Recently, I've mostly been writing the lessons to come, 7-10. However,
today I've been turning my eyes to the older lessons with the intent
of updating and standardizing. I've gone through lessons 1-2 and made
some heavy changes, mostly in lay-out, but also in the text.
Also added short passages about random trivia that needed
clarification. Changes were made to the exercises in lesson 1.
However, I do all the work in Word first, so that only the .doc files
in the Files section are updated. I'll have to deal with the .html a
bit later. But still, none of the changes made or revolutionary, or
anything that could discomfort you, I hope. It's all intended to
improve the course.
I and Haukur have long agreed that lesson 2 is too big. If we were
writing it from start, we'd make it much smaller, or that is, spread
its material into many lessons. In general, the lessons lack a
standard in the amount of new concepts, new forms, and new vocabulary
that they introduce; I might say, "1 lesson" is not a standardized
unit of measurement. We want to try to improve on this. Ideally, each
lesson should only focus on one major concept, or one batch of forms,
and have a standardized amount of exercises to go with it. The
principle should be, "One Lesson, One Concept".
The two of us have agreed to go through with this now. The solution is
to split up lesson 2, and perhaps some of the other lessons too
(lesson 5 is a potential candidate). Mostly we're talking about a
rearrangement of the material, towards a better organization, and
especially in the interest of the slower learners. I hope it will not
cause too much annoyance.
The outline of a new system, as I think of it, may be summarized like
this:
* The current lessons will be split up into one-concept-lessons
* Those smaller lessons will each have exercise texts (short stories)
intended to drill the new concept and its forms
* Some lessons will be a collection of miscellaneous small concepts
(that don't introduce forms), mostly usage.
* Some lessons will be "wrap-up", with a reference summary of the
grammatic forms introduced in the past lessons, a complete vocab list
for them, and an extra-large text & exercise package.
* 2-3 concept lessons + 1 mixed lesson + 1 wrap-up lesson will then
constitute one "chapter". Currently, lesson 6 is a wrap-up lesson, so
that we might think of lessons 1-6 as one chapter; but I intend to
split this chapter up a bit, at least into two chapters.
So we might have something like this, out of the material that we
already have:
~~~~~~~~~
Chapter 1
~~~~~~~~~
Lsn 1 - nominative and accusative, first strong masculine nouns
Lsn 2 - singular of personal pronouns and verb present
Lsn 4 - various usage, auxiliaries, verb imperative, word order,
irregular forms (maðr, sjá, vilja), assimilative nouns
Lsn 5 - chapter 1 wrap-up
~~~~~~~~~
Chapter 2
~~~~~~~~~
Lsn 6 - adjectives (strong masculine form)
Lsn 7 - dative case (indirect objects)
Lsn 8 - prepositions
Lsn 9 - various usage, infinitive clauses, irregular forms (dagr),
temporal accusative
Lsn 10 - chapter 2 wrap-up
Of course, under this system, each lesson wouldn't be taking people
days or weeks (as they seem to do) to finish. The texts would be
shorter, while the ratio of exercises/texts to concepts/forms would be
higher than before. People have mostly been asking for even more
exercises, to make it all sink in better.
I will of course try, as I do the changes, to keep the interests of
the students, who are using the respective lessons, in mind. I will
try to do it all step-by-step and report the changes that have been
made, as always.
You're all welcome to tell me what you think! (though my mind is
pretty much made up :þ)