Hints
If you chose Exercise A, it was
probably because it asked students to inventory and express
the key information in the scene, a combination of
communications and connections
standards. Based on that information gleaned in
this task, it might be possible for students to assume roles
and reenact the scene in their own version of the play's
words.
However, while an advanced class
might well be able to complete this task successfully, we do
not recommend it for an initial reading procedure.
Initial exposure to the text, after all, is just that -- the
first attempt to get an overview of howthe passage presents
information. Hence the teacher has two options: read
an initial paragraph or two for language that introduces the
information that will be read in the passage as a whole, or
scan the passage to assess its rhetorical construction.
If the text to be read is short,
or if the teacher wishes to focus on the initial segment of
a longer passage, then reading for topical vocabulary is
appropriate as long as the focus is clear (see comments
about Exercise B, Grade 8 Hints). In Exercise
A, however, the task involved looking over a longer passage
(2 1/2 pages) for language representing several different
emphases. Instead of asking what people did or
who people were, the exercise asked for both, which is not a
sufficiently narrow focus of information for the novice
reader.
The point here is, first, to
remember that initial reading should ask students only for
what can be done relatively quickly (in less than 5 minutes)
in class. If the topical focus in Exercise A had been
only on the initial paragraph and only on descriptive
features ("Finden Sie Ausdrücke, die den Mann
[Beckmann] beschreiben"), the task would be "doable"
in 5 minutes. Students would know they did not have to
scan the entire text and would not be confronted with
multiple tasks (looking for both "what" and "who" expressed
in specific vocabulary).
If scanning the entire text for
different expressions is not desirable, what makes Exercise
B feasible? Before answering that question, consider
the difference in task. Remember that, in Exercise A,
students were asked to find topical vocabulary. In
Exercise B they are asked only to identify various
rhetorical segments, a task posing very different cognitive
and linguistic demands. When rhetorical differences
are prominent in texts, they are much easier to locate than
particular types of language usage. Prominent
rhetorical differences, after all, are marked with
non-linguistic features such as quotation marks (or
theirabsence), visual differences in blocks of text
(dialogue versus commentary or descriptions) and speaker
designations, features common to German and English.
We emphasize here that
rhetorical features are not necessarily preferable to
identifying topical vocabulary, especially in a prose
text. Not all texts display prominent rhetorical
differences. Particularly as regards plays, however,
awareness of shifts in rhetorical constructs such as locale
or speaker / listener relationships helps alert readers to
the need to change their expectations about a passage.
Unlike the more ambitious connections and
communications standards implied in a search for
topical vocabulary, awareness of rhetorical relationships
only facilitates connection with the text. To
discover eventually what figures are saying, it is extremely
helpful to recognize that, in the first segment of the
prologue to "Draußen vor der Tür," a commentator
is talking to the audience, not to someone in the play, and
that the mortician, on the other hand, is talking to
himself. Such awareness of speaker/ listener or reader
relationships eases the transition into comprehending, for
example, what the commentator says to the audience or the
mortician to himself.
In sum, whether designing
initial reading to identify rhetorical distinctions or to
focus attention on topical vocabulary, an important task
distinction should be kept in mind: the easiest level search
(and the best guarantee for successful initial reading) for
topical vocabulary is one that asks students to read only an
initial segment of the text and focus on a single task (what
people do or what they say or how they are
described or how they think). Students will,
however, probably find it equally or even easier to read for
fundamental differences in textual rhetoric. Given
that task, they should be able peruse longer passages in a
short period of time. Under these conditions (a very
open-ended task, requiring students to get a predictable
something out of a text, but not any particular
language or piece of information), reading more of the text
becomes a feasible initial demand on students.
because, when reading for rhetoric, the focus is on segments
rather than words. When reading for rhetorical shifts
only, students can read paragraphs as chunks of text, solely
to see whether those chunks represent different places,
different narrative voices, or different characters
interacting in a prose or dramatic text. That is,
they are doing a crude but crucial road map of the entire
text, a sketch that they will fill in as they read for
additional comprehension.