John Henry Jorgensen and Dr. Cynthia Hallen, Linguistics

In the Post-Soviet era, there has been a dearth of language materials available to those wishing to learn the Armenian language. Thorough language texts are simply not available in Eastern Armenian, the official language of the Republic of Armenia. The small number of texts that exist are primarily geared toward native Russian speakers who wished to learn Armenian during the former Soviet regime.

Given this situation, I embarked on the journey of writing a first-year university level introductory text for the Armenian language. The subtitle of the project is “A Communicative Approach.” The emphasis of the text is to encourage speaking the language as much as possible by introducing the most widely used language structures to the student, and then continuing to build upon those principles. I incorporated everyday real-life conversations as introductory dialogues to each chapter. The grammar principles, vocabulary, writing and sound drills all revolved around the information that was used in the dialogues. I was able to record native utterances to aid me in the composition of the chapter dialogues. I found this to be a very effective method to encourage students to use the most native-like utterances possible.

While I was composing the text, I had the opportunity to teach an Armenian 101 course at Brigham Young University. This was an invaluable experience to refine the material presented in the chapters and to edit any forthcoming errors or inconsistencies in the first draft of the text. Student feedback also played a critical role, as they had the opportunity to offer suggestions about the text throughout the course.

One particular success of the text was the organization and mastery of grammatical concepts. Unlike traditional texts where multiple pages can be devoted to discussing grammar points, the focus of this text was to explain grammar only as it adequately explained the grammar of the dialogues. Therefore, lists of exceptions to grammatical rules were not stressed. As a result, most students performed at a superior level on the grammar portions of examinations, and had a high confidence level in the grammar that was used in the dialogues.

Another particular success of the text was repetition of acquired vocabulary at regular intervals throughout the text. Each dialogue would repeat a minimum of seventy per cent of acquired linguistic structures to provide an opportunity to review and practice the vocabulary and grammar. Class time was also spent with a daily review of the week’s grammar and vocabulary. This led to an increase in student confidence and motivation in the classroom. It also led to an increase in student participation. The more acquired words that were reviewed the greater amount of students participated in any language-based activity.

The final success of the text was its simplicity in form. I found that the dialogues that concentrated on new structures without involving unnecessary or complex vocabulary were most easily acquired by the students. As a result, I tried to create the dialogues with several instances of the new structures, so that students could practice the forms and begin to feel confident with them. Classroom based activities also revolved around these acquired structures.

In addition to the communicative methodology, I will incorporate a multimedia approach to the text. Natives will record the chapter dialogues on both cassette and compact disc. The compact disc will also be interactive so that students can practice the dialogues with a native on the computer. Grammatical drills that appear in the text will also be incorporated on the CD. This will greatly enhance the textbook marketability to businessmen and correspondence students and travelers.

The creation of the Armenian text was an invaluable learning experience for me. I am planning to pursue graduate work in language teaching methodology, and the Armenian text project gave me wonderful insights into the learning process. I plan to use my findings and my success to publish other language textbooks in the future.