Going moose-hunting in Middle Chulym: a thematic unit in an endangered language

13 Pages·0.132 MB·Chulym-English

by  Taylor-Adams Allison.

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Going Moose-Hunting in Middle Chulym: A Thematic Unit in an Endangered Language

Allison Taylor-Adams, APLING 611 Spring 2012

Abstract:
This thematic unit explores the potential for and possible limitations of implementing the
pedagogical approach known as Communicative Language Teaching in an endangered language
community. Members of such communities are often deeply aware of what stands to be lost if
their languages die, and many are determined to preserve and revitalize the languages in a
number of different ways, including by teaching them to their children. Taking as an example
the ethnic community living in central Siberia known as the Chulym, this project presents a
prospective model for teaching such a language to such a classroom of learners. This is a two
week long unit based on one of the few known texts in Middle Chulym. The unit consists of a
reading sequence of the text and a grammar sequence focusing on a particular narrative structure
displayed in this text. This thematic unit will show that some of the techniques of CLT are quite
promising for endangered language revitalization, but this project will also note some of the
limitations of implementing CLT fully and will stress the need for additional materials and
techniques to support the Chulym’s effort to preserve and teach their language.
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Going Moose-Hunting in Middle Chulym: A Thematic Unit in an Endangered Language
It is estimated that fully half of the world’s extant 7,000 languages are endangered or on the
brink of certain extinction (Grenoble & Whaley, 2006). These languages belong to small
communities whose entire cultures are threatened, either passively or actively, by the forces of
strong national government policies, economic pressures brought on by globalization, and
environmental degradation leading to homeland loss. Within these language communities live
citizens concerned for the well-being of their ancestral tongues, language activists who
understand the depth and breadth of loss they will suffer if the language dies completely. As one
activist asserts, “I believe in reviving the language again, and I’ll try to do my best to revive the
language, in any possible way at all” (Raward, 2010).
Many communities have developed school-based language curricula in an attempt to pass on the
language to potential young speakers. Strong language planning policies, such as those
implemented for the revival of Irish, Welsh, or Hawaiian, have made impressive progress in
reversing the trend of extinction in those communities (Hinton & Hale, 2001). These, however,
are the luckier groups, blessed with relatively large populations, government funding and
resources, a dedicated cadre of highly-trained, so-called “middle generation” native speakers,
and large collections of formal spoken and written material and realia. Ideally, pedagogical
materials and curricular design would be produced by the community itself, and indeed
Communicative Language Teaching seems to rely on the ready availability of an abundance of
authentic texts. However, UNESCO “sees this as an unreasonable expectation of grassroots
workers who should, instead, be encouraged to understand the materials so as to be able to adapt
them to meet local needs rather than producing them all from scratch” (Grenoble & Whaley,
2006, p. 188). What is a community that lacks a critical mass of teachers, native speakers, and
pedagogical materials to do? What kind of curricular practices can best serve them?
In this Thematic Unit I would like to explore how the approach of Communicative Language
Teaching can be implemented in such communities, and also to examine the kind of preparatory
documentary work that will be necessary to implement such an approach fully. I will use as my
example a critically endangered language known as Middle Chulym. Though I do not speak this
language and have never had contact with this community, I will be able to use primary research
documents and recent field notes in my investigation.
I. Introduction
Intended Audience

The Chulym people number about 400, and reside in a handful of villages along the Chulym
River in the Tomsk region of central Siberia (Anderson & Harrison, 2003). After a century of
Soviet pressure and lack of official status, their ancestral language, known as Middle Chulym, is
today classified as moribund. Recent fieldwork was unable to locate a single speaker of Middle
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Chulym under the age of 30 (ibid). However, the community council has expressed a desire to
see the language revived, and residents of the villages have partnered with visiting linguists to
produce video, audio, and text-based documentation, as well as collaboratively creating a
community-produced children’s book and a language primer. Middle Chulym has never
officially been written down, but the youngest fluent speaker, a man named Vasilij Mikhailovich
Gabov, has developed an orthography based on Cyrillic that has been judged useful for
developing Middle Chulym literacy.
This thematic unit is intended for a hypothetical language classroom made up of elementary- and
secondary-age students. Some of these students will have conversational access to a fluent
Chulym speaker in the home (i.e. a grandparent); others will have little or no contact with a
native speaker, due to the advanced age and rapid decline of the available speaker community.
Due to the small population of ethnic Chulym, the number of students in this class will be
correspondingly few. The students will have learned how to read using Mr. Gabov’s
orthography and will have learned some basic words in Chulym, but otherwise are relative
novices. This class will expose the students to what little formal Chulym materials are available,
as well as guest lectures by native speakers as available.
Theme and materials
The title of this unit will be “Going Moose-Hunting.” The authentic document used will be a
narrative provided by Mr. Gabov, published under the title “Shooting a Moose” (Anderson and
Harrison, 2003). This text was selected as it is currently one of only three authentic texts in the
Chulym language, not including the children’s book and the primer, both of which were
simplified for classroom/beginning speaker use.

