colors, numbers, and animals

Thu Aug 7 17:29:09 UTC 2014

I think that it would be useful for linguists to spend some time
visiting K-3 (and even pre-school) classes to see what sorts of
activities children are engaged in and enjoying, and also to go
to a children's toy store to see what sorts of games are sold there.
One has to develop some basic content and framework in a
language before making much use of it. Decontextualized lists
of words are anti-motivational, and can quickly turn children
(and adults) off, but they can be used in game activities such as
bingo, or a board game that advances pieces for right answers,
and these can be played in cooperative ways rather than Anglo-
centric competitive ways. But we typically underestimate the
abilities of young children, who can learn/be taught much more
than we usually challenge them with. Small playlets allow
children (or adults) to memorize contextualized language, and
these can be enjoyably practiced, then expanded from by changing
person, aspect, action, direction, systematically. For older learners,
this was the basis for our highly successful Quechua course (and
Martha Hardman's equally successful Aymara course as well).
Depending on the language/culture, short traditional animal
stories (with sound and motion effects) can be memorized and
acted out (but never at the wrong time of year!!). These again
can be used as a basis for expansions and for raising intuitive
awareness of grammatical categories and morphological structure.
Knowing how to analyze a language and how best to help people
acquire it are vastly different things, just as chemistry and cooking
are. One of the best teachers of Turkish I ever had was a lawyer
by trade, while the two worst were a linguist and a teacher trained
to mechanically teach  the Foreign Service Institute materials.

    Rudy

    Rudy Troike
    University of Arizona
    Tucson, AZ  USA

________________________________
From: ilat-request at list.arizona.edu [ilat-request at list.arizona.edu] on behalf of Peter Austin [pa2 at soas.ac.uk]
Sent: Thursday, August 07, 2014 9:13 AM
To: ilat at list.arizona.edu
Subject: Re: [ilat] colors, numbers, and animals

In our Dieri language workshops in Australia we used a variety of methods, like teaching people simple commands, drawing human figures and naming body parts (rather than list format), games like "Simon says" and "Lingo Bingo" -- you can read about some of this in various blog posts on http://dieriyawarra.wordpress.com.

Peter Austin

On 8 August 2014 00:08, Bryan James Gordon <linguist at email.arizona.edu<mailto:linguist at email.arizona.edu>> wrote:
There's a consensus among linguists that lists of colors, numbers and animals are a bad way to teach a language. Although I am part of this consensus, I don't think it's colorness, numberness or animalness that's the problem, and I doubt we're going to find anything insidious in digging up the genealogy of this practice. Some potential sources that spring to my mind:

  *   skilled preschool and K teachers who have been trained that these are the things children should learn (albeit in their first language)
  *   (in the case of color and number) the fact that Native names for colors and numbers often teach culturally important things and destabilise the apparent naturalness of the English color and number systems
  *   (in the case of animals) obviously, animals themselves (not just as a semantic system) are very important in many Native cultures!

It's listness that's the problem. Working at AILDI I've often had to discourage folks from using lists of words of any sort when they're developing their teaching tools. But the best way to do this, in my experience, is to recognise their value and try to pivot it over to something else more language-acquisition-appropriate that benefits from the same value. If a teacher is fascinated by the fact that her language has a base-4 system, I encourage her to identify a traditional practice that involves counting on 4 fingers (or whatever is the physical base) and to use that practice instead of a list for her microteaching. If a teacher really wants to teach animal names, I encourage him to teach them in complete sentences, and also teach hyper- and hyponyms that include those animals, and to include some of the flora that those animals interact with regularly - or anything culturally important about the animal that goes beyond just naming it!

Teaching lists of colors, numbers and animals is a well-established practice in many Native language programs. This has had obvious negative consequences in terms of the ratio between effort and money input and acquisition output. But I worry that, by identifying this practice as a problem instead of as a potential source of utility, we are furthering the alienation between linguists and community members. My two cents.

Bryan James Gordon

2014-08-07 8:01 GMT-07:00 Wayne Leman <wleman1949b at gmail.com<mailto:wleman1949b at gmail.com>>:

A number of methods are used for teaching indigenous languages. One that seems commonly used for teaching Native American languages in the U.S. is a focus on memorization of colors, numbers, and names of animals.

Does anyone know where this approach to language teaching originated? Might it reflect how the teachers themselves were taught English in boarding or reservation schools? Might it reflect perceived requirements on the part of school, state, or federal administrators?

Do any of you know of any programs where there has been a shift from memorization of word lists toward creating conversational fluency in the indigenous language?

Wayne
-----
http://www.cheyennelanguage.org/

--
***********************************************************
Bryan James Gordon, MA
Joint PhD Program in Linguistics and Anthropology
University of Arizona
***********************************************************

--
Prof Peter K. Austin
Marit Rausing Chair in Field Linguistics
Director, Endangered Languages Academic Programme
Research Tutor and PhD Convenor
Department of Linguistics, SOAS
Thornhaugh Street, Russell Square
London WC1H 0XG
United Kingdom

web: http://www.hrelp.org/aboutus/staff/index.php?cd=pa
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