[INDOLOGY] A new Sanskrit Reader

[Dominik Wujastyk]

Dear Antonia, we've already discussed this, and like others I produced a
list of favourite texts.

But thinking about this discussion, and Lanman, a bit more, may I make a
more general point? (If the answer's "no," stop reading now :-)

I remember vividly how hard I found beginning Sanskrit, how I wrote out all
those individual words (āsīd rājā...) and looked them up in dictionaries
and struggled to see how it all tied together to make sense.  I think that
experience is mostly good, and necessary, and just a part of the bundle of
learning a challenging new language.  But I was in an exceptional,
privileged one-to-one teaching situation, which smoothed over deficiencies
in the course materials.

What I'd like to say now is that in designing your Reader, it would be good
to hold in mind the idea of giving the student a lot of small experiences
of success.  Your Course does that, so this won't be a new idea for you.
There are already a lot of chreostomathies and readers out there that do an
adequate job of flinging chunks of "important" text at students.  So a
reader "for the 21st century" should embody modern progress about language
learning and teaching amongst professionals.  I believe that many small
experiences of success is at the heart of building technical ability and
building emotional commitment for the long term.

So, more important that which texts are chosen will be how you package the
texts, and what teaching support you provide alongside the particular texts
you choose.

It's common for student attrition to be 50% or more in second-semester
Sanskrit classes.  Why should we accept that?  If we care about the future
of the field, we should be thinking hard about that challenge.  Excellence
in pedagogy and pedagogical support materials must be at the heart of the
response.

I think I've just written in five wordy paragraphs what Patrick said in
five words: " useful from a student’s perspective.."

Best,
Dominik



​
--
Professor Dominik Wujastyk <http://ualberta.academia.edu/DominikWujastyk>
​,​

Singhmar Chair in Classical Indian Society and Polity
​,​

Department of History and Classics <http://historyandclassics.ualberta.ca/>
​,​
University of Alberta, Canada
​.​

South Asia at the U of A:

​sas.ualberta.ca​
​​


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