I’ve always enjoyed the code-breaking aspect of reading in a foreign language. If I can’t justify the time to read something vapid but appealing, I tend to pick up the French version and keep Google translate handy for the new words. Still, what I’m really managing is my own challenge level – I have no illusions about how improving the whole exercise is.
When I actually get out there in a French- or Japanese-speaking environment, in my case – put on the spot with actual questions posed by people who expect me to respond in real time – I come home from the day exhilarated and exhausted, having deeply learned. True language competence comes only through the merciless forge of conversation.
We’ve known for decades how to teach second languages. Not only does a language environment have to be immersive, but teaching has to be communicative. That is, the native speaker is telling you something you actually want to know about, and your brain reaches into the special language capacity we’re all born with and figures things out. No internal translating, no drills.
Then, after a certain lag time, the same process has to work the other way around. You must have some pressing point you wish to make and
suddenly you find yourself drawing on all the language you’ve taken in. Halting at first, then more fluently – alcohol helps – you experience the most joyful moment in a language learner’s journey: The view from a new plateau. Suddenly your understanding of your surroundings is crystal clear, as if your ears have popped after a plane ride.
No such moments occur in a traditional language classroom, but most teachers and curriculum writers ignore it. Time and again, language classrooms are adorned with vocabulary lists and grammar rules. The problem starts with the room itself and its removal from most things to talk about.
In my area, where language teaching is a matter of life and death to a culture, aboriginal language classes are still of the “repeat after me” variety. On-the-land programs encourage elders to immerse youth in their language with culturally-appropriate activities, but even there, elders complain that the kids have too low a base level of language knowledge. It’s too hard to break through the blank stares of incomprehension. When it comes to telling students something important – a real instruction – the elders resort to English.
Language acquisition is also proportional to the learner’s respect for the speakers of that language and their identification with the culture.
The whole notion of language instruction is, of course, unnatural. Where classroom teachers conduct their grammar lessons in only the language of instruction, with local language banned from the room, we do see an uptick in learning. The thing is, the topics of discussion — conjugation or dictation — are irrelevant to that learning. As much fluency or more could have been achieved in discussing something more interesting than linguistic analysis.
There’s been a recent fad for a type of language learning that involves actions for each word. There’s no evidence it works, but it’s easy to deliver, so into the curriculum it goes.
Unstructured second-language conversations are uncomfortable for both parties, sometimes to a cringe-worthy degree. The process is chaotic and not easily measureable. Access to native speakers in the numbers needed is impractical in some places, where even teachers are often intermediate-level speakers.
But what’s worse is the guilt of a student who has spent ten years in German class and doesn’t feel comfortable talking to a German person. That guilt is so pervasive that it’s become a stereotype – “I’m hopeless at languages” – but it’s not you, dear student, it’s them. You have been ill-served. After all those years of incompetence, the solution remains to live elsewhere, or to have a foreign girlfriend or boyfriend. In the second language classroom, every day should be a field trip.
Images: Shutterstock
I was absolutely awful at learning a foreign language (Spanish) back when I was a teenager. Total D student. But getting thrust into Italian in my 30s as an expat, even though the process of learning the language is exhausting sometimes, those little moments of discovery and realization are so thrilling I never want to stop.
I can’t tell you how many times I’ve heard some version of your story, Sean. And many people never get to the second part because they lose their confidence and avoid countries where other languages are spoken. Good on you for getting out there!
I took German for years in school and got straight As, but I always felt I couldn’t really speak the language. I knew conjugation tables and grammar rules, but not how to talk to people about normal things. And then I had to go to Germany for a conference and got lost en route in a small town halfway between Munich and the conference site. Everywhere official was closed because it was Sunday. I had to just go out and grab someone off the street to get help. The only someone I could find didn’t speak any English so I was forced to give it a go in German. I stumbled through explaining my problem, and couldn’t understand half of the reply. But I just kept saying “I don’t understand the word ____”, and the guy would stop and explain it to me like I was a child (nicely). For example, I didn’t know the word “umsteigen”, which means to transfer — so the man explained it by saying you get off one train and then get on another train. What would have been a two minute conversation in English took about 15 minutes and a lot of these vocab lessons, but at the end of it I felt exhilarated! I had a real conversation in German! Since then I have worked with a lot of people from foreign countries for whom English is a struggle and I have come to appreciate how poorly you can speak a language and still make yourself understood. That has been the single most important lesson to me about learning a language — don’t feel bad because you can’t speak perfectly, just give it a go! That’s how you get there.
I have yet another version of Sean’s story. I studied French in school from grade 4 until I finally, in great relief and exasperation, dropped out in grade 12. Sure, I learned something, and can maybe read one of the more populist newspapers. But I never earned a mark higher than a C, I’m sure, and I never could get much beyond “j’etudie francais pour huite annees dans l’ecole, mais je ne comprends pas” in conversation.
I spent the year after high school as an exchange student in Brazil. At first I was disoriented by my all-Portuguese environment. Then, increasingly annoyed with the one person in my tiny sphere of acquaintance who spoke English, which was the only thing we had in common. Finally, I became bored and a little desperate for human connection. But there were two young brothers who lived in the house too, children of one of the domestic employees, who must have been maybe 6 and 9 and the time. The adults around me were all kind of too busy or not interested enough to engage with my crude communication. I was too awkward and uncomfortable to make much conversational progress with kids my own age. But Mano and Rodrigo? They had all the time in the world, and didn’t seem to mind at all that I was a stone cold weirdo–because I had all the time in the world too. We kicked an old soccer ball around a stone courtyard for hours on end, me listening to their chatter and trying to join in from time to time. We watched TV together–such gloriously crappy TV!–and they delighted in telling me what was going on. I tried to help them with their math homework (sorry, little dudes!). They had infinite patience, relatively simple syntax, modest vocabularies, and freed me completely from the need to feel like a jackass when I messed up. They were the ideal teachers.
So, Tom. How many words is that comment? Would it kill you to write a guest post?
(PS – I loved your post. Sorry not to say that!)
I love that story, Tom. You’re so right that children make the best teachers for beginners. And not just in language — they’re good at explaining just about anything from a novice perspective.