Our stories are part of a language learning process

Buenos Dias! Receive greetings from Guerrero Mexico.

that we have used to teach ourselves English.

Las novelas romanticas de Artcamp se originan en cursos

de aprendizaje del idioma involucrando ejercicios

con traducciones y ensayos literarios

The romantic novels of Artcamp originate in language training

courses involving translations and creative writing exercises.

Estas son historias verdaderas, transformadas por el arte, en las

cuales cada mujer se forma siguiendo los sentimientos de su corazon.

These are true stories, transformed by art, of the ways in which

every woman*s destiny is formed by the movements of her heart.

Azucena es la Mexicana que siguio a su corazon en el camino

a su destino donde quiera que este la lleve.

Azucena is the Mexican woman who followed her heart on the road to

her destiny wherever that way leads.

This is an experimental literary process born in translation

exercises associated with the language learning courses

of Mexican village women in their handcrafts production cooperative.

This is an epic love story that is also a story about love itself.

Azucena is one of a trilogy of romantic novels that is being readied;

this writing began years ago by the transcription of anecdotal stories

in crude English prose; the coarse prose was then assigned to stdents

as homework in the self-teach language school, innovated by the Co-op.

So, the students dutifully translated the English into native Spanish

and that has proved an effective way to learn vocabulary

and basic grammar and practical syntax.

The students usually start from scratch

by looking up the English words up as they go along

in an English- Spanish Dictionary.

Then another year, perhaps, these translations were given

to another group of students for them to translate them into English;

so the stories’ verses have been forged by translating back and forth.

The story itself is constructed to present on a scene-a-day basis

the world of a country girl and that of her macho bullrider boyfriend.

It is a true story, transformed by art; the story of one woman’s heart

Estimados amigos gracias por responder a nuestra carta

y ofrecer colaborar con nosotras.

Azucena is one of our stories that we have been working on for years

by assigning translation exercises

from Spanish to English then back to Spanish then back to English again and so on.

The verses were composed in this way.

Azucena is about the Mexican village girl who falls in love with a macho bull-rider;

she is the Mexican woman who follows her destiny wherever her heart leads her.

We designed the present version

in a scene-a-day presentation in 2001-2002.

There are more than 200 scenes so the entire “movie” takes 7+ months.

The presentation is via e/mail list

so each scene can be briefly appreciated.

This is an experimental literary form

that we have made up; we realized

that the Spanish/English presentation

will serve teachers and students.

In order to extend the benefits of our work in progress,

we welcome the help of friends

who would translate our verses into other languages.

*********************************************************

Hola maestras y estudiantes

Le ofrecemos nuestra novela Azucena, escrita en espanol y ingles,

como una herramienta

que ustedes pueda usar para aprender nuestro idioma.

Buscamos unos aliados de otros idiomas para traducir Azucena

en una nueva version, ahora tri-lengue.

Envio un Word doc con las primeras escenas de Azucena

para que pueda tener una idea de que se trata.

Gracias por escribirnos. Esperamos su respuesta.

****************************************************

Hola Rayelan, we do not know any Spanish language typing software

One way that Nohemi learned such good English was that she got fast

on a Typing Tutor

What happened was that she learned the shapes of the words and how

the letters are combined

The envisioned language course has 2 dimensions

1/ written-read

2/ heard-said

Typing Tudors type program and translations INTO ones own language

from a translation of the target language and another third language

(example original Italian of Leonardo d’Vince or Dante Aligieri)

the way the Nohemi filled her notebooks is a great exercise.

One can look the words up and solve as a puzzle

also use the third language as point of reference.

Hear/said is all about tapes and pronuciation

and forcing the ear to hear the sounds

by consinuous repitition so that the

tongue can have a chance to

pronounce them correctly.

At 07:20 PM 4/29/2002 -0400, you wrote:

In a message dated 4/29/2002 3:13:58 PM Pacific Daylight Time,

artcamp2002@yahoo.com writes:

<< We are going to be developing language learning program and will

love to

collaborate with you. >>

Yes, I would love to collaborate. I just started teaching a class for

non

English speakers on how to use the computer to learn English. As part

of it

we have to learn to type with more than two fingers and we have to

learn how

to send email.

