Adam Bohannon's List: Language Revitalization Resources

• two types of language  use, primary and secondary discourse
• Total Physical Response teaching techniques
• language and culture are intimately entwined and cannot be  separated
• indigenous language  revitalization is part of a larger attempt by indigenous peoples to retain their  cultural strengths in the face of the demoralizing assaults of an all-pervasive  modern individualistic, materialistic, and hedonistic technological culture.
• Dr. Fishman's belief that the intergenerational transmission of  language in the home from parents to young children is the key to  keeping indigenous languages alive; however, schools can play either a positive  or negative role in supporting the efforts of indigenous parents and communities.
• continuum of eight stages of language loss with stage eight being the closest to total  extinction and stage one being the closest to dynamic survival
• Hinton's (1994) "Language Apprentice" Model
• "Language Nests"
• Stage eight languages are on the verge of extinction. Speakers need to be recorded  using media that is not subject to degradation over time, such as VHS  videotapes are, and through written transcripts using phonetic alphabets that catch  the nuances of the language's sound system.
• Indiana University Model described in  this volume that utilizes computer-assisted  instruction to make up for the lack of speakers.
• week-long retreats where  participants voluntarily pledge to use no English.
• Historically, school-based second language teaching has not led  to widespread "communicative competency"
• primary emphasis on  communication, not grammar
• Processing content of high interest to the learner
• Using  context that is real or at least realistic
• comprehension before completion
• emphasizing speaking over speaking correctly
• Correcting students through modeling.
• According to Fishman, moving a severely endangered language  from stage 8 to stage 5 is the minimal prerequisite for keeping it alive, and this effort does not require the dominant English-speaking  group's cooperation.
• This has been accomplished in principle through the rhetoric  of the Native American Languages Act of 1990 and policy statements passed by  some tribes in the United States. However, making the rhetoric a reality is  another issue, and efforts for real change can bring right wing political reactions.
• Stages four through one involve giving the minority language  a legal status, including minority language use in schools, workplaces, and government.

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• video has been shown to result in a significantly higher rate of acquisition than mere still image audio accompaniments.

• Susan Penfield, of the UA department of English has devoted more than 30 years of her professional life to working with endangered languages. More recently, she has been the principle investigator in a project funded since January 2003 by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation to train tribal members in the use of selected technologies that support language revitalization.
• While the preservation of native languages ultimately rests with the members of the tribes themselves, Penfield and a group of specialists from the UA have initiated a project to train tribal members from the CRIT communities in the use of computer software and other technologies to help tribal members in this task.
• As part of the project, six fluent speakers of Mohave and Chemehuevi learned how to record, preserve and digitally manipulate samples of their language with the help of special software installed on the laptops purchased with the grant money.
• One of the first sessions was on the use PowerPoint and Audacity software to create language lessons. Pictures from coloring books of Mohave and Chemehuevi were scanned and transformed into electronic images which were later combined with sound files created by the participants with the help of Audacity. These skills and language lessons encouraged the native speakers to learn additional computer skills and to use more complex software such as MaxAuthor, used for rarely taught languages and the MOO developed at the UA for multi-user conference space accessed through the Internet.

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• The game, called RezWorld, is billed as the first fully immersive 3-D interactive video game that can help young Indians learn to speak their own languages via a unique speech recognition component.
• Much like the popular mainstream Sims virtual-world computer games, the high-tech product allows players to interact with “intelligent virtual humans” that recognize players’ gestures and social behavior as they navigate their own Indian-looking characters through the game.
• But beyond the Sims-like experience, players must also interact with virtual characters by talking into a microphone so that the characters can respond and provide cultural tidbits to help human players proceed through levels of the game - all in a Native tongue. The words the characters speak can also be displayed on the screen in English as an aid to players.
• RezWorld is pre-programmed with introductory lesson plans that teach players basic pronunciation’s grammar and sentence structure. The lessons are meant to help players improve their language proficiency so they can complete increasingly rigorous challenges as the game progresses.
• Already, third-party academic scientists and researchers have found that RezWorld promotes positive learning results. Plus, many users rated the game as more effective than traditional computer language courses.
• the game is completely customizable in terms of language, culture and landscapes. The faces of the virtual members can even be modified to look like individual tribal members. And the locations portrayed in the game can be modified to look like real tribal buildings or landmarks.

