CONTENT: Texts

The content of the dialogues - 4 of 5

Concrete examples of what to avoid:

a. Disorganisation.  This refers to both the presentation of the linguistic material and the story itself. When manuals convey a lack of clarity, planning, or direction, students will feel a lack of confidence, and it is difficult to be both distrustful and receptive at the same time.

b. lllogicality.  When someone in the story walks in the door, the student expects him to say "Hello". When he does say "Hello", the student feels good, because s/he has been able to predict a predictable target-language utterance.
If, on the other hand, the person walks in and says, "What's the price of herring?" or "I warned Gertrude not to put her hair curlers in the freezer!" students will, at worst, be bewildered and discouraged, and, at best, be in awe of the writer's wit and talent rather than of their own intelligence for having figured the system out.

c. The "Morally Questionable".  Notwithstanding frequent surprises, as well as good-natured jokes and tricks that the characters play on each other - all of which make for a joyful, childlike, spontaneous atmosphere - it could never dawn on anyone in the manual to do anything dishonest; none of the characters could ever have malicious intent.
Controversial subjects such as divorce, birth control, and sex (before, during, and after marriage!) are never broached in the manual.