CHAPTER 3
A DIALOG-DRILL FORMAT (SPANISH)
| question | cf. Statment: |
| ¿Es pequeña la ciudad? | La ciudad es pequeña. |
| ¿Viajan ustedes hoy? | Ustedes viajan hoy. |
| but: | |
| ¿La tía habla español? | La tía habla español. |
With changes and additions like these, this lesson may lead to the fulfillment of a number of rewarding occasions for use:
- Talk fluently for 15 seconds (or less fluently for 30 seconds) about your travel plans.
- Converse with a Spanish speaker other than your own instructor about your travel plans. Try to make a good impression.
- Tell where each person in the class is going, and say something factual about the city where he expects to stay.
- Using a map, give a lecture on the geography of the country that you expect to visit.
Once the lesson has been adapted in these ways, its center of gravity in the linguistic dimension has moved outside of the basic dialog. To put the same point into a different metaphor, the dialog remains but is no longer basic. Those users who prefer to start with drills or with Cummings devices are free to do so. The dialog may then become, to the student, a culmination rather than a commencement—a happy concentration
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