Planning your contacts with people

318 Language Learning 3 Investigating 5. Questioning 6. Recording and writing what is said. Having decided which learning devices you will probably be able to use, in addition to the general use of tracking, talking, etc., think of what special features of the intonation, sounds, and grammar you need to concentrate on. In view of what features you want to concentrate on, think of what topics you think it would be helpful to steer the discussion or conversation towards, if given the opportunity. Assuming that you have an opportunity to steer the conversation, think through how you will achieve this. Now that you have decided what you need to do, write it down and familiarize yourself with it. Then think through the whole contact, writing down what you need by way of greeting; establishing topic; your contribution by way of conversation; some of the ―sustainers‖ you will probably need and closures. Plan what you intend to do when the conversation winds down. If it is a planned activity, make sure all the necessary preparations are made. Plan your exit.

d. Plan your investigation of Kuna

In planning further investigation of Kuna, there are several factors to be taken into account: 1 Need If you have a situation in which you can ‘t express yourself correctly, cropping up several times in a row, then this is the logical area to investigate next. For instance, if you have difficulty in expressing when an incident willdid take place, then it would be good to investigate time phrases and clauses. 2 Variations Try to systematically work through the variations of what you have discovered under 1 above. For instance, after having discovered how to say: ―Yesterday, I....,‖ systematically think through ―tomorrow,‖ ―day before yesterday,‖ ―day after tomorrow,‖ ―three days ago,‖ ―in three days‘ time,‖ ―last week,‖ ―next week, ‖ etc., and try to find out the forms for these. 3 Relationships After dealing with pressing problems, work through a list of universal grammatical relationships 139 and see which ones you can handle. Next, make a list of what would appear to be the most useful for you to use. Then use this as a basis for your investigation.

e. Process

Plan for the following stages in investigation: 1. gather data 2. hypothesize guess what the grammar rule is 3. check your hypothesis 139 Some books dealing with grammatical universals from which you can extract a list: Beekman, John Callow, John 1974. Translating the Word of God. Grand Rapids, Michigan: Zondervan Publishing House. Chafe, Wallace L. 1970. Meaning and the structure of Language. Chicago, Illinois: University of Chicago Press. Grimes, Joseph E. 1975. The Thread of Discourse. The Hague: Mouton. Longacre, R.E. 1976. An anatomy of speech notions. Lisse: The Peter de Ridder Press. Appenxix N 319 4. if wrong, form a new hypothesis and check again 5. if correct, write up the rule 6. learn the rule 7. use and practice the construction

5. Gathering and processing information

There are several books which adequately deal with this subject and it is beyond my purpose here to deal extensively with this subject. However, there are two cardinal rules worth repeating: a. Write it down When you gather information language data, write it down. Otherwise, you in common with humankind will forget it.

b. Filing

The information written down must be filed in such a way as you can readily ―find‖ it.

c. Rate Don

’t gather information faster than you can digest process it, or it will drown you. For example, don‘t sit down and gather 100 new words. Just take 5 –10 new words, write them down, check their meaning, learn them and use them. Then, and only then, gather another 5 –10 new words or one grammatical device and assimilate that.