Dreaming of the perfect Spanish class

I felt depressed after leaving Spanish class yesterday.  Granted, it is a just-because-I-want-to class at an institute at a local university.  But, by darn, I wanted to have the chance to ratchet up my declining fluency in Spanish. And that wasn't happening.

I started daydreaming about what my perfect Spanish class would look like.  Here is the rosy picture I painted in my mind.

First, and most importantly, I would have the chance to speak lots of Spanish for the hour and a half class. In my perfect class, I was paired up with other participants of varying levels of ability and allowed to talk and talk and talk in Spanish about many topics.

In contrast, yesterday our whole group of 20 worked together the entire time. I  had the chance to formulate only two full sentences in Spanish. Two sentences for each of the six classes is only a 12 sentence total! That amount of Spanish would barely get me a plate of red enchiladas (my favorite) ordered in a Mexican food restaurant!.

Next, in my perfect class, grammar instruction would take a back seat, and I mean way in the back. I'll get my shield ready to defend myself against the arrows of those who believe grammar is akin to motherhood and apple pie.  Yes, I do think that at some level of learning, grammar knowledge may be helpful to some people.  And, no, I am not a grammar hater.  I actually think it is fascinating to discover how a new language is put together.

But when a speaker is trying to express an idea in another language, the last thing that person needs at that point is to be corrected. So someone speaking Spanish makes an error and uses the preterit verb tense instead of the imperfect.  Is the sentence still comprehensible?  Probably. That person's mind is completely concentrating on making meaning.  A correction, especially when accompanied by an extended grammar explanation, is an interruption in the thinking process.  

One poor participant in our class yesterday was asked to read aloud her paragraph for a second time. Each time she used an incorrect verb, the instructor stopped her and gave an extensive grammar explanation to the class.  When the participant was through reading, she looked like she had been wrung through a wringer.  Not only was I myself bored with the repeated grammar explanations,  I felt really sorry for her. In the future her fluency may to be even lower because she will be using her energies to worry about using the correct past tense.

Finally, in my perfect Spanish class, the atmosphere would be calm, welcoming, non-judgmental, and playful. Yes, I want to have fun!    We speakers of other language put enough pressure on ourselves to be perfect without experiencing outside pressure to reach that unattainable goal.  I would rather be comfortable producing language and make a few mistakes (inevitable, even in one's native language) than uptight and thinking I need to be error-free.

My time on the soapbox is up!  But I'll keep dreaming about that perfect Spanish class I hope to find one day.

  

Connecting with Other Language Enthusiasts

Okay.  I was going to make the title of this post, "Connecting with Other Language Nerds,"  but I decided that "nerd"  may have a pejorative connotation, while "enthusiast" sounds rather elegant. 

I can proudly say that I am a language enthusiast. Whichever term you prefer to describe someone who enjoys learning languages, just for the sake of learning languages, it is always heartening to connect with other people who share your passion for languages.

In previous posts, I described how much fun it has been participating in Duolingo, a (free!) online language program.  I work on Duolingo every day for about an hour, practicing Spanish, Portuguese, French, and now Irish. It is an hour that I look forward to every day.  My brain gets a workout by jumping into new worlds created by different sounds, words, and structures. And my streak (not missing a day) on Duolingo is now at  279 days!

Duolingo

But Duolingo is not just all about language learning.  It has a social media aspect that I have dipped my toe into and found to be engaging, even addictive.  I'll do a disclaimer here and admit that I have Facebook and Twitter accounts, but that I am not a very active user.  So it has been a revelation to me that I really am a social person, at least as long as languages are the topic!

One of the features of Duolingo is the option of translating articles from the Internet from another language into your native language.  The activity is a group translation, because users can edit and comment on each others' translations.  Although in the beginning I would take each correction to my translations a little too personally, I have discovered that the majority of people make gentle but helpful comments.

My translation tier in English and Spanish

Another feature of Duolingo is  "following" other participants. The first person I decided to follow on Duolingo had written a  helpful comment on my translation. He sounded like a person who knew what he was talking about.  For other contacts, I received messages that they wanted to follow me!  So I in turn follow two young ladies who appear to be very enthusiastic language learners.  The latest person I am following is a multilingual Brazilian who is new to Duolingo but has hit the ground running, racking up lots of XP's (Experience Points) in a short amount of time.

