Last spring, I started reading Gouin's Art of Teaching and Studying Languages,
I wrote a series of posts about it for By Study and Faith, and we started using our own madeup series of phrases we've been learning in the kitchen. I didn't finish the book at that time because the ereaders I was using couldn't keep my place, and I eventually got frustrated with trying to find where I'd left off, but I slipped it into our most recent book box, and it came the other day, so I've started reading and I'm thinking about foreign language instruction again.
The book is a reprint, and it has a number of typos where the scanning process was imperfect, but even with that, I'm enjoying having a real paper copy to hold in my hands; I like those so much better.
So I found my spot again, and started reading.
In order not to load our text with too many examples, we leave on one side all such exercises as would arise from the possible and ordinary accidents which are connected with this series and complete it. We will simply point out that, as an aim can be attained, it can also be missed. ... The maid who upsets the water in carrying it to the kitchen would miss her aim. ... The development of the indirect and complementary series of accidents is hardly less rich in terms and sentences than the development of the direct series itself.
-The Art of Teaching and Studying Languages, (reprinted) p 43
This is an interesting prospect. We've been working on an
"Applesauce Series" and it's gradually generalized into whatever fruit (real or pretend) is handy when we're doing it. And we've "cooked" some crazy things, though I think that the real food we've cut up has had more impact on their skills: it seems that real activity is considerably more effective than pretending for this activity. The kids are doing quite well with this in terms of receptive language: I can tell them to do a number of variants on our Series that we've been working with. Productive language is more unsteady, but that is to be expected, and is exaggerated by the fact that I have not been doing well with integrating this into our regular kitchen talk.
But this idea of adding in accidents is interesting. I think that may be just what we need. Maybe a variant Series would go like this:
Pick up the apple.
Place the apple on the cutting board.
Pick up the knife.
Cut the apple in half.
Be careful not to cut your finger.
Move your finger away from the knife.
You have cut your finger.
Your finger is bleeding.
Don't get blood on the apple slices.
Go to the sink.
Wash the cut.
Put a bandaid on the cut.
It is, perhaps, slightly gruesome to just write them out, but this adds several new sentence options to our conversations, and I'm pretty sure that my kids would have a blast hamming it up, acting this one out, and fun is an important element in these activities!
I think that this will be a good way of keeping our exercises fresh. We're also experimenting with how to deal with different conjugations, though I'm finding that aspect tricky: I have to work really hard to stay in the tense that I select through the whole exercise, and while the kids are recognizing the similar stem and fundamental meaning, they're not really getting the finer details that the conjugations give. That's one area where having someone that's genuinely fluent would be really, really useful. But we're making progress, and it's steady, which is the goal.
