Jared Chapman and Dr. Dallin Oaks, English

Introduction

For nearly fifty years, Fiji has been the only major South Pacific LDS mission without its own Missionary Training Center (MTC) language program. For this reason, missionaries have gone without language skills and their ability to do missionary work was limited. Today, the MTC has a fledgling program that struggles to teach its missionaries the language. The program=s major challenge was the lack of adequate language lesson materials. As a return missionary from Fiji and founder of its MTC language training program, I have a strong love for the people and an intense interest in improving the instructional methods used to teach missionaries Fijian. The purpose of this project was to research the Fijian language and report my results in the form of grammar lessons. These lessons fill a gap in current grammar instruction materials, specifically materials for missionaries going to the Fijian Islands.

Current Teaching Materials were Inadequate

One major difficulty in learning Fijian has been limited resources for grammar instruction. Only two noteworthy works attempt to teach the Fijian language. One is Spoken Fijian by Albert Shutz and the other is A Fijian Grammar by B.G. Milner.

Spoken Fijian strives to teach inductively by including many grammar examples. However, it falls short of being an effective tool because Shutz has omitted nearly all grammar explanations. In addition, the instruction system is incomplete because the book=s supplementary audio tapes were lost during shipment to a production company. Finally, the book does not give enough detail to adequately prepare the missionaries. For these reasons it has been abandoned by the MTC.

Fijian Grammar, on the other hand, is designed mainly as a resource for linguistic understanding. It lists many rules and provides brief grammar examples. However, it is unsuited for classroom teaching. Milner has not organized his book in a logical learning order. Also, it is encumbered with complicated detail and complex terminology and it provides only limited practice exercises. These factors make language acquisition difficult for young missionaries.

Because of the inadequacies of the only available lesson materials, Brother Steven Graham of the MTC asked me as a volunteer to produce a Fijian grammar manual with the understanding the MTC will print it and I will retain the copy rights.

Poor Teaching Materials Negatively Affect Missionary Training and Work Because teaching materials for Fijian grammar were lacking, teachers have been forced to teach Afrom the hip.@ Teaching without organized materials resulted in the following problems:

• Because teachers had never been taught the language in a formal setting, they struggled to decipher technical grammar explanations and describe the grammar accurately.
• Some grammar principles were not taught because they are either undocumented or teachers assumed that another had already taught them.
• Many grammar principles are over taught because teachers repeat each other=s work.
• Each newly hired teacher wastes time rediscovering important grammar rules.
• Teachers lose credibility as they seem unprepared to answer missionaries= questions.

Poor language preparation causes the following problems for missionaries in the field:

• The teaching involvement of expatriate missionaries who cannot speak Fijian has been almost nonexistent. They cannot fully participate in most discussions and are often encouraged to sit back and relax while their native companion does all the teaching. As a result, they accomplish less and the focus of many expatriates is weakened. This reduces the overall spirit of the mission.
• Finally, effective relationships with church members, companions, and investigators are difficult without language skills. Understanding the idiosyncracies of people who think in a foreign language is hard for most missionaries. Missionaries often give up trying and never build positive relationships.

I Researched the Fijian Language
My research centered in two areas:

• Research to discover and generate a comprehensive list of grammar principles.
• Research to discover and generate effective explanations of grammar principles.

I drew the information for my project from the following sources:

• Six Fijian linguistic texts, A Fijian Grammar by B.G. Milner, A New Fijian Dictionary by A. Capell, Fijian Phrasebook by Paul Geraghty, Monolingual Dictionary by Paul Geraghty, Spoken Fijian and The Fijian Language by Albert J. Schütz.
• Ethnographic research in Fiji and with natives living in the BYU area.
• Formative research and evaluation with those learning and teaching Fijian in the MTC.
• Discussions with the translation department of the Church in Fiji and Paul Geraghty, a linguist appointed by the Fijian government to promote the use of the Fijian language and commissioned to create the first monolingual Fijian dictionary.
• My own personal experience and insight into learning, teaching, and speaking Fijian.
• Comparative research with English linguistic principles found in An Introductory English Grammar by Stageberg. I will also refer to various other English grammar books.
• Direction from Dr. Oaks and other Professors in the Linguistics department as needed.

My Findings Are Compiled in a Grammar Lesson Manual

The findings of my research are reported in the form of a series of 31 lesson outlines. The outlines have been organized in a logical learning order. They include a simple but accurate grammar explanation, a board display, examples, and drills that a teacher can use while teaching the class. The outlines will also include grammar examples, chosen from the Fijian translations of the Missionary Discussions and the Book of Mormon, and descriptions of creative activities that utilize the grammar principles being taught.

Further Work

Research in learning items for the Fijian language indicate that at least eighteen more lessons need to be written. In addition, sections including instructions to the teacher, a preface to the grammar book, a brief glossary of technical terms, and a glossary of common vocabulary words needs to be written and added to the book.