Creating learning materials and teaching materials for language revitalization: The case of Mutsun

When a community is working to revitalize a language, especially a dormant one, community members must create opportunities for people to learn the language. It is easy to focus on written teaching materials as important resources for learners, and outside linguists often collaborate with communities by writing teaching materials such as word lists, coloring books with words in the language under the pictures, language textbooks, and audio-visual language lessons. There is a lot to know about how to produce effective teaching materials, and community members’ pilot tests may reveal unexpected things about what types of materials the community prefers and finds effective. However, it is also important to consider how one creates opportunities for learning apart from producing paper (or audio-visual) documents. Creating learning opportunities also includes choosing times, settings, and topics that allow learners to practice open conversation, and teaching how to stay in the language when one does not know a word. The authors explore these issues by discussing their experiences with creating opportunities for learning the Mutsun language (Costanoan, California/USA), through traditional language teaching materials, language activities, and more open-ended settings. We argue that when linguists attempt to work with a community on revitalization, they should avoid restricting the focus to production of written teaching materials, and should think broadly about creating opportunities for language use.