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• The most ambitious effort in this regard is the creation of the Leokï (Powerful Voice) Bulletin Board System, believed to be one of the first BBS's in the world entirely in an indigenous language
• Leokï was created in 1995 by the Hale Kuamo�o Hawaiian language curriculum office at the University of Hawai�i at Hilo. Its purpose is to provide online support for Hawaiian language use in the immersion schools and the broader community. Among the other features of Leokï (which will be discussed below) is a section called Noi�i Nowelo (Search for Knowledge), where traditional Hawaiian stories and songs are published, as well as 19th century newspaper articles.
• Presently, Hawaiian immersion schools often adapt English-language textbooks via an elaborate translate-and-paste operation: the Hawaiian-language translations are photocopied and then pasted page-by-page over the English language of each individual textbook.
• Since newly-developed terms are not found in published dictionaries, a searchable bilingual dictionary of new vocabulary has been made available on the Hale Kuamo�o web site and is being developed for Leokï as well.
• According to Joshua Fishman (1991), the key to success in language revitalization is to achieve 'the intergenerational and demographically concentrated home-family-neighborhood: the basis of mother tongue transmission'
• the communication features?an e-mail system and a synchronous chat line?of Leokï are its most popular features, and are in fact the central reason the BBS was created.
• the children are working in long-distance collaboration
• Native Hawaiians, who for the most part face difficult social and economic conditions (Takenaka, 1995), have strong pragmatic pressures to devote their energies toward achieving their goals in English, rather than in Hawaiian. In this situation, Hawaiian educators have viewed developing a Hawaiian presence online as essential toward the effort to bring Hawaiian forward.
• It's like a double advantage for us, we're learning how to use new tools, like new technology and new tools, at the same time we're doing it in Hawaiian language, and so we get to learn two things at once. We learn new technology, and implementing it with Hawaiian language, which I think is really, really good. It looks almost as if it's a thing of the future for Hawaiian, because if you think about it, maybe there's [only] a few Hawaiian language papers. But instead of maybe having a Hawaiian language newspaper, you have something that might be just a little bit better, like the World Wide Web.
• the substantive (also called determinist, see Ebersole, 1995) view, argues that 'technology constitutes a new type of cultural system that restructures the entire social world as an object of control'
• the instrumental (or neutralist, see Ebersole, 1995) view, considers technology to be devoid of any particular content or values and thus 'indifferent to the variety of ends it can be employed to achieve'
• In this view, it is not technology per se which creates problems or solutions, but rather how technologies are put to use.
• the critical theory of technology. Feenberg views technology as neither completely deterministic nor as completely neutral, but rather 'ambivalent' (p. 14). The ambivalence of technology is distinguished from neutrality 'by the role it attributes to value in the design, not merely the use, of technical systems' (p. 14, emphasis added). Yet the values inherent in particular technologies do not mean that their impact is pre-determined; technology is 'not a destiny but a scene of struggle'
• 'machines require a social organization to become technologies'
• What must be evaluated then, for its neutrality or non-neutrality, is not merely the bytes and bits of the Internet but rather its social organization.
• As Castells (1996) points out, the Internet is both the most democratic and the least democratic of all mass media
• Hawaiian diacritical marks are not handled by ASCII
• Roy Bowers (1988), in his book on the cultural non-neutrality of educational computing, warned that non-Western cultures are threatened not by lack of access to computers, but rather by access, since the new forms of knowledge they encounter may often lead to unanticipated consequences
• the writings of Bowers and other media critics (e.g., Postman, 1993) make it clear that they believe the entire computer culture, which the Internet has only accelerated, represents a threat to traditional ways of life.
• the community has seized on aspects of the Internet which they believe are most compatible with their own traditional patterns of communication and knowledge. These involve (a) the importance of social networks, and (b) interactive, multimedia learning.
• Hawaiian educators have emphasized the social and collaborative aspects of the Internet
• all the Internet projects that I observed in Hawaiian language classes placed a strong emphasis on integration of different media
• Working in an online environment provided students an excellent opportunity to explore and invest in their cultural identity by discussing issues of Hawaiian culture with other students near and far, and by publishing their own work related to Hawaiian life online for others to share. A number of students who went through this process came out with a stronger sense of being Hawaiian and a deeper commitment to the language and culture
• There is growing recognition that identity is a central issue not only in language revitalization but in the broader learning and use of second languages (e.g., Peirce, 1993, 1995). Educators would do well to consider the potential role of the Internet in facilitating students' investment in social identities that involve expanded use of and expertise in second languages.
• In my view, the work of Hawaiians represents an excellent model of a group of people working to positively amplify existing cultural practices in an online environment. I believe their achievements include some important lessons that may be beneficial for language educators working with a variety of culturally and linguistically diverse learners.

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• • here