Do you know of any internet typing programs in Spanish?

Our school has no typing programs in Spanish… and how do you teach

someone who doesn’t speak English how to use a typing program that has all

the directions in English???

Dear Rayelan here are some notes of ideas about the Language Training

Program

there *ought* to be an important market for the English-Spanish

Spanish-English models.

ENGLISH SPANISH LANGUAGE TRAINING COURSE CD ROM

Ear/Mouth Training

Initial Exposure: tape training on vowel sounds, student repeats our

loud …

Advanced Course: tape training on words and phrases student repeats

aloud…

The sounds come IN the ear and OUT the mouth

The ear learns to distinguish the sounds so the mouth can learn how

to form the sounds.

The ear has to learn to hear before the mouth has a chance of making

the right sounds.

The key is repetition something on the order of 10,000 repetitions in

this phase of course.

The student must be motivated enough to do the reps or the rest of

the course isnt worth it

Read/Write Training

A good English-Spanish Dictionary is included in the CDROM package.

Initial Exposure: the student is given a single paragraph

from Leonardo d*Vinci*s notebooks

and/or from passages of Dante Aligieri*s *Comedia Divina*.

The paragraph from Dante or Leonardo is printed on the Page

in two side-by-side columns:

one version is in the English language, and one in original Italian.

The course assignment is to translate the passage

Into one*s own native Spanish language

Of course, the language training course

Works just as well in reverse

Where the student is provided

With the passage in the Spanish language

alongside the original Italian.

Either way, the student puzzles out the translation,

Until he or she can *figure it out*

The cognitive experience of *discovery*

Is the key to the efficacy of this technique

Once the student *figures it out* he or she

Translates it into his or her own language.

This is an excellent training to learn words

And prases and how to make words work.

An English-Spanish Typing Tudor on CDROM

The student drills and learns to type at same time

The student reads and familiarizes him or herself

With a descriptic novelistic vignettes, a love story.

The students read the story and at the same time they

Re-live the reading as they keep up with the streaming

Words as they pass by on the screen one is typing fast

Trying to keep up with them at the same time reading.

By going very fast like this the brain becomes sharper

and picks up all the words and phrasing and spelling

and everything very well.

At 04:05 AM 5/1/2002 -0400, you wrote:

You have the same idea that I have…

I can take a Spanish speaking person from no English at all to being

able to get by in the US in about two months.

I have never worked with anyone to perfect the language. My specialty

is taking people who don’t speak a word of English and teaching them the

alphabet, the sounds of the letters and words, and a very basic vocabulary.

I really love it when my students and I can have conversations. My

Spanish is limited, but once they learn enough, we can communicate.

The class on the Internet seems to be going very well. Two of the men

who are taking it are about 30. They still work in the fields, and both of

them say it is time to start looking for another profession. They are too

intelligent to be wasted in the fields. If they had been born in the US they

would probably be engineers or doctors.

I get so angry when I see talent wasted due to economic hardships!

And I see it everyday!

Let me know a little more of your idea… I can’t quite see your vision,

only my own!!

Now let us go to the other level where we both want to be

because we are building up the new world in this way

even though it seems like an impossible challenge

there is the hope of self-developing intelligence in humanity.

The tape you are making is an excellent idea.

Falling in love is, of course, the best way to learn a language.

otherwise, tape training is the most effective way

of learning the heard and spoken language.

The student must simply expose herself

to hundreds of hours of concentration and repeating.

It is the effort that one makes that determines the prize’s value.

That was one of Leonardo’s great virtues

- he spent a lot of time sitting in a chair.

For written and read language the case of Nohemi is outstanding;

in fifteen months she could read and write beautiful English.

There were two aspects to Nohemi-s training

1. Typing Tutor 2. translations to Spanish of Leonardo’s notebooks

We have been uploading developments to

http://www.artcamp.com.mx/

please take a look over and show your class -

the new sections about Tecalpulco are written in Spanish and English

so they are also useful for language-learning purposes.

