Page:Adapting and Writing Language Lessons.pdf/51

CHAPTER 2 Some students, but only some, can profit from spending the first 15 hours of class on phonological drills; some students, but only some, want to start out with 'What's your name and where are you from? some but only some thrive on the memorization of dialogs one group plans to drill wells for two years, another group plans to teach English, and still another expects to monitor radio broadcasts. Tolerance for one or another approach depends partly on the coordinator or supervisor of the program, partly on the past experience of the students themselves.

The assumption about 'responsiveness' is close to the issue of 'relevance' that looms so large in the entire world of education today. We must not be too facile either in accepting a language text as 'relevant' merely because it is job-related, or in rejecting it as 'irrelevant' just because it spends most of the first lessons in talking about colored blocks of wood. As we have pointed out in chapter 1 (p.23f), the needs and interests that any student has, and to which a course may relate, are many and complex. Nevertheless, there irrelevant courses, and almost any textbook may be made either more or less relevant to a given class.