Miskito/Lesson structure

In this page we shall see what the standard elements of a lesson are and what is in each standard element. For information on the technicalities of producing each of these elements using the course's templates and conventions, see the Layout Guide.

Overall structure of a lesson
The generic structure of a normal lesson is as follows:

There may be any number of "points" (not necessarily three!). A lesson is divided into the sections (with second-level headings) shown here. Each of the "points" is named in the heading by a reference to the linguistic concept (e.g. Adjectives), corresponding English language item(s) (e.g. Is, This and that) or Miskito language item(s) (e.g. "Lika" and "sika") covered, choosing whichever designation is most easily intelligible for most readers (and otherwise in this order of preference). For example, the sections of Lesson 1 is as follows:

Each of the "points" consists of three "components": Model, Commentary and Exercise. The "Vocabulary and review" section has two components, of course: Vocabulary and Review. This gives the following generic component structure:

A note on layout
The standard structure of a point, as we have already seen, consists of three components: a model, a commentary and an exercise. These components appear on the page in the following layout: For details on the technicalities of editing these components (using the course's templates), please read the Layout guide.

Purpose
The purpose of the model component is to present a limited linguistic sample (such as a text, a conversation or a set of sentences, phrases or words) that illustrates, as clearly and succinctly as possible, the point to be studied.

Format

 * The items that specifically exhibit the point under observation are in bold in the model sentences. For example, here (from Lesson 1):
 * the point being studied comprises the demonstrative pronouns, which are naha "this" and baha "that".


 * The translations of the model sentences is also provided, but are initially "hidden". The user may view them at will by clicking on "Show" and hide them again by clicking on "Hide". This is what the whole thing looks like:

NB Thanks to the course's template technology, all an author needs to write on the lesson page to get this is the following! Look here in the Layout Guide to see how such texts are laid out in the lessons.

Purpose
The purpose of the exercise component is to provide an opportunity to practise the point being studied.

Format

 * Different kinds of exercise are possible here. Translation (for comprehension) of a few additional examples, such as in the following example (Lesson 1), is just one of various possibilities:


 * As the example illustrates, formally such an exercise consists of an instruction (here, "What do these sentences mean?"), a list of input items (in this case the Miskito sentences) and a corresponding list of output items (i.e. correct answers). The latter are initially "hidden", but the user may view them or hide them at will by clicking on "Show" or "Hide".

Look here in the Layout Guide to see how such texts are laid out in the lessons.

Purpose
The purpose of the commentary component is to provide explanatory observations about the point being studied (or any other observations needed at this point in the lesson).

Format
Two different kinds of paragraph may be used in any number and order: comments and notes. The main information should be placed in comments and any less central observations in notes. Comments appear in large font, notes in normal-size font, bulleted, e.g. (in this example there are two comments followed by one note):

Look here in the Layout Guide to see how such texts are laid out in the lessons.

Vocabulary and review
The Vocabulary and review section comes at the end of the lesson, after all the points, and covers the entire content of the lesson from two perspectives: a list of all the new vocabulary introduced, and an exercise that is useful for reviewing everything learnt in the lesson.

The vocabulary component
The vocabulary component lists all the new vocabulary items in alphabetical order in a three-column display. For each item the meaning is given, and for most a part of speech (POS) indication. (The abbreviations used for POS can be seen on the List of abbreviations page.) POS and meanings are all initially hidden, showing only the Miskito items, but can be shown or hidden individually as the user likes. Clicking on a word takes you to the lesson section where the word is first introduced. For example (Lesson 1):

See the Layout Guide for instructions on how to set up a vocabulary component.

The review component
The review component takes the form of an exercise (of any kind that has an input (or cue) and an output (or answer). Items appear as a vertical, numbered list. Answers (to the right of the corresponding cues) are initially hidden and may be shown or hidden individually. For example (Lesson 1):

See the Layout Guide for instructions on how to set up a vocabulary component.