How To Teach When the Teacher Isn't Fluent.

Abstract

The majority of the indigenous languages in our country are no longer be-ing learned at home, and the last generation of native speakers are growing older and older.1 At the same time, there are increasingly strong efforts by communi-ties to keep their languages alive by developing teaching programs of various sorts in the schools and in the community. The problem is, who will teach the language? Some communities are lucky enough to still have young and middle aged adult speakers who also have or can get training in language teaching prac-tices. But as the speakers age, increasingly, the energy and the burden for lan-guage revitalization is among the younger adult generations who are not fluent in their language. It is sad, but it is true, and we can do no less than honor and support those with the drive and the bravery to take on this task. This paper is an attempt to support these efforts by discussing the problem that such heroes must face: how to teach a language when the teacher isn’t fluent. It is very easy for a non-fluent speaker (or often, even a fluent one) to fall back on a form of language-teaching that involves word-lists taught through the

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