Duolingo leaderboard for XP's

Every time I log on to Duolingo, I can't help checking the Leaderboard to see how many of my connections have been active users and which ones are ahead of me!.  I am usually about mid-way in the pack!  I also notice connections with a 0 for XP's who haven't participated in quite a while.  

I wonder what causes people to start and then stop a language program?  I suppose you have to be a little over the top about languages, a true language nerd, I mean enthusiast, to fit languages into our busy lives. 

    

Language and Ego

Does your ego get in the way of acquiring a second language?  Mine does.  And I believe that lots of us allow ego to take control of our brains, especially when we attempt to speak a new language.

Some synonyms for "ego" are "self-esteem," "self-respect," and "self-confidence."  Cambridge Dictionary Online defines ego as the idea or opinion that you have of yourself, of your level of ability, and your intelligence.  Why does the attempt to learn a new language come into conflict with your ego? 

I know that my Spanish language abilities have become increasing rusty over the years.   I decided to take a step to force myself to speak more Spanish by joining a group of about fifteen adult learners at a local university for the short course, "Spanish Conversation Storytelling." 

We were a quiet group on our first day of class, staking out preferred seating spots and table companions.  The instructor gave an introduction to the course, using clear, comprehensible Spanish. Then she asked us to raise our hands if we understood everything she had said, most of it, or very little of it.  I tentatively (but proudly, I must admit), raised my hand with the "everything" group. 

A little later, the instructor asked us to divide ourselves into groups, corresponding to the three groups previously identified, Beginning, Intermediate, and Advanced.  I could feel ego at work as I debated over joining Intermediate or Advanced.    And I could sense tension in the room as others made their decisions also. Should you join a higher group and put yourself at risk of not knowing as much as the other members, or should you play it safe and be the star pupil of a lower ability group?   I decided to go for it and joined the Advanced Group.   

Four of us identified ourselves as Advanced Learners.  We tentatively started speaking Spanish, trying to calm our egos by determining our own level of speaking ability compared to our companions (jockeying for position, so to speak).  And I noticed that each of us was making disclaimers as to our Spanish speaking ability, just in case anyone would expect us to be a fluent speaker. 

One person said she had lived in Central America, but that since returning to the United States, had not had the opportunity to speak very much Spanish.  Another person said she was of Hispanic background, but that her family always spoke English, so she didn't feel that she was a strong Spanish speaker.  Another person said he had been in the process of studying Spanish for ten years.  And as for me (ego taking strong hold here), I neglected to tell the group that I had done a Master's degree in Spanish many years ago and had taught Spanish for quite a few years, but that the most recent language I had taught was Portuguese.  I suppose I should have revealed my language background so they would be more understanding when I let Portuguese influence my Spanish (which happens more often than not).  Every group member was wrestling with ego  when confronted with the necessity of speaking a second language.

I worried about my accent in Spanish.  I worried because I can't produce a good Spanish rolled 'r'.

I worried about words I didn't know the Spanish equivalents of, like shirt collar and nanny.  I worried because it appeared that my advanced companions were not understanding all of what I said.  I worried when I caught myself making an error.  My ego was taking a beating, and I'll bet my ego was not the only one in the room suffering.

For our next class, I may take along a copy of this quote to help in taming my ego.

They say "to learn another language is to have another soul."  Maybe my second, Spanish speaking soul, will be more interested in communicating with others than in feeding an insatiable ego!

  

NIne hours to learn a language? Really?

I'm hoping to teach a short, six-weeks Portuguese course this summer at a local institute. The class would be one day a week for 90 minutes, which makes a grand total of nine hours of instruction. Talk about cockeyed optimism!  "What can anyone learn about another language in 540 minutes?" I asked myself.

I have a selfish motivation for wanting to teach the course, I must admit.  Portuguese is one of the world languages I have fallen in love with. Brazilians say that Portuguese is the language of the angels (a língua dos anjos).   I can well imagine those kind, winged creatures speaking it.

The sounds of Portuguese are soft and gentle, and the grammar is not formidable.   A certain playfulness exists in the language. What could be more satisfying than sharing a language I enjoy with others? 

But immediately the practicality of planning a nine hour course raised its ugly head.  "So much to learn, so little time," my T-shirt should read.  I turned to the Internet for Portuguese materials.  It seems that authors of Portuguese language books are also cockeyed optimists!  Learn Portuguese in 7 days, promises one book. Portuguese in 10 minutes a day, proclaims another.

