nu'o textbook

[Colin Fine <colin@KINDNESS.DEMON.CO.UK>]

>
>My main criticism of the draft textbook as it stands is that it's largely a
>step by step journey through the refgram.  If we want to produce a textbook
>that is a practical guide to Lojban, then it needs (pace Austin) to
>concentrate more on "how to do things with words" - such as ask someone a
>"whether" question, for example.  This would also require substantial
>changes in the "syllabus" - this is the only language textbook I have come
>across where you don't get to numbers until Chapter 10!  This is not to
>belittle the textbook, which I think does a reasonable job at what it sets
>out to do (i.e. present the grammar and semantics of Lojban in a digestible
>way) but since any future readers of the textbook will also (.a'o) have a
>copy of the Book, they need to be offered something different, i.e. a
>course that will enable them to start communicating in Lojban as soon as
>possible.  After all, I don't start teaching English to beginners by
>explaining English sentence structure, I start with things like "Hi, how
>are you?" li'a teaching/learning a conlang like Lojban is going to be
>different from learning a natlang - mu'a you wouldnt need to spend much
>time on how to do your shopping in Lojban - but I still think we can learn
>a lot from second-language pedagogy here.
>

The trouble with this (and with the pu'i draft textbook) is that
starting with "How are you" delays getting into the areas that the
selcinri be lo jbobau are likely to be looking for pe'i.
If we ever got to the point * that people were learning Lojban for some
practical reason, a pedagogic approach would be sensible. But if I came
upon it at this stage for the first time, and found a draft textbook, I
would skim (if not skip) the "How do you do" chapters looking for the
linguistic meat; and I suspect that a significant proportion of pu'i
jbopre are like me in this respect.

* I was going to write ba'anai here, and then I remembered that for some
daft reason ba'anai means "I anticipate" - reversing ba'a on an
unobvious temporary scale - as opposed to "and I don't expect that"
which I cannot see how to express with an attitudinal.


So shoot me down in flames already.

Happy New Thing
        Colin
--
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|     Colin Fine    66 High Ash, Shipley, W Yorks. BD18 1NE, UK       |
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|        "Don't just do something! Stand there!"                      |
|              - from 'Behold the Spirit' (workshop)                  |
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