APPENDIX S TO CHAPTER 7
MICROTEXTS AS PARTS OF A SHORT BASIC COURSE
The Foreign Service Institute's Luganda Basic Course consists of 94 'lessons.' Lesson 38 and every fifth lesson thereafter are based on microtexts. These texts cover three topics: principal cities of Uganda, eating customs, and interurban travel. The originator of the texts recorded them impromptu, concentrating on giving useful general information, rather than on composing language lessons. Each of nine cities was a subtopic and formed the basis of one lesson. For each subtopic, three versions ('takes') were recorded on tape. Any one lesson uses each of the three versions in a different way. In Lesson 38, which contains the first microtext, the content of the first version has been converted into very short, uncomplicated sentences. Following those sentences are two or three questions based on each. The student is to get the answers by listening to the first version. The second version is to be written down off the tape, and checked by reference to the book. Later, the student tries to fill the blanks (orally) in a printed copy of the third version, and then checks himself by listening to the tape.
One of the aims of the series of microtexts that runs through this course was to give to the tape lab an independent status of its own, rather than making it the slave of the teacher-directed sessions.
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