Page:Adapting and Writing Language Lessons.pdf/388

Rh 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.