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ix Preface This book is the fruit of the Oxlajuj Aj Intensive Summer Program in Kaqchikel Language and Culture sponsored by Tulane University and the University of Texas at Austin, which Brown and Maxwell founded in 1989. Its story, a tale of hard work and good luck, begins six years earlier, when Brown and Maxwell met during their first year at Tulane, he as a graduate student in Latin American Studies and she as an assistant professor of linguistics and anthropology. The extensive field experience and contagious enthusiasm that Maxwell brought to her courses quickly drew many students into her orbit, including Brown who, emulating her work on the Chuj Mayan language, spent the summer of 1985 in Guatemala studying Kaqchikel at the Proyecto Lingüístico Francisco Marroquín (PLFM) and planning an extended study of language maintenance and shift in Kaqchikel communities. Maxwell agreed to chair his dissertation committee, and a year later he returned to Guatemala for eighteen months of fieldwork in collaboration with the PLFM and its then director, Martín Chacach, where he was fortunate to receive further Kaqchikel instruction from Arnulfo Simón Sucuc in exchange for help teaching workshops for aspiring young Mayan linguists. Good fortune continued in 1988 when Brown returned to Tulane to find a visiting position in the Spanish and Portuguese Department for three years which exposed him to the texts and methods of the growing communicative approach to second language teaching. When the Stone Center for Latin American Studies offered the opportunity to mount a field school in an indigenous language, Brown and Maxwell immediately agreed upon Kaqchikel given his recent work in the language area and many logistical considerations. Maxwell, a trusting and generous mentor, allowed Brown free rein to design the program, encouraging his vision of a lively interactive content-rich language-learning experience and of building a community in which equal numbers of Mayas and non-Mayas collaborate as both learners and teachers seeking to readjust the historically imbalanced relationship between the studier and the studied. A schedule was constructed of eight (later condensed to six) weekly thematic units whose content expanded concentrically from the classroom to communities. Martín Chacach helped recruit and orient teachers before the course began. Mornings were dedicated to language instruction. Teachers rotated through several instructional roles. Brown created a sequence of lessons in which new structures were presented contextually in short skits followed by whole-group exercises gradually requiring more complex responses from students. Teachers then worked individually with pairs of students for continued practice. Borrowing communicative methods that had proved successful in teaching Spanish, Brown encouraged the teachers to use the target language as much as possible and to have fun in the classroom. A lively and raucous environment resulted involving constant modeling and participation, applause and laughter. Afternoons were dedicated to the exploration of weekly themes (such as family, agriculture, and weaving) through lectures, large and small group discussions, guest speakers and field trips. The high degree of trust shared by the group enabled its members to exchange experiences, perceptions and x stereotypes with remarkable candor. Over the years, guest speakers included some of the most influential Maya scholars, practitioners and activists. The first year, however was baptism by fire. Brown spent mornings working at a table in the back of the classroom writing and explaining the next lesson with each successive small group of teachers who would then rotate to the front. Orchestrating morning and afternoon classes, fieldtrips, lodging and budget for a group of almost thirty demanded constant attention. Yet the investment of ideas, time and energy paid off handsomely–the structure and content of the course established that first year have endured the test of time and remain largely in place to this day. Maxwell dedicated herself to learning the new language and analyzing its grammar. By the second year, she began offering during the first morning hour a grammar description for students and teachers of the structures presented the previous day. Those daily lessons have been assembled and shaped into the grammar summary of Chapter 8 and the alphabet section of Chapter 1. Brown worked with teachers to write up the lessons taught, develop vocabulary lists and practice exercises. Teaches wrote short paragraphs and dialogues employing target content. By the third year, these written materials were compiled into a draft course text for use by teachers and students. Further refined over the successive years, this material makes up Chapters 2 to 7 of the present...

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