Wednesday, February 8 Training and putting it into practice

The training phase of our workshop continued today with role-specific training and exercises to put into practice what I’d taught yesterday. For the role-specific training, I ask those who will be functioning as word-collection group leaders to come to the front of the room and the others to sit behind them. Then I explain in detail what a group leader is expected to do and how it is to be done, allowing those being trained to ask questions or make comments but requiring those listening in to remain silent. Then when I’m done covering all the details that those being trained need to know and they have no more questions, I allow the others to ask any questions that they have. Then we repeat the process, but changing seats so that those who will be serving as scribes now take the front-row seats. Finally, we do the routine once more, this time with the glossers (translators) seated in the front row.

training the scribes

I do the training for these three roles with everyone present because we usually need, at some point in the workshop, to ask someone who was originally selected to perform one role to switch and do one of the others, and I want them to have a good idea what that other role entails when that happens, so that I don’t need to give them an impromptu 20-minute training session. The training for the typists and the record-keeper involves only the individuals who’ve been designated for those roles because it’s not very likely that we’d bring anyone else in to do those particular tasks. 

Near the end of the day, we dismissed everyone except the typists and then spent 45 minutes or so introducing the six data-entry individuals to the program they’ll be using. Their training will continue tomorrow (day 3 of this training phase) as we practice collecting words via group exercises and the typists enter these words into a practice database. The remainder of their training will take place on Monday, when they get words from the groups during the workshop to enter into the real database.

training the typists

Yesterday we did a couple of exercises as a single large group, but today we broke up into three smaller groups to collect words. After allowing them some time to write down the words that came to mind, I asked the scribe for each group to write the words they found on the blackboard. Tomorrow I hope to do much more of this, giving everyone the opportunity to put into practice what I’ve been teaching them. As we go, we point out what has been done correctly and what has not been done quite the way I had instructed, and through this, the various details of the process become more and more solidified in their minds.

scribes from each group writing their words on the blackboard