Page:Adapting and Writing Language Lessons.pdf/389

CHAPTER 7 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.'