Dealing with emotional consequences of historical trauma in the language classroom

[Dr. MJ Hardman]

Rudy, this sounds similar to what we did with Aymara.  One student after one
semester successfully shopped in the Central Market in La Paz in Aymara &
ended up staying with an Aymara family.  Our course is also on the web
http://aymara.ufl.edu/ including voice, exercises, etc.  MJ

On 3/1/14 12:21 AM, "Troike, Rudolph C - (rtroike)"
<rtroike at email.arizona.edu> wrote:

> Some years ago I read that the Oneida had launched a (then-)successful
> campaign to revive the use of the language based on the need to have
> participants in certain ceremonies. This of course would not work as well in
> an urban setting, but embedding the language learning in a context of honoring
> and perpetuating significant aspects of historical culture might help
> motivationally, as conversely might applying it to modern technological use as
> a challenge (being able to share information within a knowledgeable peer
> group, so that the language is relevant, and not just a difficult learning
> exercise).
> 
>  
> 
> Methodologically, the teaching model we created for a course in Bolivian
> Quechua at the University of Texas some years ago might easily be adapted. By
> the middle of the second semester, students were able to communicate with a
> visiting student from Peru who spoke a radically different dialect (considered
> by some linguists to be a separate language), discussing differences in
> education in the U.S. and Peru. (Most modern language courses I know reach
> this level of proficiency after 4 semesters, rather than 1 1/2!) The textbook,
> by Garland Bills, Bernardo Vallejo, and myself, is available on the web, and I
> am told that the lab lessons are also.
> 
>  
> 
> The crucial aspect of the success of the model was in the lab lessons, which
> (at the outset) had students memorize conversations and practice sentences by
> listening to them being repeated 3 times before being provided a space to say
> them, then hearing another repetition followed by a space, and then hearing a
> final confirmation. After about the 5th lesson, memorizing a constructed
> conversation becomes burdensome, so we dropped that requirement in favor of
> using the patterns for expanded and innovative use in the classroom. But the
> key is building up hearing/listening (receptive) ability first.
> 
>  
> 
> In a heritage language setting like this, I would add engaging the students in
> the creation of novel conversations, jokes, playlets, etc., as soon as a
> minimally adequate level of competence had been reached. In many native
> communities, being able to turn a joke in the language is a socially desirable
> skill. Finding ways to engage learners in their own learning could be a key.
> Writing first and reading aloud rather than being forced into impromptu
> speaking can make things easier.
> 
>  
> 
> A great mistake in much of modern language teaching ideology is pressing
> students for informal conversational competence, without developing an
> adequate receptive foundation. I have queried college seniors who had taken a
> required 2 years (4 semesters) of Spanish, and found that they had already
> forgotten most of what they studied, thus almost totally wasting that much of
> their lives. (By contrast, from a reading/grammar-translation approach with no
> speaking whatsoever, I was successfully able to take graduate courses taught
> entirely in Spanish in Mexico.) Overemphasis on production without sufficient
> receptive hearing/listening development can be counterproductive. So one must
> be wary of what the "experts" in language teaching prescribe.
> 
>  
> 
>     Good luck,
> 
>  
> 
>     Rudy
> 
>  
> 
>     Rudy Troike
> 
>     University of Arizona
> 
>     Tucson, Arizona
> 
>  
> 
> 
> From: ilat-request at list.arizona.edu [ilat-request at list.arizona.edu] on behalf
> of Tanya Slavin [tanya.slavin at gmail.com]
> Sent: Friday, February 28, 2014 6:08 PM
> To: ilat at list.arizona.edu
> Subject: [ilat] Dealing with emotional consequences of historical trauma in
> the language classroom
> 
> Dear all, 
> 
> We're having a local workshop on indigenous language teaching at the
> University of Toronto, an event organized for school and university language
> teachers to share ideas on some of the challenges specific to native language
> teaching in an urban setting. One of the topics that we hope to address in
> some way (perhaps as a roundtable discussion) is the question of how to deal
> with emotional consequences of historical trauma in the language classroom.
> One of the biggest obstacles for aboriginal students wishing to regain their
> language is the painful history of their relationship with it (e.g. their
> parents were forbidden to speak the language, they may have grown up
> discouraged speaking their language or feeling that their language was somehow
> inferior). All that baggage influences negatively their success in the
> classroom: they either reach a certain plateau or can hardly progress at all,
> or are unable to start speaking the language. As a result, the drop-out rate
> of native students in a university language classroom is much higher than that
> of non-native students wishing to learn a native language. I witnessed it
> myself when I was teaching Ojibwe in a university setting, and I'm seeing it
> now teaching it in a community setting. The question is how to deal with that
> and help these students succeed (also keeping in mind that they don't
> necessarily have the support of their community in an urban setting). Is it a
> good idea to actually raise this issue in the classroom, in order not to
> ignore the elephant in the room, so to speak? Would having separate classes
> for native and non-native students help the issue?
> So I wanted to ask if anybody had any ideas about this they would be willing
> to share, or experiences they had, or any stories they have about students
> that were dealing with this obstacle. If that's ok, I'd love to share your
> ideas and experiences at the workshop (obviously, giving everybody credit for
> them), which would also hopefully generate a productive discussion. I would
> appreciate any ideas you might have, and thank you in advance!
> 
> Tanya
> 

Dr. MJ Hardman
Professor Emeritus
Linguistics, Anthropology and Latin American Studies
University of Florida
Doctora Honoris Causa UNMSM, Lima, Perú
website:  http://clas.ufl.edu/users/hardman/ 

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