How To Build An Excellent Wikibook Teaching Any Language
Whilst browsing WikiBooks' selection of assorted foreign language books, one finds that many of these books present their content in vastly different ways. Many of them present their content in very similar ways, but different enough to be noticeable, confusing and irritating. Navigating the book is a challenge in itself, and after mastering its navigation one finds reading the book to be difficult and off-putting as well. There seems to be no logic in how some of these books teach the reader their language. This needs to be fixed.
Where a problem arises, a solution must be found. This wikibook hopes to be the solution. This book's goal is to create guidelines to unify the organization and presentation of content in the many wikibooks on foreign languages and to finally make learning a foreign language as easy and as painless as possible.
When this book is complete, it will be a valuable guide to make well established wikibooks even better and it will be a guide to jump-start budding new wikibooks into the big leagues with the rest.
The Guidelines
This book is meant to detail guidelines, not rules, on how to make an excellent wikibook teaching any language. You can pick and choose from all the suggestions this book has to offer and implement them in your wikibook. When you read this book, don't look for rules to follow; rather, look for helpful ideas on how to make an effective and useful foreign language wikibook.
Learning Curve
When you write a wikibook teaching a foreign language, it is important that you gradually introduce the language to your readers. This keeps your readers interested, instead of frustrated, and it allows you to go into greater depth in any given subject. For instance, if you devote an entire set of lessons to just teaching the beginner-level verbs for Japanese, then you can teach many different verbs, their usage, spelling, grammar rules (at a basic level, of course), and so on. Don't teach exceptions to beginners; that only confuses them. Plan that for later lessons.
Assume Nothing – Describe And Explain Everything
As a partner to the Learning Curve guideline – Whenever you're introducing a new language, there is going to be a lot of new material for your readers to cover and understand. When writing your lessons, don't assume ANY knowledge whatsoever. If you're going to use a term that most people might not understand, either replace that word or define what that word means. This is most important for describing how to pronounce letters and symbols. For instance, how many of your readers know how a 'guttural' sound is made and what it sounds like? What about 'plosives'? What do you mean by 'voiced' letters/symbols? These are examples of things that you'll need to explain.
1-2-3-4-5 Punch
The 1-2-3-4-5 Punch is a process of repetition and memorization critical to the learning of a new language. There are two parts to the 1-2-3-4-5 Punch: the 1-2-3 Punch and the 4-5 Punch. The 1-2-3 Punch deals with lessons and the 4-5 Punch deals with groups of lessons. First we'll start by listing each part of the 1-2-3 Punch:
1. Tell your readers what you are going to teach them. “You're going to be taught XYZ, and by the end of this lesson you should be able to do ABC, DEF, GHI...etc.”
2. Teach them.
3. Tell your readers what you taught them.
With this technique, your readers hear the material 3 times in different ways. This repetition will ingrain the information in them. You can go 2 steps better and repeat the information even more.
4. Review what you taught your readers in the last X lessons and what they should know and be able to do.
5. Review what you taught your readers in the last Grade/Section/Division and what they should know and be able to do.
The more repetition the better. This is important, people don't normally remember something the first time they hear it. The more times you repeat the material you've gone through with the reader, the more likely they'll be able to remember what they read. It's a simple, but important, concept.
Many wikibooks for languages are trying to be curriculums rather than textbooks or references. This is an excellent goal, but to achieve it you must plan your curriculum, and repetition is key to any curriculum
Exercises
Exercises actually go hand-in-hand with the last section, the 1-2-3-4-5 Punch. You can tell people information all day long, but until you pose a problem which requires that they used the acquired information they won't truly learn.
Since the reader of this book has probably gone to school and understands what exercises are all about, no further explanation is needed to describe them.
Now the questions are how many, and what kind? It really depends on the subject matter and at what level in the book the reader is. Some subjects don't need many exercises to teach the material, some need dozens. If the reader is at the end of a group of lessons then a quiz might be in order. After 3 or 4 quizzes you have probably covered the necessary material for that division of lessons and are ready for a test. These factors play into how many and what kind of exercises one should pose to the reader.
There is one thing worth repeating: YOU NEED EXERCISES. Got that? You need them to teach the reader. Let the reader decide if he wants to do the exercises or not, but put those exercises in front of him so that he has the choice to ignore them or not.
One other thing, include the answers to the exercises at the end of the exercises (preferably in a link). For self learners this is crucial: nobody likes not knowing whether they got the right answer or not, and it can make it difficult for your readers to learn from the exercises.
References
It's a good idea to have references for all the different grammar rules, example tables, etc. for the material you teach. This allows the reader to quickly find a certain rule that he needs to brush up on. For instance, you (the reader of this book) have probably more than once wished you could remember what that illusive 'gerund' thing was the teacher was talking about in school. Of course, he assumed you already knew what it was. Too bad you didn't have a quick reference to look it up in, huh? Of course, you could use a dictionary, but it is more effective to find the definition of a gerund catering to the particular language you are learning.
References need to be easily searchable, which means they need to be well organized. There are a few techniques for organizing a reference. You could list each rule in alphabetical order. This is effective when a student knows what rule he is looking for, but doesn't know when he learned it. You could list each rule according to the grade level of the rule. This is effective for finding all the rules in a specific grade level and reviewing them easily. One step further, you could list each rule according to the grade level of the rule in the same order as presented in the curriculum. Each have their advantages, and it is up to you, the wikibook author and contributor, to choose one and stick to it.
Invite And Excite
Learning a language is fun, but it can be tiresome and boring as well when you start getting into some of the more esoteric grammar rules. Plus, with all the repetition you will subject your readers to, you'll just be going over the same tiresome and boring stuff over and over and over again, 5 or more times. You need to keep your readers interested.
