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

APLING 611, Spring 2012. — 13 p.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.