The theme was selected for three reasons: 1) the availability of authentic material; 2) the
modern-day applicability of the theme - the villages in which the ethnic Chulym live are beset by
poverty and subsist on small-scale farming, hunting, and fishing for food; and 3) the connection
to cultural traditions – the Chulym maintain distinctive traditions of fishing and hunting
techniques, and speakers are still available who can discuss traditional technologies such as
moose-hunting, canoe building, and manufacturing of fishing lures, in fluent Middle Chulym
(ibid.)
Design rationale and skills targeted
In addition to theme-specific vocabulary, the narrative used for this unit will help students learn
and practice peculiarities of the Chulym narrative structure. At the end of the unit, students
should be able to describe a hunting or fishing expedition taken by an older relative in the past,
and describe an expedition or adventure they have had themselves.

Though this work will be done in Russia in a heritage language learning context, the skills
targeted can be stated in terms of the American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages’
National Standards for Foreign Language Education (Smith, 1999). Students will engage with
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authentic text and learn information about traditional hunting and fishing practices (Standard 2.1)
and will understand how the Chulym language conveys information about these unique traditions
(Standard 3.2). In learning more about Chulym tradition, they will be able to compare their own
cultural practices with those of the majority (i.e. Russian) culture of their nation (Standard 4.2).
Students will use Chulym for in-class activities as well as in contact with native speakers in the
community (Standard 5.1), and through cultivating a deeper understanding of their heritage and
their language, as well as forging stronger connections across generations, will develop an even
stronger desire to become lifelong learners and Chulym speakers (Standard 5.2).
II. Literacy, CLT, and Authentic Texts
Local literacy in language revitalization
Among the six postulates that linguist David Crystal proposes regarding language revitalization
and maintenance is the statement “An endangered language will progress if its speakers can write
their language down” (Crystal, 2000, p. 138). Akira Yamamoto identifies “the creation of
language materials that are easy to use” and “the development of written literature, both
traditional and new” (quoted in Crystal, 2000, p. 144) among his nine factors for maintenance
and promotion of small languages. Literacy in a minority language enhances the language’s
prestige, offers opportunities for engagement with language in a meaningful way, and balances
the educational parity of linguistic majority and minority students (Grenoble & Whaley, 2006,
pp. 116-117)
Communicative Language Teaching and authentic texts
These arguments in favor of local literacy dovetail nicely with the emphasis on authentic texts in
Communicative Language Teaching. Authentic texts in the endangered language offer “a point
of connection with the past, which is a critical feature of language revitalization” (Grenoble &
Whaley, 2006, p. 121) while at the same time providing genuine input for language acquisition
(Lee & VanPatten, 2003, pp. 227-228). Students in these language communities are in a
uniquely optimal position to use schemata to scaffold language comprehension and learning. For
example, the text I have chosen in Middle Chulym tells the story of going moose-hunting, and is
structured like a traditional oral narrative. Chulym students will therefore be able to use
structural schemata, as they are familiar with the narrative structure, as well as content schemata,
as most Chulym families subsist on such activities as hunting for food (Anderson & Harrison,
2003, p. 1). Lee & VanPatten note that “exploring the communicative function of a text can also
be thought of as personalizing its content” (2003, p. 238, emphasis original); if this is the case,
language learners in endangered language communities have almost certainly already
accomplished this function of CLT, as the texts available in their language directly relate to their
specific sociocultural circumstances and ancestral background.
That being said, Communicative Language Teaching is incompatible in many ways with the
current linguistic situation of communities like the Middle Chulym. The “key considerations in