As much as we would like to think that we can learn another language in a short time, most people do not have that experience. And the definition of "learn" is murky. Are we talking about meeting and greeting someone, solving the problem of lost luggage, or translating at the United Nations?  So many levels of language ability exist (and in various modalities - speaking, listening, reading, writing) that "learn" can mean almost anything we want it to.

So, what do I think participants in my Portuguese course can learn in their nine hours, which are equivalent to about three weeks of a college language course?  The first three classes (4.5 hours) could be spent becoming acquainted with the sounds of Portuguese.

Participants would be in a"Silent Period" in which they would listen to spoken Portuguese but not be required to speak it.  My task would be to speak to them in clear, comprehensible Portuguese and make sure they could understand the message.  (Careful planning and orchestration needed here!)

Plans for the rest of the course would include Day 4, saying hello and goodbye; Day 5, talking about oneself; and Day 6, describing other people and things.

And that would be it!  Our time would be up!  As our goodbyes are being said, we can talk about what the next steps in Portuguese could be.  For book lovers, I will recommend The Everything Essential Brazilian Portuguese Book: All you need to learn Brazilian Portuguese in no time by Fernanda Ferreira.    I do wonder how long "no time" is, though.

For techies, I will recommend signing up to the free web-based program, Duolingo, which makes language learning a truly fun game.

Can you learn a new language in nine hours?  Not really. But you may just start a hobby that will bring countless hours of enjoyment for a lifetime.
 

Can language influence thoughts and actions?

"Could your language affect your ability to save money?"  the TED announcer asked as he introduced a recent podcast.  I was doing a daily walk using an iPhone plugged into earphones when I heard this intriguing title.  Two of my favorite topics rolled into one talk - language and economics!

This TED talk was done in February 2013 by behavioral economist Keith Chen from Yale University.  He and his colleagues have been testing an hypothesis concerning the correlation between language structures and monetary savings rates.

Here is the gist of his argument.  Feeding my inner grammar nerd was the observation that some languages (like English) have special structures for future time. Chen calls these languages "futured languages."   We say, "It will rain," adding "will" to the verb, or "It is going to rain," using a progressive form of the verb "to go"  to talk about a future event.

How we conceptualize the world in English

Other languages, like Chinese, do not use a different form of the verb for past, present or future. Chen categorizes them as "futureless languages."  The Chinese sentence would contain the equivalent of the plain verb, "rain."

And since I am often fretting about family money matters (especially trying to find the right balance between spending and saving), I was also intrigued by the idea that my native language structures could be influencing my bank account!

The conclusion reached by Chen (after much statistical analysis) was that when people speak a language that requires a new structure for the future, they tend to disassociate the present from the future, making it harder to save for the future.  The citizens of the United States and Great Britain fall into this category. In Chinese and Finnish, on the other hand, speakers do not change the verb from present to future tense, so they do not see the future as distant, and therefore tend to save more.     

As I thought about the Chen study, a red flag was raised in my mind from the field of Linguistics about the relationship between language and thought.  Linguists have rejected the strongest form of the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis, which states that our language determines how we think about the world. However, linguists do discuss a weaker form of the hypothesis, which allows for some investigation of the issue.

Another reason the Chen study interested me was that it supported my contention that language (and Linguistics, the study of language), has a connection to so many other important topics, in this case, Economics.  I used to tell my Linguistics students, "Linguistics has its finger in everyone else's pie."

If the idea that there is a connection between language and thought interests you as much as it does me, you may want to watch this 12 minute video of Keith Chen presenting his ideas  TED talk.  At the end of the presentation, Chen states that he is looking for tools to make us better savers. And speaking for myself, I do believe that is an idea worth investigating!   

Learning Irish just because

Several months ago, I started learning Irish (or Irish Gaelic) on Duolingo.  It is one of four languages I practice daily on either the laptop, the iPad, or the iPhone ( Yes, I am a certified language nerd).

The other languages I work on, Spanish, Portuguese, and French, are ones I studied at school, so I am really just reviewing and expanding language knowledge.  What I needed was the challenge of learning a language from absolute scratch.

So, why did I choose Irish, you may well ask?  It was an intuitive decision, but maybe I can explain what drew me to choose Irish from that seductive list of languages offered by Duolingo.

First, let me say that practicality did not enter into my Irish decision.  Many language learners have job opportunities, family ties, cultural interests, or significant others that lead them to select one language over others.  I have only a  family story about the vague possibility of Scots-Irish ancestors and a four-day trip to Dublin, Ireland planned in the spring.  The possibility that I may actually speak to or understand an Irish speaker in The Temple Bar hovers between slim and none (as we say in West Texas).

