Page:Adapting and Writing Language Lessons.pdf/153

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CHAPTER 4
WRITING ADAPTABLE MATERIALS

1. Socio-cultural. ('What will be the trainee's position relative to speakers of the language -- and bearers of the culture -- in which he is interested?') This information may be given in the form of a careful prose description. The source of the information itself may be discussion, questionnaires, surveys, or some combination of these.

2. Topical. ('What kinds of messages will the trainee need to handle?') This information is best given in the form of a list of problems or tasks. Some of these may involve social situations of interest to a broad spectrum of trainees, while others will be within special fields of interest or technical specialization.

3. Linguistic proficiency. (' How well will the student need to understand, speak, read and write the language?')

This information as it comes from spokesmen for the future audience will not be in technical linguistic terms, but will be stated functionally, perhaps somewhat as follows:

The trainee must learn to participate effectively in all general conversation; he must be able to discuss leprosy control and health education with reasonable ease; comprehension must be quite complete for a normal rate of speech; his vocabulary must be broad enough so that he rarely has to grope for a word; his accent may still be foreign, but his control of the grammar must be good enough so that his errors never interfere with understanding, and rarely disturb a native speaker.


The above statement, which is based on an official description of the Foreign Service Institute's widely-circulated S-3 rating, represents a rather high goal. Much less demanding would be:

The trainee must learn to ask and answer questions on topics that are very familiar to him; he may not understand even simple sentences unless they are repeated at a slower rate than normal speech; he may

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