Foreign language teaching in most U.S. schools is academic. It puts language in nice, neat boxes, labels each one and gives tests to see how the students do with these nice, neat boxes. Then the students go out into the rest of the world and find that daily language is actually very messy stuff. Everything gets dumped out of the boxes and thrown together in a not very nice way.

If you want to be able to speak and understand a language, you need a really heavy dose of messy language. You also need a certain amount of technical intervention to isolate pieces of language in order to get a good look at them. The right mixture of messy and technical intervention greases the learning process and reduces frustration. School schedules rarely allow the time to do that. So I want to ask you two things.

Question 1: Have you ever noticed that we all master our first language without a certified language teacher? If a child comes to kindergarten without a high degree of mastery in the language, that child is considered unfit for school. At school we assume the kid comes to us already an expert.

Question 2: Have you ever noticed that we all successfully pass on our language with a high degree of mastery? Parents pass on the language. Older siblings pass it on. Neighbors and friends pass it on. We’re all really, really effective at that, nevermind a number of grammar and pronunciation errors. These are miniscule compared to the amount of vocabulary and expressions and the extraordinary number of combinations we learn along with many shades of meanings. To get that far in school language classes would take longer than the schedule allows. Not even honor students come close. No way.

So why would we need foreign language teachers in school? Well…we are needed to teach school language. School is miserably plagued with overly academic language learning and it would be far worse if unqualified people taught the courses. Able teachers can do amazing things when it comes to motivating students and providing one kind of foundation to spring from.

People (including school officials) are always telling me that they’ve taken years of language in high school and college and that they can’t speak a word of it. I’ll never forget a Ukranian Russian-speaking 4th-grader who moved to the U.S. The school where I taught purchased a famous software program to help him learn English. He spent everyday with his classmates, mingling, hearing and absorbing and finally speaking their language. Then he told me something. He said, “Those software programs don’t work.” He said you learn language by doing language.

Language classes and software can be very helpful, but they are pretty weak apart from doing the language, and school schedules hardly make any room for that. That’s how it goes in most private, public and home school language learning.

Language learning should include a roomy “climate of use” to be truly worth its time. A climate of use needs to be free from any sort of grading other than for participation. Most Americans think of language learning in academic terms because that’s what they’re used to. Change how you think and you’ll be better prepared to do language right.