You are considering “setting-up” a game to pull or push language. To do this, you need players and/or “fluent fools”. For the most satisfying game, you ensure potential players are “Warm/Fed/Rested/Safe/Willing”. Humans are animals with bodies, and are therefore subject to biological constraints. It may seem laughably obvious to make the above statement. But for… Read more »
You’ve found a “fluent fool” in your target skill; you dive right in after “fluency”, by picking a common, accessible, “same conversation”, then “start at the beginning” by “copycatting” everything they do. “Art begins in imitation and ends in innovation” (Mason Cooley). According to research over the past couple decades, humans (along with some other… Read more »
To maximize the players’ experience of “Obviously!”, we intentionally “Set-up!” as much of the environment as possible, removing variables and distraction, focusing their attention on play. “I don’t think we got set up, I know we got set up! I mean, really, seriously, where did all those cops come from, huh?” – the Usual… Read more »
You’re “setting-up” a “TPR” environment, as close as possible to the real life objects and situation involved in your target skill. Yet starting with the real life, fully complex situation will overwhelm you and your players, so you “Limit” the scope of the environment and play to your current ability. The cost of information… Read more »
We want to acquire a new competency, a new target skill. To do so we begin sharing and naming “Techniques” that will accelerate our acquisition of the target skill. The first principle for acceleration is to remove every barrier between us and the performance of that skill by “Obviously!” removing all ambiguity, uncertainty, and guessing… Read more »
Once we agree to share accelerators that work through tq “Technique!”, it leads us to tq “Obviously!”: the mother of all other techniques. Every technique in the WAYK system exists to serve this primary principle. Success drives learning – failure undermines it. Many people in our culture are very familiar with negative feelings around… Read more »
“Technique!” is the fundamental structural element of the WAYK system. With it players can name and share the techniques that will accelerate learning and teaching, incorporated as “rules of the game”. The line between students and teachers is the biggest obstacle in education. The teacher is the boss. The students are the… Read more »
When explaining WAYK, we like to say, “There are a million specific ways to accelerate learning. We know 200.” This month we’ll be blogging 20 accelerated learning techniques, one at a time. These techniques are also known as “the rules of the game”, that we share back and forth, and through which we hunt language… Read more »
It’s easy to forget to just “play the game”, when using WAYK for the first time. The temptation to “remember” and “learn” is always lurking, ready to pounce on an unwary player. “But don’t we play WAYK so we can learn a language?” Most new players are surprised when we answer, “No! Don’t learn anything…. Read more »
So, owing to our recent work with helping revitalize Ecclesastical Latin at Wyoming Catholic College, Evan and I finally decided to put pen to paper and make a written USC road-map from zero to “Getting to the Party”. It’s been an “oral document” (as anthropologists like to say) up till now. We’ve noticed that even… Read more »
WAYK player Jay Bazuzi has put together a handy index of almost everything we’ve produced for WAYK. Check it out: http://wayk.bazuzi.com
The WAYK toolkit doesn’t provide a preset curriculum for any particular language; it provides the tools for generating this curriculum. In a sense, for us, “curriculum” has become somewhat of a dirty word, because of its conventional connotation as a prepared-materials-heavy, top-down, mostly static delivery of subject matter. But, we have to admit, the WAYK… Read more »
And now, Evan’s follow up: I am so excited for you Jay! Learning your own language from your own elder… A wonderful source of pride for your entire family and especially your grandma! I can’t tell you the number of times I have heard of people looking at books instead of talking to their elders… Read more »
Reader and fluency game player Jay Bazuzi commented recently: In a month I’ll be visiting my grandmother and want to learn her language from her, so I’m eager to learn how to use WAYK for other spoken languages. I’ve been following the roadmap myself, practicing with the videos, friends, and kids. I’m getting pretty comfortable… Read more »
The second question you ask in the WAYK game: “Who is that?/Whose is that?”, setting it up with a “Craig’s List” of pronouns: Me/Mine, You/Yours, He/His, She/Hers. Why do we start out so simply, and add bite-sized pieces, one at a time, constantly “starting over, starting at the beginning”? Abbot and Costello’s famous routine shows… Read more »
