Workshops

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Asset Based Language Development Workshops

This series of workshops is designed to facilitate motivated communities to develop their own orthographies, with minimal technical support from outside the community. These workshops will depend almost entirely on local funding and logistics; outside agencies will contribute linguistic expertise as needed, and provide evaluation and feedback to the communities.

Workshops would each be organized over three days, where teams are oriented to the next task and begin working on it in a context where questions can be answered and resolved locally. After the three day workshop, teams would finish the task in their home area.

For each workshop, an outside agencies' commitment to helping a given community will depend on that community having fulfilled the prerequisites for that workshop. If the prerequisites are not fulfilled by the time a given workshop happens, that community would be welcome to join that workshop the next time it is offered —assuming they have the prerequisites done by then.

If you want any of these workshops in your home area, please consider inviting a neighboring language team to join you. You may want to consider sharing the burden of hosting between one workshop and another.

Prerequisites

• Figure out workshop logistics for your team.
  • how to lodge your team
  • how to feed your team
  • how to get your team to and from the venue
  • how to pay for all of the above
  • If you want this in your home area, please consider inviting a neighboring language team to join you.
• Buy a computer, if you do not already have one.
• Get your computer set up with the SIL Cameroon keyboard (or a similar soft keyboard that will enable you to type all the characters you may need).
• Buy at least one flash drive dedicated to
  • backing up your data, and
  • sending your data to your consultant.
• For each Worshop: Finish Follow-up Action Items from previous workshops (Please ask for help if you are having trouble with this!!)

Word Collection

Workshop prerequisites

Goals

• Install A→Z+T, and familiarize the team with the overall project, the A→Z+T interface.
• Familiarize the team with the Add Words and Record Words tasks.
• Decide on citation forms for nouns and verbs.
• Get the team started on the Add Words task.
  • Better: Add and Parse Words (This will be available with version 1.0)
  • Fix any image problems (Available in A-Z+T 1.1)
• Get the team started on the Record Words task.
  • this may need to break into two workshops

Follow-up Action Items

• Finish collecting the Comparative African wordlist
  • with parsing (This will be available with version 1.0)
• Finish recording the Comparative African wordlist
• Send your database to your consultant.

Vowels

Workshop prerequisites

Goals

• Familiarize the team with the Sort Vowels task
• Work through the sorting of Vowels in at least one syllable profile for nouns and verbs

Follow-up Action Items

• Work through the sorting of Vowels in at least the three most populous syllable profiles for nouns and verbs.
• Prepare to discuss orthographic options if you have more than five vowels.
• Send your database to your consultant.

Consonants

Workshop prerequisites

Goals

• Familiarize the team with the Sort Consonants task
• Prepare to discuss orthographic options if you find consonants not in your LWC.
• Work through the sorting of consonants in at least one syllable profile for nouns and verbs

Follow-up Action Items

• Work through the sorting of Consonants in at least the three most populous syllable profiles for nouns and verbs
• Send your database to your consultant.

Alphabet Chart (Available in A-Z+T 1.1)

Goals

• Familiarize the team with the Vowel Letters and Consonant Letters tasks
• Discuss orthographic options for any consonants or vowels not in your LWC.
  • this may need to break into two workshops
• Update groups as appropriate.
• Familiarize the team with the Alphabet Chart Report (Available in A-Z+T 1.1)
• Work through the selection of 1-2 example words for each of consonants and vowels.
• Make draft chart (at this point, will have default choices for many letters)

Follow-up Action Items

• Work through the selection of the rest of the example words for consonants and vowels.
• Make fully drafted chart
• Share this chart broadly in your community, collect feedback
• Send your database to your consultant.

Tone in Noun Roots

Workshop prerequisites

Goals

• Discuss possible tone frames for nouns, and
• Define noun tone frames
• Familiarize the team with the Sort Tone task
• Test frames on the whole process of sorting, on a small profile (~25 words)
• Familiarize the team with the Record Tone task
• Record these words in all framed contexts
• Sort through largest noun profile in 1-2 frames

Follow-up Action Items

• Sort the three largest syllable profiles for nouns in all frames
• Record all these words in all framed contexts
• Send your database to your consultant

Tone in Verb Roots

Workshop prerequisites

• N.B.: in some contexts, it may make sense to do this workshop before Nouns, in which case it should also include the Familiarize goals above.

Goals

• Discuss possible tone frames for verbs
• Define verb tone frames
• Test frames on the whole process of sorting, on a small profile (~25 words)
• Record these words in all framed contexts
• Sort through largest verb profile in 1-2 frames

Follow-up Action Items

• Sort the three largest syllable profiles for verbs in all frames
• Record all these words in all framed contexts
• Send your database to your consultant