George Bailey and Dr. Steven Sondrup, Scandinavian Studies
Danish is an important language for many who wish to make a study of family history and genealogy. Opportunities to learn Danish are very rare, and BYU is one of only several universities in the United States that offers courses in Danish. Due to this scarce availability of Danish classes, resources for Danish teaching and learning are likewise difficult to come by. To this point in time, BYU has been using Danish for Ducklings for its first-year course. However, this textbook not only has an insufficient amount of material to cover the first year, but it is also geared towards individual users and not a classroom setting.
My role was to design a packet of material that is more easily used in a classroom and contains enough material to last through the first year of Danish. This packet includes more thorough explanations about basic principles of Danish grammar, role play situations that enable students to act out everyday experiences that would commonly be found in Denmark, and vocabulary lists to help students learn Danish words in a logical sequence. In addition, I also included a review section at the end of each lesson that tells students which grammar principles will be good to review as well as recommendations about how best to learn the language. This way, the students can learn to teach themselves. In order to cater the packet to LDS students, I created a page that gives students a basic prayer in Danish as well as a lesson that contains genealogy terms. A former student, Della Steineckert, was generous in allowing me to use a paper she had designed in order to help those who wish to research specifically their Danish genealogy. The packet has enough material for the first year of Danish classes and can be used for teaching several students.
In creating and arranging my material, I consulted with various language professors about effective language instructing. I also used a number of resources that discuss Danish grammar in depth. In May 2003, I traveled to the annual conference of SASS (Society for the Advancement of Scandinavian Studies) held in Minneapolis, Minnesota where I made connections with professors from different universities who could give me help with more complex issues in the Danish language. I would like to thank all those who assisted me in any way in the completion of the packet.
I used the first half of the packet, combined with Danish for Ducklings, to teach Danish 101 this past fall semester. Through its use, I was able to find out its strengths and weaknesses. Students frequently stated that they found the grammar section far easier to understand than grammar explanations given in Danish for Ducklings. They also thought that the recommendations for review were very useful. One shortcoming was that the packet could have used more examples of how certain grammar principles are used in Danish, and some students felt that we covered a bit too much material in each lesson. Overall, the packet was met with a lot of approval