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selecting materials for L2 readers” proposed by Swaffar, Arens, and Byrnes, such as “select texts
with greater structural organization,” “select texts that have little extraneous prose,” and “select
texts of appropriate length” (quoted in Lee & VanPatten, 2003, p. 225) presupposes a large and
various corpus of texts to select from. Lee & VanPatten’s notion of Guided Interaction (ibid, p.
233) presupposes the existence of a wide variety of texts of different lengths and densities, as
well as fluent teachers to guide learners through those texts. Even the idea of “Designing a
Standards-Based Thematic Unit” (Smith, 1999) assumes a large enough corpus of authentic
target language materials to allow a theme to be fully and richly developed.
Middle Chulym has only very recently begun to be written down. The language’s youngest
fluent speaker, a 60-year-old man by the name of Vasilij Mikhailovich Gabov, developed an
orthography based on the Cyrillic alphabet, which makes most sense for a community that
primarily and almost exclusively speaks and reads Russian. As a consequence of its very new
literacy, its very limited number of fluent speakers, and the very depressed economic
circumstances of its ethnic population, the Middle Chulym language lacks a corpus to support
the techniques of CLT. Indeed, only three written texts have ever been published, and they are
all very short narratives (Anderson & Harrison, 2003, p. 12).1 In addition, as noted above, there
is a dearth of fluent speakers, and most of them are of considerably advanced age; the “middle
generation” who would normally make up a teaching corps has no competencies in the language.
Therefore Middle Chulym lacks both a selection of sophisticated authentic texts and a fluent
speaker to teach such texts in a communicative way.
However, I do not wish to insist that CLT is the only possible way to effectively teach a
language, and that therefore Middle Chulym is a lost cause. Vasya Gabov himself, despite the
pessimism of the field linguists working to document his language, argues that “it is going to be
very difficult, but I think it’s still possible to correct the situation” (quoted in Harrison, 2007, p.
154). As long as members of the speaker community are both willing and determined to revive
their language, I think it is our duty as linguistic professionals to provide as much logistical
support as we can and to actively investigate the best ways to provide that support. Therefore I
will take from CLT what can be applied to Middle Chulym, while acknowledging there will be a
mismatch in many circumstances.
III. A Moose-hunting Narrative in Middle Chulym: A Reading Sequence
Shooting a Moose
Артян туруп, кунгарагы шикпанча
мян мылтыгын ап чердюпскем кольге
кольдя мен камям полган
камя олуруп, амьда парыдым,
анды корьям алыч суудун шиктыр,

1 An ABC book and a primer in the language have also been produced, but these do not fall within the category of
“authentic texts” as defined by CLT.
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мян камезын кырга пурнуп, мылтыгын ап
чакшилын кёзюмь, тынлегыбжабалгам мен,
алыч ойдашпаган мян пир канза тартап,
анзондын пичаг ап аны союп,
эедын камезимге сап апьке чанпаган.
Мены апьта апьчим угланеры саганнар.

English translation:
I got up in the morning before the sun rose
Took my gun and set off for the lake.
My boat was at the lake.
I sat in my boat and set off.
Then I look: a moose is coming out of the water.
I landed the boat on the bank,
Took my gun and aimed well, then made it go boom!
The moose fell over.
I smoked one pipe (of tobacco).
Then I took out my knife, skinned it,
Put its meat in my boat and returned home.
My wife and children were waiting for me at home.
(text and translation taken from Anderson & Harrison, 2003, pp. 8-10)
For this sequence, I will hypothesize a classroom teacher who has worked to become competent,
though is still not fluent, in Middle Chulym. The teacher will have access to a dictionary of
Middle Chulym to be able to provide words and phrases as requested by students to supplement
their current knowledge. I will assume an ideal situation in which the teacher is able to conduct
the sequence almost exclusively in Middle Chulym, though as noted above, there are many
reasons to believe this is not feasible. I also assume that this class will be mixed in terms of age
and proficiency levels, considering the small size of the language population.

