Hints
Of the two exercises, B comes
closer to filling the linguistic function of Phase 5:
student practice in extended discourse as interpolation of a
text. Exercise A will encourage interpolation, but
only as individual sentences within a visual context that
serves as a substitute for verbal linkages.
Thus if students had a
photograph of a group of soldiers who were prisoners of war,
they might be able to insert a caption for one soldier
reading "Drei Jahre Soldat und wir haben nur Hunger und Tod"
and for another the caption "Und ich habe auch ein schlimmes
Bein." A second picture might offer opportunities to
elaborate on other details ("auch meine Eltern sind tot"
"andere Personen wohnen in unserem Haus").
Such activities encourage
language use, but the language produced has only implied,
not verbally expressed connections between these scenes and
these individuals. Just as comic books are easier to
read than prose texts, such captions are easier to write
than their elaborated prose counterparts would be, since
those prose versions would have to explain who is speaking
to whom, who responds, where they are or why the scene
shifts to another locale. As a preparatory exercise
for such vital prose elaborations, however, the picture
series works. It also provides opportunities for
verbal presentation and discussion that build toward
specification of details based on the imagination of
individual students or small groups.
It should also be kept in mind
that this exercise as described relies on a "generic"
wartime situation with styles of devastation and the impact
of war on soldiers' and civilians' lives --these experiences
are interchangeable, regardless of time and place. In
this sense, such activities actually foster a perception
that is culturally inaccurate, since such details reflect
different cultures and the ways they deal with their own
histories. Consequently, if culture or
community standards are to be emphasized, this task
should be augmented with an activity stressing
similarities and differences between any war,
and the situation in Borchert's play. Differences such
as length of time at war, scope of battles (world-wide or
local), scope of destruction (infrastructure, agriculture),
populations affected (civil war versus outside attackers)
all should be identified in class discussion, if not in the
assignment itself.
Exercise B fulfills the function
of asking for a potentially longer piece of writing.
As an interpolation of the text, however, the task is not
sufficiently linked to Borchert's work. Without some
language explicitly relating student writing to the scene
between Beckmann and Frau Kramer, the results will probably
be both linguistically and contextually quite different from
the Borchert model. The lacuna could be remedied if the
assignment included the phrase "using the language and
situation in Beckmann's scene with Frau Kramer, write a
story. . . ." Such framing may seem superfluous, but,
in practice, it is critical if students are to use the
language of the text as their linguistic and contextual
model.
Phase
5: Long-Genre Exercises: Grade 8
Phase
5: Long-Genre Exercises: Grade 12