In the http://www.artcamp.com.mx/AZ/0.html AZTEC CALENDAR DAY SIGNS

there are ten articles about the Calendar Stone

and its meaning written in English and Spanish side by side.

Tell your teacher friends about us we have a directory for teachers

and we do not try to change the world by changing anybodys wrong ideas

we will change the work by supplying our own good ideas.

By all means make us a copy of the language tape and materials,

we should collaborate on a unique effective language learning tool.

All of the elements of effective language learning,

including falling in love:

could be part of the curriculum of our language website

supported software.

That seems like a worthwhile product with a broad array of prospects:

schools and tourists and governments and private people

still need to learn language

even this benighted post-information salami and baloney age.

If you can demonstrate a novel method

with a good story that goes with it

about why all the normal academic language-learning methods

do NOT work.

Show how the reading-writing function

is distinct from the hearing-saying function;

Reading-writing is to experience meaning as a cognitive function

- is to get an *idea*;

hearing-saying is to to train the ear and tongue

and acustom them to the sounds.

It seems as if we have stumbled across a golden opportunity, rayelan;

you are living right all the grace that you exude caught a bright fish

ENGLISH SPANISH LANGUAGE TRAINING COURSE CD ROM

Ear/Mouth Training

Initial Exposure: tape training on vowel sounds,

student repeats our loud …

Advanced Course: tape training on words and phrases

student repeats aloud…

The sounds come IN the ear and OUT the mouth

The ear learns to distinguish the sounds

so the mouth can learn how to form the sounds.

The ear has to learn to hear

before the mouth has a chance of making the right sounds.

The key is repetition

something on the order of 10,000 repetitions in this phase of course.

The student must be motivated enough to do the reps

or the rest of the course isn’t going to teach her.

Read/Write Training

A good English-Spanish Dictionary is included in the CDROM package.

Initial Exposure: the student is given a single paragraph

from Leonardo d*Vinci*s notebooks

and/or from passages of Dante Aligieri*s *Comedia Divina*.

The paragraph from Dante or Leonardo is printed on the Page

in two side-by-side columns:

one version is in the English language, and one in original Italian.

The course assignment is to translate the passage

Into one*s own native Spanish language

Of course, the language training course

Works just as well in reverse

for Spanish language learning

Where the student is provided

With the passage in the Spanish language

alongside the original Italian,

her task being to translate to native English.

Either way, the student puzzles out the translation,

Until he or she can *figure it out*

The cognitive experience of *discovery*

Is the key to the efficacy of this technique

writes it out in his or her native language.

This is an excellent training to learn words

and prases and how words work to form ideas.

An English-Spanish Typing Tudor on CDROM

The student drills and learns to type at same time

The student reads and familiarizes him or herself

with a descriptic novelistic vignettes, a love story.

The students read the story and at the same time they

re-live the reading as they keep up with the streaming

words as they pass by on the screen one is typing fast

trying to keep typing after the words while reading them.

By going very fast like this the brain becomes sharper

and picks up all the words and phrasing and spelling

and everything very well. Normal language teaching

is TOO slow, the brain goes numb and falls asleep.

At 10:03 AM 5/2/2002 -0500, you wrote:

Polish Radio Warsaw Reports:

“Polish secondary students have broken the Guinness Book of World

Records in the longest lesson category when 24 students from V-

attended a Polish language class for 40 hours and 15 minutes,

improving the previous record in this category by 3 hours.”

They did not say if the students improved their Polish.

Hola Rayelan hope you are well are the language tapes are being made?

remember your tapes make the audio-verbal part of the course

our translation techniques make the wrote-read part of the course.

It is a two dimensional program that is its unique feature

and we will produce an essay or descriptives

of the way languages are effectively learned

and about why some common forms of language training

are NOT effective in learning a foreign language.

It could be called (let me think)

the HEAR/SAY READ/WRITE Language Training Method.

Hola soy Alma; vivo en Tecalpulco, tengo 16 años;
trabajo en la cooperativa de Artcamp.

Hi, I am Alma; I live in Tecalpulco, I am 16 years old;
and work in the Artcamp’s cooperative.