A. Preparation: Session 1, approximately 60 minutes

In order to prime students’ content schemata and working vocabulary, the classroom teacher will
start the lesson by presenting images, either pictures or photographs, of some of the key
vocabulary and concepts in the text and ask students to provide the word in Middle Chulym.
Images should include words such as “boat,” “water,” “moose,” “gun,” “knife,” and “home”;
concepts that could be illustrated could include “set off,” “sat in,” “smoked a pipe,” “returned
home,” and “wife and children.” The image collection should also include a wide selection of
related words and phrases. For phrases that include verbs, it is not necessary for the students to
provide the full phrase or correct verbal form; what is important is activating the background
knowledge and preparing the students to comprehend the story.
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After performing this task for half an hour, the teacher will ask the students to write down, in
Middle Chulym, some ways that they know of to get food. After a few minutes of silent
individual writing, the teacher will ask the students to share their ideas with the class, and to
react to their classmates’ ideas. Together the class will decide on the five best ways to get food,
and the most proficient students will record these in a class notebook. Less proficient students
will be encouraged by the teacher to select images from the collection used earlier to
demonstrate these methods.
The last ten minutes of classes should be reserved for a brief preparation of the text. The teacher
will distribute copies of the text to the students. The students will then be asked to scan the text
and circle or highlight any of the words or phrases they remember from this session.
B. Guided Interaction: Session 2, approximately 60 minutes
The teacher instructs the students to read the text (she might provide fresh, unmarked copies if
she sees fit.) Students might ask what a certain word or phrase means; the teacher should
respond, if possible, by using an image from the image collection or demonstrating in some other
way, instead of translating into Russian. After the students have had a chance to read and try to
comprehend the text, the teacher will ask the students to write a one-sentence summary of the
story. The whole class will then discuss their summaries together. The teacher should
encourage the students to discuss only in Chulym and to use examples from the text to defend or
explain their summaries.
The last ten minutes of class should be set aside for students to read and respond to a worksheet
developed by the teacher. The worksheet should include a list of statements such as
• The narrator’s children went hunting with him.
• The narrator smoked a pipe in his boat.
• The narrator is a good marksman.
• The knife was very sharp.
• The narrator is a patient man.
• The narrator and his family will have a big dinner.
Students must select the statements that are true. These statements contain a mixture of direct
comprehension checks as well as judgments that students must make based on their
understanding of the story. This ensures both linguistic comprehension and higher-order
thinking.
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C. Assimilation: Session 3 & 4, approximately 90 minutes total
The teacher will begin the class by asking the students to read the story again. Then she will ask
the class to brainstorm together to develop a timeline of events that happened in the story. The
timeline will be written up on the chalkboard by one of the students.
After the students agree on the timeline, each point on the timeline will be assigned to a student
to illustrate. Students will have access to drawing and coloring materials to complete their panel
for what will become a group storyboard. Once the panels are complete, the teacher erases the
timeline from the board and asks the students to tape up their panels in the correct order on the
board. She will then ask students to describe what is happening in one of the panels that a
classmate drew. These activities should take up all of Session 3.
In Session 4, the teacher will ask the students to come up with questions they would like to ask
the narrator to get more information about his moose-hunting expedition. Each student should
come up with several questions. After a few minutes of individual brainstorming, the teacher
will ask students to share some of their questions with the class. Students should be encouraged
to write down questions that their classmates came up with that seem particularly useful and
might get the most information. This activity will take up the first part of Session 4.
D. Personalizing: Sessions 4 and 5- approximately 90 minutes
During the last part of Session 4, the teacher will ask the students to use the last three activities in
reverse (i.e. interview questions, illustrated storyboard, timeline) to write a new version of this
narrative. In pairs, students will interview each other about an expedition, either to find food or
just a fun adventure, which they have taken. They will then plan a storyboard and a timeline of
their partner’s story. It is possible that there will not be enough time in this session to fully
illustrate the storyboard, but this is just practice.
In Session 5, the class will host some guests. The guests will all be fluent Chulym speakers, as
many as are available and able to attend. The teacher will ask the students to repeat the process
they used with their classmates to interview a native speaker about an expedition they once took,
and then develop an illustrated storyboard and timeline for this story. The class should end with
the students producing a written text of these new stories. The guests should be encouraged to
collaborate on these stories as much as they like.
III. Discourse Reference in Middle Chulym: A Grammar Sequence
The sequence will take place the week following the reading sequence previously discussed.
The text used for that sequence was a narrative with a structure unique to Chulym. Students will
find value in developing a solid comprehension of and facility with particular forms that are used
in Chulym narrative structure.
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One of the unique forms observed in this type of structure is a “switch reference system,” in
which “the converb –p…denote[s] that multiple verbs in a sequence have the same subject”
(Anderson and Harrison, 2003, pg. 249). This means that it is common for a long sequence of
verbs ending in –p followed by a single inflected verb, all referring to the same subject, to be
used in the particular Middle Chulym narrative style (ibid.)
An example of this is seen in the following excerpt from the text used for the reading sequence:
мян пир канза тартап,
анзондын пичаг ап аны союп,
эедын камезимге сап апьке чанпаган.

