Syllabary Dictation Practice

Workbook

Michael W S Joyner

http://www.CherokeeLessons.com/
Copyright 2010 - All Rights Reserved

ISBN: 978-0-557-68640-7

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The importance of learning the Cherokee Syllabary:

The majority of Cherokee Language documents are composed in the Cherokee Syllabary. In addition, if you wish to
communicate with someone via written or electronic means the majority of Cherokee Speakers will be expecting you to use
the Cherokee Syllabary. And contrary to popular belief, learning the Cherokee Syllabary is not that difficult, if the right
technique is used.

The importance in writing to learn the Cherokee Syllabary.

The best way to learn any writing system is by writing it. Not with flash cards. Now, don't get me wrong, flash cards
can be very useful in learning to read the Cherokee Syllabary and is extremely important when learning Cherokee Language
Vocabulary, but, you will not be very good at it, unless you learn to write it. The physical act of writing each Cherokee
Syllabary Letter immediately after saying what letter you are going to write will dramatically reduce the amount of time it
takes to learn the Cherokee Syllabary.

Dull repetition is not the answer.

With the need for the physical act of writing clearly stated for you to be able to properly learn the Cherokee Syllabary,
simply starting out by writing '', '', ', '', '', '', '' over and over will not work. Your brain and hand and arm will
quickly become numb to the information you are trying to learn and you will encounter great difficulty going beyond 8 or
so letters. Instead what we need to do is write the different letters out in such a pattern so that your brain does not quickly
become numb to what we are trying to learn, giving us the ability to learn all 85 letters in very short order.

Graduated Interval Recall is the answer.

Paraphrased from Wikipedia: Graduated-interval recall is a specific method of spaced repetition, published by Paul Pimsleur
in 1967. It is particularly suited to programmed audio instruction due to the very short times (measured in seconds or
minutes) between the first few repetitions, unlike other forms of spaced repetition which may not require such precise
timings.

Graduated Interval Recall is a complex name for a very simple theory about memory. No aspect of learning a foreign
language is more important than memory, yet before Dr. Pimsleur's work, no one had explored more effective ways for
building language memory.

In his research, Dr. Pimsleur discovered how long students remembered new information and at what intervals they needed
to be reminded of it. If reminded too soon or too late, they failed to retain the information.

How Graduated Interval Recall ts in.

After studying Dr. Pimsleur's Graduated Interval Recall methodology, I created special audio files for different groupings of
the Cherokee Syllabary letters that dictate when I should write each letter.

I did this after failing miserably in trying to learn the Cherokee Syllabary in a timely fashion using simple repetition. After
doing this, I was able to finish learning the Cherokee Syllabary in a day and a half. I also know from experience that if
I don't exercise this knowledge, losing it, that I can redo a much briefer version of the initial exercise and regain the lost
knowledge in very short order. This was not possible for me before creating these special audio sets.

The results of my efforts are recreated here for use by others in the hopes that others who are also having difficulty will
instead experience ease of learning and the joy that the writing as well as reading the Cherokee Syllabary will bring.

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The exercises

Each exercise set plays for about 30 minutes. This should be short enough to allow even a busy individual to do at least one
exercise per day. There also is nothing requiring that you limit yourself to only one exercise per day.

On the following pages, you will find writing guidelines for each of the Syllabary Letters. Each guideline matches one
Syllabary exercise. It is recommended that you print them out and have the sheet that matches your practice set handy as
you do these exercises.

After you have completed all of these exercises, you can then try the full dictation exercise. The full dictation exercise
works both as a test of your Syllabary writing skills and as an aid for long term memory retention.

It also can be used an aid of time to quickly bring back your Syllabary reading and writing skills for when you have not
worked with the Syllabary for an extended period. The self check sheets that match the full dictation exercise are after the
writing guideline sheets.

After the self check sheets there is a blank penmanship paper for copying should you not have penmanship paper available.

Let us know

If you find this language material useful, and would like to see more produced, let us know. Visit http://www.
CherokeeLessons.com/ and join the online language discussion forums.

The people volunteering to produce this material want to hear from you!

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