After six months (or one semester, in the olden times reckoning of dividing up a university year in Australia) of basic Swedish instruction, we were introduced to our first genuine Swedish novel.
Actually, it was a story book. A story book for kids...
For a good part of the next 3-4 months, we read -- chapter by chapter -- about the hilarious adventures of a little troublemaker named Emil Svensson, who came from the tiny village of Lönneberga, deep in the Swedish district known as Småland. Emil i Lönneberga was a classic collection of kids stories written by one of Sweden's literary treasures, Astrid Lindgren. Remember Pippi Långstrump (you may recall her as Pippi Longstocking)? Same writer.
So how do you think a group of young adults felt about spending a couple of hours of formal instruction time per week reading a book made for 1st graders?
To be honest, we loved Emil. Personally, I can't help smiling every time I recall how he hoisted his little sister up the farm's flag pole, testing out his theory it would help her to see all the way to a neighbouring village...
Now, I bring this to your attention because I think it's worth thinking about whether or not it is appropriate or desirable to use children's books to help teach adult foreign language learners.
As I mentioned, we loved the character and the stories. The language was genuine (even incorporating humorous examples of the infamous local Smålänsk dialect), but on the whole reasonably approachable -- especially with the assistance of a teacher (as it turned out, we ended up reading Emil i Lönneberga with a semi-famous retired Swedish professor of linguistics, Göran Hammarström -- boy did that turn out interesting, and thank goodness the guy had a brilliant sense of humour and fun).
Culturally speaking as well, this book was an absolute gem. The simple exposure to Sweden's history, regions, landscape, cuisine, and all sorts of cultural snippets was well and truly embedded in the reading experience.
Did we feel insulted to be reading a book made for kids?
Not at all, really. I mean, we didn't discuss the stories as children, and none of us was under any illusions as to our realistic linguistic level. We enjoyed the stories for what they were, lapped up the language and cultural tips being introduced from our professor of linguistics, and generally had a great time and learned an immense amount of Swedish.
Tomorrow, one of my new classes is with a group of very low level students. What do you think? Would they be insulted to read some classic Australian stories for kids (perhaps a little further down the track, once I've taught them to read a little more)?
Oh, and to show you how times have changed and what technology can do for language learning, imagine if us readers of Emil i Lönneberga had had access to YouTube?
Enjoy the visual and aural experience of Emil and the "flag pole incident" I mentioned above! (Still cracks me up that all the VIP guests at the farm were initially horrified that the all-important blue and gold flag of Sweden had been replaced by a red and white one, representing -- shock horror! -- Denmark!).
:-D
