Tuesday, February 12, 2013

Finished the First 100 Hours

I was thinking today, as we did Phase 1B session 25, how that so much has happened between us and our nurturer, and thus, in us, and including in our brains (language processing systems), and in "us-in-the-host-world", in spite of the fact that, in my case at least, I wasn't "trying" real hard. Just doing all the games (nee activities) and quite a bit distracted, but it worked. We're more than ready for Phase 2. We have some other things to do, though, for a couple of days, and then we'll be away for awhile.

One thing we noticed is that key concepts ("vocabulary") need to be added to the games. You recall that our Phase One activities are not too much about "useful expressions for the real world". Our supercharged participation sessions are part of the real, host world--the only part that is accessible enough for enough hours that we can grow much during this early stage. And as we play, we "conquer the world". That is, we want to start understanding speech, and then talking, about the basics of everyday experience, because that is what we will build on in Phase 2.

PEOPLE (man, woman, boy, girl)
Their bodies (body parts, possessive)
Their emotions and physical conditions
Their appearances
Names of their family relationships
Their most basic actions (run, walk, take, read, buy, sneeze, barf...)

ANIMALS (included early because of their place in discourse)
Household animals (if there is such a thing)
Farm animals
Wild animals
Creepy crawlies

HOUSE
Parts of of it
Contents of it

The OUTSIDE area where most outside daily business is done

The COUNTRYSIDE and it's contents
Natural features
Agricultural features
Maybe salient countries

PROPERTIES OF OBJECTS
Shapes
Textures
Tastes
Etc.

RELATIONS BETWEEN EXPERIENCES/STATES AND OTHER EXPERIENCES/STATE
Before
After
During
If, then
The one who ...

GRAMMAR of ongoing processes (is doing), states (is) and commands; also person and number, negation, wide range of range of question words, yes-no, etc.

So doing the First 100 Hours for the first time in twelve years, I notice some of the most basic bits of experience are missing. For example, nothing about hardness/softness among the properties of objects. In relations between experiences/states, there was no during (while, when). Actually, it is really time to sit down with the First 100 hours and the outline above, and think of important holes missing. We want to manage starting to understand speech and to interact verbally in all these aspects of experience (and no doubt more) with 800 to 1000 vocabulary items. i.e., space for "conquering the world" is limited. Time is too. Make wise choices.

Well, we maybe need a whole bunch of people together who have done the First 100 hours and brainstorm again to update. We don't want to change the instructions for the games and their order, but the gaps we see (like hard/soft) can be filled in without changing the instructions or order. We could have an appendix if we want to update certain games. But if we change the games or their order, then we defeat the beautiful, caring work done to translate the First 100 Hours for GPs of many languacultural backgrounds (Chinese, Korean, German, Spanish, French, Arabic, etc., etc.) learning many host languages.

3 comments:

  1. In the manual for Arabic, we added some activities (not changing the numbers of any current activities) in phase 1B sessions 15 and following, to add words for days of the week, today, yesterday, tomorrow, weather (cold, hot, rain, etc.), telling time, seasons, times of day (including prayer times and meal times), and dates. We also add ownership (words like "mine," "yours," etc.) which is included in phase 1 but not specifically as separate words which we commonly use in Arabic dialects.
    Anyway, the time and weather words seem to me a basic piece of life that it is good to get in phase 1. We do it with pictures, of course, as well as clocks and calendars, using more games.

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  2. Good! There is lots of room for localisation within the games. And in adding new games we should not change the numbers of the old ones, as you didn't. For Russian, I made up a bunch of structured input games that were not in the original Kazakh or the English version, and just included instructions (maybe only in English) as to which sessions they went with and where. So those additions won't be available to Koreans, Arabs, Chinese, etc. who are GPs in Russia. Don't know what else to do.

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