Estoy muy orgullosa de ser parte de este grupo de mujeres

trabajadoras, con ellas he aprendido

a valorar el trabajo que hago
y a sentirme orgullosa de lo que producimos.

I am very proud to be part of
this hard working women group, with them I have learned
to appreciate the work I do and to feel proud of what we produce.

No es facil decidir continuar produciendo artesanias
en estos tiempos dificiles para todos,

sin embargo, he aprendido que podremos lograr exito si persistimos
y trabajamos duro y realmente creo que asi sera.

It is not easy to decide to keep ongoing producing artcrafts during

this hard times for everyone,

however, I learned that we can succed if we persist and work hard and

I really believe this to be true.

Nuestras condiciones no son faciles, pero creo que todo lo que vale

la pena cuesta trabajo,

ademas como mujer he aprendido que logramos sobrevivir a traves de

los años

generacion tras generacion a pesar de cualesquier circunstancia y de

alguna manera

siempre hemos logrado mantener vivas nuestras tradiciones y

artesanias, asi que creo que

esto continuara asi en la medida en que yo y ellas asi lo decidamos.

Our current conditions are not easy, but I think that everything that

is worth requires effort to do,

furthermore, as woman I learned that we have survived through the

years, generation after

generation despite any circustances and somehow we have always

managed to keep our traditions

and handcrafts alive, so I think that this will keep ongoing to the

degree that myself and them decide that it would be.

Nuestro exito depende de que persistamos trabajando y valorando

nuestro trabajo

y el valor cultural que contiene. Eso es algo que mientras estemos

aqui, nunca morira.

Y si no es mi generacion la que logre el exito, vendra otra y despues

otra mas, pero

en tanto tengamos nuestra atencion en preservar lo valioso de lo que

nuestras artesanias

representan, triunfaremos.

Our success depends on us persisting working and giving to our work

the value it deserves

as well as the cultural value that it contains. This is something

that as long as we are alive, will

never die. And if my generation does not succeed, well… another

will come and another …

but as long as our attention is kept on how worth is to preserve what

our values and handcrafts represent, we will succeed

Hola mi nombre es María y quisiera comentarles un poco de mi.

Yo deje de estudiar para ayudar a mi mama

y decidí ayudarle en el taller para poder cubrir los gastos de la

casa

y los de mi hermana menor quien esta en primer año de primaria

y quien necesita zapatos, libretas, ropa, calcetas y otras cosas

que quiero comprar para ella.

Hello my name is María and I*d like to comment a little about me.

I, María, left studies to help my mother and I decided to help her

and my mama is in the shop because the household expenses and my

little sister

who is in first grade for my little sister I have to buy shoes,

notebook, clothes, stockings.

me preocupaba mucho, esto era debido a no contar

con el apoyo de mi papa, asi que salir adelante fue dificil

pero no imposible y de alguna manera seguimos aqui.

Ahora que estoy en la cooperativa, estoy aprendiendo a utilizar las

computadoras

y estoy entrenandome a escribir a maquina y a aprender ingles

con un programa computarizado que se llama Typing Tutor.

It worries me a lot without the support of my father we can not get

ahead without him

but without him we move foreward only a little. Where I work at the

cooperative I learn

how to use a computer and Typing Tutor to show me how to typewrite

and read English.

cara vez que regresamos de trabajar a ella le da mucho gusto verme!

Voy a seguir trabajando duro en la cooperativa , entrenándome y

aprendiendo lo que sea necesario para que triunfemos

y salgamos adelante entre todas, el trabajar de este modo me ha

enseñado

que como grupo organizado es mas fácil sobrevivir

y que si trabajamos y continuamos, al final lograremos tener éxito.

My little sister - when we return from working, she is so happy to

see me!

I am going to keep working hard at the cooperative,

training and learning whatever is needed so we can succeed

and keep ongoing together, to work this way

has taught me that as an organized group is easier to live,

and that if we work and keep on, we will triumph at the end.

Hola friend, greetings from Guerrero Mexico

Algunas de nosotras estudiamos ingles en los Estados Unidos

(las jóvenes que se fueron con sus papas mientras ellos trabajaban de

braceros por allá). Gracias a ellas, ahora tenemos mas facilidad para

aprender

y usar este idioma.

