Learning to speak Tlingit

[Heather Souter]

Taanshi, James,

Kihchi-maarsii pur tii parol!  Kwayeeshk kiiya.  Mitoni nishtohteen
ee-itweeyeen.
Thank-you for your words!  You are right.  I really understand what you are
saying.

I appreciated your concrete suggestion about how to teach
grammar--especially verbs-- in a communicative/discovery-oriented
manner. Although I am interested in the linguistics of my language (as much
as I almost hate to admit it!), my passion is to create teaching/learning
materials that will help people learn communicate with each other--and not
just with stock phrases!  I dream of hearing Metis people joke with, get
made at and  tease each other in Michif not only at conferences and major
gatherings but in their homes, in the store and on the street....

Eekushi pitamaa.  That is all for now.
Heather



On Wed, May 7, 2008 at 4:43 PM, James Crippen <jcrippen at gmail.com> wrote:

>  On Wed, May 7, 2008 at 11:01 AM, Scott DeLancey <delancey at uoregon.edu>
> wrote:
> > On Wed, 7 May 2008, Ted Moomaw wrote:
> >
> >
> > > I am okanogan from eastern Washington, I have worked at our lang.
> program
> > > 7-8 years, and it is my thought or perception that verb conjugation
> was
> > > thought of as to difficult, also tenses and possesives,  it is from my
> own
> > > experience in teaching that when you teach the conj. as part of your
> vocab
> > > people will be able to communicate, w/out conj. there is no
> communication.
> > > xwistsmxikn
> > >
> >
> >  I completely agree with this.  People have trouble memorizing the
> >  conjugations of Spanish or German, and nowadays language teachers
> >  agree that that's too hard for most people, and not the way to teach
> >  the language.  And in so many Native languages (definitely both Tlingit
> >  and Salish!) the verb is so incredibly more complicated than in
> >  European languages, there's just no way in the world anybody is
> >  going to memorize that.  You have to teach one form at a time--
> >  teach folks how to say what they're trying to say at the moment,
> >  or for that lesson.
>
> This works for teaching at the beginning and even low intermediate
> levels, but once you get to the stage where people want to be creative
> with their language use, they've got to learn grammar. The issues of
> inclusion of grammar into the curriculum is a well researched topic in
> second language teaching, and many of the strongest teaching
> approaches and methods incorporate grammar lessons as an integral part
> of the curriculum.
>
> In dealing with very complex grammars like we find in North American
> languages, grammar needs to be taught even more so than in more
> commonly taught languages. However, people have the archaic idea that
> grammar is supposed to be taught like old high school Latin classes,
> where people memorize long tables of conjugation patterns and recite
> them from memory. This type of teaching is highly inefficient as well
> as boring for both student and teacher.
>
> Instead, it's better to take one single, specific conjugation pattern
> (e.g. 1st/2nd/3rd singular subject perfective for intransitives) and
> teach it in the context of a number of different verbs. Show the
> students how it works in these different verbal environments, and let
> them generalize a rule themselves rather than shoving one down their
> throats. If they don't get it at first, give them more verbs with the
> same form. They have to learn to see the patterns for themselves.
>
> Learning to make such rule generalizations from patterns is part of
> the process of linguistic analysis, and it's also an essential part of
> the language learning process. Without learning to generalize from
> patterns you won't be able to expand your verbal lexicon. This is the
> way I was taught both Russian and Japanese, and I've successfully
> applied the same sort of reasoning to my learning of Tlingit.
>
> It takes a while for people to get used to thinking in terms of
> patterns and predicted rules, but eventually nearly everyone gets the
> hang of it and they get a great sense of accomplishment when they are
> finally able to use a word they've never heard before and produce a
> coherent, meaningful sentence with it. This is the major step where a
> student passes from a beginning student to an intermediate student,
> when they have enough grasp of rules to start making novel sentences
> on their own. Unless this hurdle is passed, students will remain
> beginners no matter how much vocabulary they learn.
>
> James
>
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