis presents an organized view of the total grammar of the target language. It differs from a reference grammar in that it is shorter and less detailed. A student requires so much time to go through an ordinary reference grammar that he cannot form a general view ('syn-opsis') of the whole. The proposed format is therefore limited to perhaps 3000 running words (exclusive of examples), and