I smoked-CV one pipe (of tobacco).
Then I took-CV out my knife, skinned-CV it,
Put-CV its meat in my boat and returned home.

The verbs in bold are all performed by the same subject, i.e. the narrator. The sequence displays
the converb –p (-п in the native orthography) except for the final verb which wraps up the series.
PACE Grammar Sequence
A. Presentation (Session 1, approximately 30 minutes)
This structure will have already been presented in the reading sequence. To review, the
instructor will ask the students to stand up and act out the narrative. In this Total Physical
Response-type activity, she will read through the narrative line-by-line and the students will
pantomime the action. This will prime the students to think of the story as a sequence of events,
with a single main subject.
B. Attention (Sessions 1, 2, and 3, approximately 90 minutes total plus crafting time)
After students have acted out the story, the instructor will select sample sentences and ask the
students who was the subject. After reviewing this text, the instructor will lead students in
Structured Input Activity #1.
Structured input activity #1: Who Did It?
The instructor will say she is going to tell them a story about two friends, Dima and Kolya. She
will tell them parts of the story, and they must decide who the subject of each action was. Since
both Dima and Kolya are boys, she can use the masculine personal pronoun for all of her
examples, thereby ensuring that learners cannot rely on the first noun to give them the meaning
of the sentence (Lee & VanPatten, 2003). An example given in English might look like this:
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a. Dima and Kolya went for a walk. Dima decided to go to the river. He said-CV goodbye to his
friend. He turned-CV to the right. He walked-CV down the hill. He jumped in the river to
swim.
b. Kolya came down to the river and said hello to his friend. He said no CV he liked to swim.
He looked no CV to see if there were any fish.
In example a., the Chulym switch reference system encodes the meaning that Dima was the one
who performed all of the actions in the series. In example b., the lack of the converb means that
Kolya performed the first action, Dima the second, and Kolya the third.
The instructor will give examples in blocks like this, and then will repeat each sentence
individually and ask students to write down the subject of each one.
Structured input activity #2: Who is better?
At the beginning of session 2, the instructor says she is going to tell the students about two girls
she knows, Masha and Katya. She instructs them to listen to her tell about what they did
yesterday, and to tell her who was better at doing certain things. An example in English:
a. Masha and Katya wanted to make some bread. Masha asked her friend for the flour. She no
CV spilled the flour on the floor. She no CV went to look for some more flour. She found no CV
some salt and decided to use that instead.
b. Katya and Masha went to the river. Masha wanted to go swimming with her friend. She
jumped-CV in at the deepest part. She hit-CV her knee on a rock. She started-CV choking on
the water. She called-CV for help.
After she has read each example in its entirety, she will ask students to write down their answer
to her questions. For example a., her question is “Who is better at cooking?” (answer: Masha,
since Katya was the one who spilled the flour and decided to use salt instead!). For example b.,
her question is “Who is better at swimming?” (answer: Katya, since Masha almost drowned!)
This activity should take half of session 2.
Crafting activity
The last half of session 2 should be dedicated to a craft project that the instructor will incorporate
in her Structured Output Activity and in the Extension portion of this sequence. The instructor
will write a list in Chulym on the board of puppets and set pieces she needs for her activities,
including a moose, a bear, trees, a boat, a river, etc. Students select which piece they would like
to create and spend the rest of the class session creating them.