with German. He published some of the fruits of his work in 1916, in a little book titled How to Learn a Foreign Language. one of his most characteristic emphases was that his students should know not only some answers, but also some questions to which each answer is appropriate, and not only some questions, but also a number of useful answers for each question. Cummings saw that each language has only a small number of question-words, and realized what power those few questions give to a student who wants to elicit new vocabulary. Furthermore, the same questions can be applied to one center of interest after another, in accordance with the student's changing needs. The answers to such a set of questions can readily be combined into meaningful and interesting texts, whether those texts be written exposition or genuine unrehearsed conversation. Having more than one answer to each question insures that the student does not merely memorize a fixed sequence, but that he is always aware of the choices without which discourse cannot qualify as communication.
Half a century after Cummings, this writer was attempting to solve problems of materials development for Swahili and Hausa at the Foreign Service Institute, and for Chinyanja (now called Chichewa) in the Peace Corps. This work led to three observations:
1. The shorter a dialog, the less unexplained, confusing clutter it contains. The shortest possible dialog consists of two lines.
2. Differences in progress were less between trainees of low aptitude and trainees of high aptitude when material was true, important and, if possible, autobiographical, and greater when material was general, fictitious and of no immediate use.
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