saasmath's blog
I teach an elective math class to high-school seniors that I can pretty much choose the topics. I would like to introduce them to Esperanto (and they want to know more about it as well). But I need to have a math twist.
Has anyone come across intersting math-based articles that might be help us for this purpose? We could then learn the language for a week or two with the goal of deconstructing the article -- probably with the help of a dictionary. A topic that they had some familarity with, but that had some new content and perhaps some pictures would be especially helpful.
If anyone has any ideas or sources, it would be helpful.
--Gary
Having now spent several weeks with my students in the study of Esperanto, I am starting to think that the best goal for such a course in American high schools may to to focus initially on reading -- including the ability to read out laud. Now I recognize that this is a much different approach than is common in typical foreign language instruction, but I think that there are differences with Esperanto that may make this an appropriate strategy.
The reason that this seems interesting to me is that I am coming to the conclusion that students who can read at the high school level in their native language can probably become independent readers of Esperanto in a single trimester (40-50 hours of instruction). On the other hand, if one follows the typical approach of focusing on all of the language skills such as also independently interacting with the spoken language and also producing text, one could only introduce the language.
I also find much less variability in student ability when it comes to reading text than in comprehending or producing the language in a spoken form. Or perhaps it is just that the variability is less important to moving the class forward.
I also suspect that students who are fluent readers of Esperanto will find the transition to conversational Esperanto or the production of text much simpler than if one tries to teach it all at once. For some, this transition may even involve very little planned instruction, while for others, at least one can avoid having to teach multiple skills at once.
So, a possible model may be to focus on written Esperanto the first trimester, while those continuing on can work on conversational Esperanto the second trimester, and production of written Esperanto the third, and at the end of a year the goal would be would be to reach a level similar to that produced by one of the "B-Level" proficiencies described in the Common European Framework.
Additional advantages of this approach is that it requires less experience instructors and it is much easier to to make work with computer augmented instruction. Spoken language and the monitoring of written work requires experienced conversational partners and readers which is less important when the initial goal is on reading for comprehension.
I would define an independent reader as one who can read at 150 WPM without the aid of a dictionary when working in a content domain that one is familiar with, and with an Esperanto only dictionary in other domains. And that seems possible with well-structured instruction in about 50 hours. And since one would hope that a student could also continue their work in spoken form, reading out loud and reading along with the spoken text would certainly be part of the instruction for the first term. And many of the reading may be of dialogs that would also facilitate this transition.
The above does not describe my current instructional method, but it is a direction that I seem to be heading as I consider methods that might be most appropriate for Esperanto in an elective type high school course where one might have students of only a single term.
I have started recording some of the 78 RPM records from the Connor collection. Here is a nice promotional piece (3:30 minutes) for their book, correspondence course, and the language in general. They also have recordings of some radio broadcasts, some music, and their correspondence course.
http://www.ipernity.com/doc/garyanderson/6986240/
I drove down to Portland yesterday to pick up a few boxes of books and other materials belong to Doris Tappen Connor, a significant figure among American esperantists, and widow of George Alan Connor. Doris is still alive, over 90, and is in a nursing home with severe dementia. Several thousand Esperanto books and other materials were donated to the Univ. of Oregon's library special collections in 1976 -- making it one of the largest if not the largest such collection in the country. What I got seemed to be a sampling of that -- I will have my students go through and learn about and catalog all that was received -- it should be very interesting.
What G. Alan Connor is probably best known for was his leadership and extreme anti-communism actions in the US's Esperanto movement during the McCarthy era. For Alan Connor, is was not necessary to be an actual proponent of communism, but simply being sympathetic to those with such leanings was enough for him to condemn them. In a group that is open to considering nonconformant ideas, this can be a problem.
So given this background I was really interested in hearing the story from Doris' niece and husband about what led Alan to this view. It turns out that Alan spent several years in the Soviet Union working on their infrastructure in the 40's. And over that time he saw a number of his friends killed or all of their rations cut off and this was just a small sample of other tremendous injustices. He came to the very personal conclusion that communism was pure evil and every effort must be put forth to rid the world of the threat.
Today one certainly wonders why more rational and nuanced thinking could not have prevailed. In this case it caused a huge fracture in the Esperanto movement, especially in the US during that time period. But it is at least useful to understand how one came to their conclusions, and for Alan Connor, that decision seemed to be very personal.
And this is all very interesting to think about as I hold in my hands right now a copy of "La Komunista Manifesto" from the collection.
We have just finished our third week of our Esperanto course at Seattle Academy and by all measures things are going very well. We are learning what types of activities work and are fun with this format and the daily progress is obvious.
So, just prior to Christmas break when we sat down to talk about what was going well and what could be improved, I was a bit surprised that several students asked me to assign homework. to the class.
While my current course is focused on what are the best collection of activities for students to study Esperanto in their first 50 hours, I frequently have the opportunity to spend a much smaller amount of time, about 30 to 45 minutes to introduce the language to one of my math classes or to another teacher's class where there is some time to fill.
So far I have come up with this:
* The basic idea of the language: "Imagine a world where every person could speak as equals with one another, but without giving up their individual or group identities?"
An interesting thing is happening in my Esperanto class/club and I am not sure whether to celebrate it or try to prevent it. What is happening is that new words and expressions are coming into existence. The most apparent is the word "Malsaluton" which is what they use for "Goodbye". I have explained that constructed compound words -- especially with the established affixes is an important part of the language. But I have also explained that such constructions have to make sense,and that there are perfectly good existing expressions that have these meanings.
I have Judith Meyer of Edufire work with my Esperanto class each Tuesday. It is nice to have an excellent teacher from Germany work with the class, and at a cost of $15.00 per hour, it is a bargain (group classes are $5.00 per person/per hour -- everyone should consider it as a way to increase proficiency).
It is a little humbling -- my students remembered fewer of the prepositions than I had hoped for. And I would have hoped for them to speak more and be less bashful. But it is a great resource and I just need to figure out how to use it to the best of our advantage.
Today we had a very productive activity in my Esperanto class. Together as a class we read and discussed the initial part of Tim Westover's first story in his book Marvirinstrato.
In my first two weeks of my independent study course at Seattle Academy, we have explored a number of learning resources including Mazi, Paspoto al la Tuta Mondo, Jen Ni Mondo, and Internet resources from lernu.net, smart.fm, livemocha, etc. But while these, and our class discussions, have given a good orientation to the language, getting students on their feet and actively using the language is by far the most effective activity.