When you're introducing your wikibook, try to invite your readers into the book. Make the readers feel like you want to teach them, engross them in the culture behind the language, and above all else excite them with all the myriad ways they'll be able to use this new language they are learning. Tell your readers about all the great literature they are missing! Tell them all the wonderful countries they'll be able to visit and explore! Tell them all the new movies they'll be able to see and understand! All the new females they'll be able to talk to (and the cute boys too)!
The converse to this is FOR THE LOVE OF PETE DON'T INTIMIDATE AND BORE YOUR READER! Understand?
Illustrations
For some languages, you'll need to teach your readers how to write the letters or symbols. Make heavy use of animated .gif files in this instance. As you advance in the book, you may find it useful to make small movies to show an example of a conversation. For added effect, you could take some popular media in the language you are teaching and use it to help your readers even further. For example, using a scene from some anime might make teaching Japanese more effective, and it will have the added effect of entertaining your readers as well. They'll learn more, and they'll be able to actually utilize their new-found skill with a language in a useful way, which is really the purpose of learning a language for most people!
Examples
This is a bit obvious, but it is worthwhile to mention that you need to give examples of how to use a language, especially exceptions to rules. Effective examples are short and to the point and take into account your readers' level of knowledge of the language being taught. Try also to make them memorable.
Formatting And Navigation
Good formatting will make content easy to follow, as will a good way to navigate to each page.
The way you format each page should reflect the logical organization of your content, and in fact you'll have most of the work done if you just organize your content well.
Navigating to the next or previous page in a book without being forced to go back to the index is a must in the real world, the same is true for the internet world. A suggestion is to use 'breadcrumbs', a technique whereby you allow your reader to see which page/lesson he is on, what section that page/lesson is in, what grade that section is in, etc. all the way back to the main page.
Some templates are below:
Splash/Intro Screen
They're useless and a waste of time. Seriously, don't use them.
But, if you must, try to make it worthwhile. Don't just use a big picture of a flag.
Splash/Intro screens seem to be an attempt to make a wikibook feel more like a 'real' book by having some pretty picture to look at. All attempts up until now have been futile at making a worthwhile splash screen. This is a wikibook on the internet, not a physical book in the bookstore, your readers haven't come searching for pretty pictures of the flag of Japan or Morocco.
Reading Drills
Reading drills are good for practicing how to read and speak a language quickly and accurately. Make rules on how to use your reading drills, such as using a stopwatch or microwave clock to time how fast your readers should read any given paragraph/story. Make some rules on how your readers should score themselves and improve.
Games
A great way to get people to learn how to read a language is games. If you can find games on the internet that help teach a person how to read the language you're teaching, reference it in a section on games. You can be bold and make your own game (like a board or card game) that can be customized to your wikibook. Games are good, make use of them if possible.
Mascots
A great way to help unify your wikibook is to use a mascot. It can be used as a way to identify your wikibook; it can be used as a character in examples; it can be used in games; it can be used in illustrative movies; it can be used to entice your readers to continue to the next lesson (because they want to see what is going on with the mascot next) etc. Think of a mascot that identifies with the language being taught, and try exaggerating stereotypical qualities in that mascot. For example, if the mascot is a German bear, make sure he drinks lots of beer and eats tons of hot dogs. If your mascot is a Japanese dragon, make him shoot fireworks out his nose and make references to his relatives in Europe.
You can even use humans as mascots. Just be creative with how you make the characters act. Make them memorable. The worst thing that could happen is for your mascot to be irritating or forgettable.
Logos/Seals
Another good idea would be to use a logo or seal to be used as a source of branding for your book. Don't use some stupid picture of the Eiffel Tower as your logo for your wikibook on French, make something unique. Don't use too many different colors unless you know what you are doing; logos should be seen, not heard. Mono color logos work well for this purpose. Make it fit into each page you use it in; don't try to squeeze a big picture where it doesn't belong, and don't put it somewhere that it will distract from the content of the page.
And for love of Pete, don't use MSPaint to make your logo!
Mistakes You Should Never Make
1. Never teach languages in the sense of simply providing a sentence with its translation and requesting memorization.
Solely learning:
- Hur är det? -- How's everything?
- Hur mår du? -- How are you feeling?
- Var bor du? -- Where do you live?
- Jag bor i ___ -- I live in ___
- Jag heter ___ -- My name is ___
- Vad heter du? -- What's your name?
- Var kommer du ifrån? -- Where are you from?
- Jag kommer från USA/Kina/Tyskland/Storbritannien. -- I come from USA/China/Germany/Great Britain.
- Ha det bra! -- Have a nice day!
- Vi ses! -- See you (later)!
- Vi hörs! -- I'll call you! (lit. "We will hear (from each other)!")
NOTE: This section was actually copied from Swedish_Lesson_1.
Does not aid in learning a language. If a person doesn't understand the sentence itself (ergo, cannot tell what every part of it means and why), the person does not gain anything from memorizing it. This is because the person cannot make or understand other sentences made of the parts of this sentence.
2. Never teach languages by giving a linguistic explanation.
If the person doesn't understand linguistics, they won't understand your explanation. If I don't speak Japanese and I want to learn German, a German guide in Japanese is useless to me.
Prominent Contributor Recognition
To promote the recognition of contributors to your wikibook, display all contributors prominently near the top of the page. Put a small symbol or image next to the name of each contributor to show which part of the wikibook they contributed to. For instance, you could use small colored circles to denote contribution to the grammar references section of the book, and small colored squares for lessons, etc. Each wikibook's group of contributors can decide who is a contributor and who is not. Try not to 'water-down' the status of contributor; if someone edits to fix spelling errors in certain parts a wikibook, that may be a contribution, but it is probably not significant enough to warrant being added to the list of contributors.
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