Subject: Re: [lojban] pedagogy and lojban

From: Robert LeChevalier <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 01 Aug 2002 17:41:25 -0400

At 09:14 AM 8/1/02 -0700, Edward Cherlin wrote:
>I had some TESL (Teaching English as a Second Language) training in
>the Peace Corps, including a taste of the Defense Language
>Institute's "wavelet" teaching system. It takes the concept of
>structure drills a step further. Instead of trying to teach whole
>branches of grammar at once, it divides the task into a succession of
>small steps, each of which is drilled to the point of mastery before
>proceeding further.
>
>I started to make a list of Lojban language features suitable for an
>introductory set of drills, but I haven't gotten far enough to
>present anything.
>
>Is anyone interested in pursuing this?

I would like to see this made an "official project", since Lojban pedagogy 
is our most important need and our weakest skill (says the person who has 
given up on writing a Lojban textbook twice in large part because the 
pedagogy work is not far enough advanced.)

In addition to you and anyone else who wants to volunteer, I am explicitly 
recruiting Gary Burgess (address in the cc: list, in case he isn't reading 
the list at the moment), since he has been a DLI student as well as having 
other experience in military linguist training and testing. Either of you 
or someone else could serve as the "project manager".

Are you listening, Gary?

...

>Of course, drill isn't the only thing needed. Drill can make the use
>of structure automatic in a formal setting, but then the student
>needs guided conversations where those structures can actually be
>used. Games are a good way to handle that structuring.

Inventing good games, both for self-teaching and for group learning, needs 
a creativity that I've never had. I hope you can do better than I did.

>I have to stop now, but I will be happy to take any of these topics
>up again another time.

Please do.

lojbab

-- 
lojbab [email-masked]
Bob LeChevalier, President, The Logical Language Group, Inc.
2904 Beau Lane, Fairfax VA 22031-1303 USA 703-385-0273
Artificial language Loglan/Lojban: http://www.lojban.org