CHAPTER 4
WRITING ADAPTABLE MATERIALS
THE PROBLEM
If the blind lead the blind, shall
not both fall into the pit?
The preceding chapter suggested ways of adapting and using language materials that are already at hand. Whoever rejects what is at hand and writes his own lessons assumes a double responsibility: to produce something that really is better for his purposes than what existed before, and to reduce the likelihood that those who come after him will feel that they in turn have to write their own courses. Chapter 4 applies to the writing of new materials many of the same principles that guided adaptation in Chapter 3 and its appendices.
Writing lessons for seldom-taught languages and writing them for commonly-taught ones differ in much more than the names of the languages. Students in seldom-taught languages are likely to be more mature, and many have already in mind some imminent and very definite use to which they hope to put the language. Yet in the development of language study materials, writers are only rarely qualified to speak for the public among whom the prospective students are to live and work. Sometimes, the materials-writing 'team' consists of one person, who is biologically coextensive with the only student. It is for this situation that we have Gudschinsky's How to Learn an Unwritten Language (1967: cf. also Ward [1937] and Bloomfield [1942]). Most frequently, however, the materials writers directly represent neither the student nor his future audience. All too often, they have begun and completed
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