But there is a certain romance in learning an ancient language that was first written down in 4th century A.D. The Irish language has served a population that has lived through centuries of often turbulent history.

Irish was on a downward spiral brought about by political and economic factors until the Gaelic Revival of the 1890's.  It is now on an upward spiral in this century, and who doesn't love an underdog that has a chance of surviving?

And then there is the soft, lyrical sound of spoken Irish.  Ah, so pleasing to the ear. Here is a two minute Youtube video of the President of Ireland giving a St. Patrick's Day message in 2008. Just let the beautiful sounds wash over you.

Yet another draw to Irish was the challenge of a new grammar.  Irish is what is identified as a VSO language, meaning that the verb usually is placed at the beginning of the sentence, followed by the subject and then by the object. For example, Caithim an hata means "I wear a hat," but the literal translation is "Wear I hat."   English, my native language, is a SVO language, so my brain is used to looking for the subject in first position in a sentence. It's good brain training to make oneself think in a different way.  (Have you ever heard the recommendation to brush your teeth with the opposite hand or take a new route to work?  Same idea!)

Another challenge is matching the sounds of Irish to the written word.  And this is truly a challenge for me!  Who would think that Irish for plural you, sibh, sounds like [ʃɪvʲ]?  I'm constantly losing challenges on Duolingo exercises that give me an Irish audio clip and ask me to write or translate it.  I often find myself talking back to the program and saying "Whaaaaaaat?"

When I work on a more familiar language, I sometimes daydream, or let myself get distracted by the cat, the beautiful weather, or my next household duty, but when I am studying Irish, it requires my full concentration.

And isn't a short escape from everyday life a true pleasure?

Speak more slowly! I can't understand you!

Understanding and speaking a second language.  The same skill or two different skills?

For anyone who has tried to acquire a second language, the answer is obvious.  Understanding and speaking are separate skills that seem to be two sides of the same coin, but unfortunately they do not always develop simultaneously in our brains.

The ability to understand spoken language has in the past been labeled a passive skill.  Nothing could be further from the truth! When someone speaks to me in a foreign language, I can feel my brain working overtime, trying to make meaning.

Some people I know will answer the question, "Do you speak Spanish?" by apologizing and saying, "No, but I can understand it."  No apology needed here!  Being able to understand another language is a great accomplishment.  

On the other hand, few people will admit, "I speak Spanish, but I have trouble understanding it." Have you ever been hesitant to try out your new foreign language for fear that someone might respond with a bunch of sounds that your brain can't match to words?  I have!

How does it happen that a person can produce language but not understand it? In a new language, I can acquire vocabulary, sounds, and structures so that I can put together sentences. But I still may not have the ability to understand spoken language.

The crucial difference is perhaps this:  When I speak,  I am in control of what I say.  If I don't know the word for bananas, I can avoid talking about bananas. If I have trouble producing a certain sound, I can avoid words with that sound.  (Note:  You will never hear me say ferrocarril in Spanish. Those two trilled r sounds would be the death of me.)   And if I feel insecure about a certain structure (for example, the rather exotic Portuguese future subjunctive), I can reword my sentence to avoid the use of the difficult structure.  

But when someone speaks to you in a foreign language, who knows what they are going to say- possibly words you have never heard of, sounds you have never produced, and complex structures that you may never conquer? Ah, if only those fluent speakers would agree to speak to you using just language that you have already mastered!

Lots of language being produced here!

  

At one point in second language instruction, teachers were encouraged to provide students with a "Silent Period." This was a period of time in beginning language classes when students would only hear the new language but were not required to speak it.  The idea was that infants have an extended silent period (approximately from birth to 18 months of age) when they can take in language and let their brains make sense of it before they begin to produce language.

This probably isn't going to happen!

What a luxury a Silent Period would be for an adult language learner!  Wouldn't it be relaxing  to listen and understand your new language without feeling the urgency to speak?  But in our speeded-up world, few people have time for a Silent Period.  Advertisements for language learning software that promise "Learn Spanish in 15 days"  give us the impression that we should learn a new language in the same time it might take me to master a new app on my phone.

Successful language acquisition is like the turtle in the race with the hare.  Slow and steady wins the race.  But what a great prize awaits us!