Some of us studied English in the United States

(as youth going with their parents who worked as bracero laborers

there)

Thanks to them we have the facility to learn and use the language.

Nosotras estamos aprendiendo a base de traducciones

que hacemos comoejercicios en nuestras casas y ellas nos corrigen

y así poco a poco vamostodas mejorando en esta difícil tarea.

We are learning based upon translations

that we make as exercises in our homes and they correct us and little

by little

we are improving in this difficult task.

Nos cuesta mucho trabajo y es muy difícil, pero sabemos que si

queremos tener éxito,

esto va a ser primordial manejarlo, así que pues ni modo,

lo tenemos que hacer cueste lo que cueste.

It costs us a lot of work and it is very difficult,

but we know that if we wish for success, this is necessary to work

for it,

and so therefore we do what we must do.

Hace años nos dijeron que debíamos utilizar el Internet

para poder dejar de ser lo desconocidos que somos.

Years ago we were told that we ought to utilize Internet

to stop being the unknowns that we are.

Algunos de los miembros de nuestra cooperativa han trabajado

por casi tres años en aprender HTLM y los programas necesarios

para poder crear nuestro sitio web.

Contratamos algunos maestros de computación para que nos ayudaran.

Some members of our cooperative have worked for nearly three years

to learn the HTML code and the programs necessary to be able to be

able to

create our web site We hired some teachers of computation to help us.

Finalmente creamos nuestro sitio web

pero todavía estamos tratando de hacer que funciona para nosotras

Finally we created our web site and we are trying to make this work

for us.

Confiamos en que Dios nos va a ayudar porque tenemos mucho que ofrecer

y porque sabemos producir nuestras artesanías y constantemente

buscamos

cada día nuevas formas para crear lo que nos indican que el mercado

de hoy quiere.

We believe that God is going to help us because we have much to offer

and because we know how to produce our handcrafts and constantly we

seek

each day new forms to create what the markets of today desire.

Quiero darte la dirección del sitio web que creamos (este es el tercer

intento mejorado) de Artcamp (esto es una abreviación de Artesanas

Campesinas),

y es el nombre de nuestra cooperativa.

I want to give you the address of our website that we created

(it is the third attempt to improve it) of Artcamp

(this is an abbreviation of Artesanas Campesinas which means in

English,

Rural Women Artisans.

Me gustaría que lo visites y nos aconsejes sobre lo que debemos de

estar

haciendo para mejorarlo y poder obtener beneficios del mismo,

como nos dijo el amigo que nos aconsejo hacer este proyecto.

I would like that you visit it and advise us about what we should be

doing

to improve and to gain advantage of it like our friend said who

advised us to do this project.

La dirección es http://www.artcamp.com.mx

Estaré esperando tus comentarios.

The address is http://www.artcamp.com.mx

We will wait for your commentaries.

Eso es todo por el momento, muchas gracias por reconocernos

y esperamos estar en contacto.

That is all for the moment, many thanks for recognizing us

and we hope to be in contact.

Sus amigas en Guerrero México,

saludos todas las mujeres de la cooperativa

de Artcamp:

Your friends in Guerrero México, greetings from all the women of the

Artcamp cooperative.

Yolanda Areli Tamara Marcela Maria Hilaria, Luz, y Anglica y las otras

Ojalá que un dia nos puede visitar aquí en México!

We hope that one day you may visit us in Mexico!

Atentamente,

Nohemi

At 02:03 PM 10/29/2002 -0800, you wrote:

Dear Maria,

Mr. Gaines forwarded this message to me because I teach Spanish here at East Bakersfield High School. I would be very interested to use your story in my upper level classes as a learning tool for translation. I think the French teacher would also be willing to translate it into French. The exchange of your goods would be wonderful, as you offer some beautiful artifacts. I am especially interested in the silver brooches, bracelets and rings.

Please let me know if you are interested in working with us. Also, is there a charge for using your story?

Thank you,

Patti Fortmeyer

take_action2 You are invited to experience Azucena Scene-a-Day Novel. Enter here.