the book discussion

[Bernadette Santamaria]

I agree with T. DeCoteau's assessment on whether to use subtitles--I've
taught Apache at the university level--English subtitles "interfere" with
teaching.  I found that students depend on them instead of learning the
words on their own with my oral-only presentations in class. They would
concentrate instead, on writing the word in Apache & English for their notes
& not be concentration on listening or pronouncing.

I switched to not writing the words on the board or anything but used only
immersion methods and got better results at end of semester. One thing in
our favor for Apache students from our tribe is that they still have
speakers all around them at various domains at our reservation--speakers of
ages 40 and over. Those under that age are less fluent but still do have a
higher percentage of fluent speakers among younger people than other
Indigenous groups, even some children but we know that we need to be
conducting language maintenance and revitalization programming too to avoid
further attrition of our language.

Just contributing my comments.....

Bernadette A. SantaMaria
Language/Cultura Consultant
White Mountain Apache Tribe



On Mon, Sep 21, 2009 at 9:52 AM, Tammy DeCoteau <tdc.aaia at verizon.net>wrote:

> Han Mitakuyapi,
>
> I have been following the book discussions going on.  Two very important
> things have been brought up.
>
> To subtitle or not to subtitle.
>
> This is something that our program has struggled with.  Initially, we were
> attempting an immersion program in a daycare at the local tribal college.
> The problem was everything was in English.  And then another problem was
> that most of the people in the videos and books were non-Indian.
>
> This was when we started creating our own materials.  First we tried
> handwriting the Dakotah.  What happened was that the English looked all nice
> and the Dakotah looked second-class.  So then we tried printing the Dakotah
> on stickers.  That didn't look so great either.  So eventually we decided to
> create our own.
>
> It was then, that the discussion on whether to subtitle was held.  On the
> reservation where we are located, we are fortunate (by many standards) to
> have around 100 speakers.  But of those, even less ever learned to read in
> Dakotah.  However, we have the date of birth of 54 of those speaking elders
> and have determined that the average age of those speakers is 76.
>
> The next generation, in their 40's or 50's has only a handful of speakers.
> And the young parents of today, still another generation away, has no
> speakers.  So these young parents, and the grandparents of our children are
> not speakers.  So they can neither speak nor read in Dakotah.  We have had
> some of our books narrated and tell parents these cds are for them to learn
> to read to their children.  But because of all of this, we did subtitle.
>
> I think subtitling would depend on whether you are an immersion program --
> then absolutely no English -- and whether your population could read the
> book.
>
> Tammy DeCoteau
> AAIA Native Language Program
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