Welcome back :)

I hope you all had a wonderful and restful break. I will be putting out some midterms over today and tomorrow - these are formative - meant to give you an idea of where you are right now :)

As we begin to work with the Grescyzk text we will be exploring some other features of language learning. I am particularly intrigued with the idea of us using BYKI files to go with the Grescyzk text. I will also be posting very short UM Connect sessions each week and posing some topics of interest that may be useful discussion fodder for your blogs ☺. It will be nice to get to work with some actual language and I can’t say enough about how I value our course text.

I truly hope the speech work is going okay for everyone. It really is a long term cumulative kind of project. I would ask everyone if they could try to upload a “draft” version of the speech – at least the parts you want to present – in Moodle by week’s end. And then maybe do the Moodle recording of the speech by the week after that? I think as long as we do these things incrementally it will be okay for people to preset their speeches next session. The key will be to practice them enough. I know the last Cohort found it helpful to practice it with each other using a phone calling tree, and with members of their family. Would the phone calling tree work for this group? Maybe we could make it optional. It really did get people practicing and sharing well in advance of our meeting, and people were then not so shy to present as they had already shared their speech with many in the class. I will create a WIKI in Moodle if people want to share their numbers, and maybe assign some calling tree combinations after that? I think it would be really helpful, and it is fun as well ☺

I think all in all people seemed to have gotten the big ideas so far: everyone has an equal stake and responsibility in community language learning (whether as a first language speaker or second language learner); there are many different ways that languages are learned, and there are many different ways that languages can be taught. We have explored some of these in our discussions in Moodle and in the blogs. Thank you all for for the unique and valuable contributions that have been individually made to the greater collective discussion ☺.


One thing I did want to note just a little further include my early comments on errors in speech. It really was said just to let people know that it is okay to make errors in speech – that it is natural and that it happens all the time. The difference I suppose between a fluent speaker and a language learner is that they could intuitively identify the errors, or suggest better speech forms (such as word, ending, or sentence order). Errors in speech are also characteristic of everyday speech – such as a conversation between people. If any of you have ever been interviewed in English and seen a written transcript (or even better listened to the tape) you were in all likelihood a little horrified. Not just because we tend to sound a different on tape, we can also hear (or see) a lot of unflattering speech tendencies we all have. Ie.) pausing, saying ‘okay” or ‘um’ way too much, stuttering, repeating words, making false starts to words, or occasionally staying something which is grammatically incorrect.
Here is an example from an English interview:

Interviewer: So you can u tell me about your experience with Early Childhood Education programming?

Interviewee: Sure can. I guess I have, I mean, um, I have been working er helping with um, these kinds of programs for a darn long time, over about 30 years when I was working at the stupid Department store ad, um, got, uh, laid-off in that, uh, uh, whatchamacallit, recession we had last time. The thing with the assistants or the, sorry, paraprofessionals, is that don’t believe it’s fair she is suppose to have to look after the supervision and instruction too most of the time as they are busy and, uh, don’t have any breaks, and, well, don’t get the respect that a teacher who is certificated has.

Neither the interviewer nor the interviewee heard any mistakes in the interviewee’s response during this interview. Only after whe the interview was written did they stand out. Our language skills filter through these errors and we hear the informational message only.


Here is an example from a 30 minute Ojibwe language interview I did last week. In going over the transcripts there were a lot of little minute errors – most of which either he or I self-corrected – but there were a lot of false-starts and last minute changes we were making as we were talking:

Brian: Gidebwe

Maajiigwaneyaash: Dibishko iwe nake gaa-ateg iwe mazinaabikiwebini… mazinaabikiwebinigan awashime go, awashime go da-ozhichigaade.


Brian: Wa! Mii ganabaj naasaab gaa-kanawaabandamaan igo geniin iwidi. Miigwech, gidebwe sa aapiji, mii ganabaj i'iw iskwaach. Nashke dash, gemaa gaye niizh giishpin giwii-tazhindaman, gwii-tazhindaan, gii-mikwendaman iw apii gaa-kashki'ewiziyan dibishko go 'success' gaa-ayaaman… gemaa gaye inakeyaa aanigodinong gaa-sanagendaman ezhichigeyan.

Maajiigwaneyaash:Ingoding igo aapiji gii-naanaagadawendaman iwe. Amanji igo naa ji-gikendamogwen abinoojiinyag, abinoojiinh, amanji igo naa ji-nisidotawigwen gegoo gaa-kagwe-gikinoo'amawag apane go gegoo wii-izhichigeyaan imaa gii-kikinoo'amaageyaan biinjayi'ii ayi’iing ayi’iing gikinoo'amaadiiwigamigong.





Brian: You so speak the truth there!

Maajiigwaneyaash: Like the way that the word for comput-, computer was put in place more, more need to be created.

Brian: ! I think I saw things happening there in a similar way. Thank you for sharing your experience so openly, this is about the last one. Or perhaps there are two, but if you could be talking about a time,if you could talk about a time, when you remember having success.....or about the times when you may have found yourself struggling with the work you were doing.

Maajiigwaneyaash: At one time I really thought about this. I was not sure if a children, a child was really learning anything, or if they were really understanding me the way that I was trying to teach them, the way that I was going about my instructional practice there in that place, that place, the school.


Please note that these were each taken from larger speech events between two people who were happy and willing participants. The odds are that if you hear a speaker praying or giving a planned Ojibwe lesson then there will be few if any errors. We all have different ‘registers’ of speech, from casual to highly formal. The highly formal discourse we use for instruction or prayer has few errors compared to the talk we have with a friend on a road trip or over coffee. But still, speakers are sensitive to error and try not to make them. You hear that whenever dear Dorthy does her invocations she asks forgiveness “giishpin wanigiizhweyaan” (“if I should make an error in speech”) …this despite being one of the most powerful and strong (and yes, error free) invocation givers I have ever met. Humility - dabasendizowin/ dabasendindizowin – is a wonderful and thing. As important as any of those other values in language revitalization that we talked about in our very first face to face session together.