When I was a child, my father would regularly go on business trips to Japan. I always looked forward to this, because each time he went, he would bring me back small souvenirs and gifts, such as Pokémon toys, sweets filled with anko, and JAL model airplanes. I cherished these gifts, and even though I only vaguely knew what Japan was like, I began to yearn to learn more about this distant, exciting place. This early fascination led to my lifelong fascination with learning about the diverse cultures and languages of the world.
As I have grown up, I have continued to foster this desire and deepen my understanding of the world. In particular, I love studying languages, as I believe language is the key to creating bonds with people and communities around the world and truly understanding new places.
Over the years, I have studied several languages, both formally and informally. I have studied using a variety of “methods” across contexts, which has helped me clarify my own philosophy of language learning (which you can read more about here). Here, I will trace this journey through the languages I’ve learned to show you just how I came to my philosophy:
Spanish: Spanish was the first foreign language that I studied in school. Starting in elementary school, we took Spanish classes once a week. Unfortunately, most of these classes were very “fluffy” with very little learning…We maybe learned one new word a week? All the research says that children learn languages the most easily, so this simplification did not make much sense, but my feeling is that unfortunately, the teaching situation has not improved much in schools.
In high school, I was able to take Spanish daily as one of my core courses. While these courses were much better and more comprehensive, the curriculum followed a strict grammar-based sequence. We did not even learn the past tense form until the second year or the future tense form until the third year! Imagine trying to speak to somebody only in the simple present…The conversation would break down rather quickly…
While this slow, structured method did lead to grammatical mastery (especially in reading and writing), it really stilted my communication abilities. Today, I continue to struggle with conversing in Spanish despite being able to read novels and newspapers. This made me realize that speaking should take precedence in any language program rather than the rote memorization of grammar alone.
Japanese: Given my interest in Japanese, I started taking elementary level Japanese classes at an after-school program in high school. Although only once a week, I was able to pick up on the basics of Japanese writing, grammar, and conversation as the teacher mostly focused on these skills.
Going to college, I chose to further my Japanese studies by majoring in Asian Studies. While my classes were comprehensive, similar to my high school Spanish program, the curriculum was heavily based on grammar. At the advanced level I could take more contextualized courses such as “Japanese Cooking” and “Japanese Journalism,” but these courses were unnecessarily restricted to higher-level students.
I did have the opportunity to intern and study in Japan, which ended up being the most effective way for me to learn Japanese. Actually using the language and conversing regularly helped me grow and strengthen all of my language skills.
Hindi/Urdu: This was the first language that I learned in a true “trial by fire” method. Without having ever formally studied Hindi (or Urdu), I left for a summer Hindi study abroad program in Delhi, India for which I had received a scholarship.
My professors there were extremely passionate about Hindi education and serve as inspiration for my own teaching. They contextualized all of the lessons and utilized a variety of audiovisual resources that they created to teach everything from grammar to vocabulary. We were encouraged to speak Hindi from Day 1, even as absolute beginners. Furthermore, instead of traditional exams where we would have to answer decontextualized questions with trite answers, we had to write up interviews using the language we knew and interview 2-3 different people “in the real world.” While this was daunting, it forced me to go out and use the language in authentic ways.
This experience showed me an alternative model to teaching language, one that is much more context-based, creative, engaging, fun, and ultimately, effective.
Realistically, not everybody has the opportunity to travel to a foreign country to study a language; however, this does not mean that you are at a loss. Now with online teaching, you can start conversing with real speakers from day one, as I have done with Tamil and Portuguese.
Tamil: I spent a year teaching in Chennai as a Fulbright Scholar. As a part of my scholarship, the Fulbright office paid for language learning lessons for us. Unfortunately, the teachers they hired were not actual trained teachers. The two “native speaker teachers” were computer scientists who had previously developed a typing software for the Tamil script. While a laudable achievement, this is no way qualified them as language teachers. Unfortunately, you see this a lot: “Native speakers” believe that because they speak a language, they know how to teach it, which is not the case at all.
Despite that rough beginning, I was determined to not give up on Tamil, a fascinating, ancient, and beautiful language. So, given that I favor a “conversational” approach to language learning, I found a trained online tutor with a similar teaching philosophy. We began meeting weekly and before I knew it, I could have basic conversations in Tamil. Of course, I studied grammar and vocabulary on my own, but during our lessons, we mainly focused on applying those skills to develop them in a real way.
Portuguese: This is the language that I’ve most recently been working on. I never really intended to study Portuguese, but I made a friend from Brazil on an online language chat website (coeffee.com) who was really enthusiastic about Portuguese. He simply began to chat with me in Portuguese, and I slowly started to pick things up. He has also shared resources with me to help me clarify different grammar forms and vocabulary, but by and large, our “lessons” have just been conversations. While having Spanish in my background has certainly made learning Portuguese easier, I have found that the conversational approach has been extremely effective for my learning!
That’s my language learning journey so far in a nutshell, but in the future, I wish to continue developing these language skills, as well as learn more languages, such as Italian (a heritage language for me) and basic Chinese.
I hope that my journey has inspired you to continue or alter your own language learning journey so you can reach your communicative goals. I also hope that the Language Co-Op can become a part of your language learning journey and assist you in any way possible! Happy learning~
Add Comment