Surrender Value

There's more to language-learning than memorizing vocabulary. A communicative approach is "higher-surrender."

This, from the Encyclopedic Dictionary of Applied Linguistics:

> Surrender Value
>
> This concept is taken from the world of insurance. A policy with
> high surrender value yields a quick return on investment.
> Wilkins (1974) observes that in some situations (e.g. on pre-
> sessional courses) the learner requires a swift ‘return’ on
> ‘investment’ made, in terms of ability to communicate. Wilkins
> argues that the notional/functional syllabus provides this since
> the learner is soon able to use language to communicative ends.
> The structural syllabus, in contrast, has low surrender value
> because it may take a considerable time before the learner has
> enough grammar to attempt communication. (1974).

Tonight, I'm finding myself just memorizing parts. I'm pretty sure that memorization is a big part of learning to play. But tonight, I'm letting myself get hung up at every "mistake" and not playing communicatively at all. Being limited to just memorizing "vocabulary," it feels like I'm compromising the development of the skill of recovering from a missed note--the very skill that would supersede the need to have parts memorized (or at least that would allow for the creative improvisatory recovery from something I "went for," but missed.) The question comes up: "OK, so why not just stop memorizing vocabulary tonight and work on the development of that skill?" And the answer is: "Fine . . . and how do I do that?"

Hmm . . . I'm going to have to define "communicative playing" at some point. . . . And "improvisation."