ARG

Summer Programs 2002 & 2003

In the recent years the ARG conducted two intensive summer courses in which small groups of students were exposed to Ayola. The purpose of these two experiments was to determine whether Ayola could be mastered within a summer course as well as to qualitatively compare its rate of acquisition with those of second natural languages previously acquired by the students. It was found that Ayola could indeed be mastered within a summer course and that the rate of acquisition was considerably more rapid than that of second natural languages.
Class of 2002
The experiment conducted during the summer of 2002 involved teaching Ayola to two students. The participants were recruited at the University of Massachusetts at Lowell and were paid for their diligent participation in the learning process. These students had linguistic backgrounds in English, French, and Spanish.

Students met three hours each day, three days a week, June through August. During this time, they were intensively exposed to Ayola via their instuctors. Classes were predominantly held in Ayola. Quizzes were administered weekly and exams monthly to monitor the language progress. Each class was audio recorded for later retrieval of the data during the analysis process. A composition was requested of them each week utilizing the new vocabulary learned. Length requirements for the compositions increased as the students immersed themselves further into the language.

It was found that students could express their thoughts easily in Ayola given some prompting in vocabulary. However, because the sample size in this study was rather small, no significant conclusions were reached about the acquisition rate of Ayola and other second natural languages. Some significant weaknesses of the language were observed during the course of the program and corrected during the fall of 2002. A second study using the improved language was designed and scheduled for the summer of 2003.


Class of 2003

For the second summer program, the five study participants were carefully selected from a pool of two dozen applicants at the Universtity of Massachusetts at Lowell. Students were chosen based on five criteria: their performance in college courses and GPA, their aptitude for learning foreign languages which they demonstrated in an oral and written aptitude test designed by ARG, their background in foreign languages, their conduct in an individual interview, and their motivations for participating in the study. The students who were selected had backgrounds in English, French, German, Spanish, Hindi, and one of the Nigerian languages.

Classes were held four times a week, three hours a day. Students were required to study outside of the classroom for a total of eight hours per week. At this time they reviewed in-class activities, studied the provided textbooks, and completed written assignments. Each student was provided with the full-color text of Ayola: A Beginner's Guide, the companion Ayola Workbook , and classroom supplies including note paper, pens, and folders.

During class the instructors guided the students through grammar lessons, conversation, spoken and written exercises, and interactive, creative activities such as performance dialogues, cultural readings and social events, and games like charades and show-and-tell. Homework assignments included grammar exercises, sentence and story creation, vocabulary, oral presentations, exam preparation, and a final term paper. Each week the students submitted a 1-2 page journal entry whose topic varied by the week. One quiz was administered at the conclusion of each week. A midterm exam was given midway through the course and a comprehensive final exam was given at the end. Course work followed the format of the text, Ayola: A Beginner's Guide. One chapter was completed per week, with the exception of the last two weeks, which were composed of intense reading, writing, and translating activities, as well as the composition of the play, Alice in Wonderland , which was performed for the instructors on the final day of class.

Students' performaces were gauged on homework scores, test and quiz scores, journal entry scores, and their final term paper and oral presentation scores. Surprise oral exams were given and recorded four times during the course to assess each student's rate of progress. Classroom exposure to the language was controlled, whereas each student's study time was not. Pay and monetary awards served as the students' incentive to work dilligently.

After a solid 120 hours of exposure to Ayola by the instructors and 80 additional hours of individual study, the five participants demonstrated moderate fluency in Ayola. The students acquired Ayola quickly and progressed consistently, lengthening their journal entries and making their spoken and written sentences more fluent and complex as the weeks passed. It was observed that while most of Ayola's grammar was easily learned, a few improvements still had to be made to perfect the language. The Summer Program 2003 not only confirmed ARG's suppositions about Ayola's quick rate of acquisition, but provided new insights into simplifying the grammar.