My family uses many languages, but all of us agree that Spanish has an advantage in this country that can’t be argued. It used to be that people had to leave the U.S. in order to be near the people who spoke and lived a language taught in the schools. You pretty much still have to do that with most languages, but Spanish-speakers abound, and you have to be asleep to miss the opportunity that surrounds the student of Spanish. While foreign language instruction becomes rarer and rarer in elementary schools, people who study Spanish on their own can still depend on a handy context for practicing it. Homes and schools that make language learning a group thing will get a lot farther than by just completing a course. After all, almost everyone in the U.S. takes language courses in high school or college.
Archive for March, 2010
A Great Reason to Learn Spanish
Monday, March 29th, 2010Immigration Issues Versus Foreign Language Learning
Monday, March 22nd, 2010Every time another wave of immigration debate and conflict rolls in, I face more opposition to Spanish. I never get it from people who speak more than one language. So many one-language people are unable to separate their disgust with our immigration mess from language learning. If the people south of our border spoke Latin, the opposition would be about Latin. I find that most of my fellow citizens are not aware of the bunches of immigrants moving here legally and illegally from around the world and bringing languages with them. We are accumulating many pockets of recent immigrants who speak languages other than Spanish. Although I am disappointed when people think they need to emphasize to me as a Spanish teacher that immigrants need to learn to speak English, I still enjoy trying to help them see from another point of view. That is, it’s possible to talk about language learning without getting into immigration complications. We didn’t have this mix-up when I was in school.
Today I will work on some strong instructional tools, and meanwhile I will be aware that today’s news means that some people will not be able to see the value in what I’m doing. Not at first, anyway.
More Than Ever, Schools Hardly Offer Languages
Sunday, March 14th, 2010It’s amazing how many public and private schools around the country have been dropping languages out of their curriculum. Enrollment in high school Spanish continues strong, more so as other languages are cut or allowed to fade out when a French or Japanese or Latin teacher retires or moves on. And in districts that bragged about their language programs in elementary and middle schools, most of that is history too. It’s happening fast along with the economic downturn, but it was already occurring during the past 10 years as schools have faced increasing pressure to produce high test scores in “basic” subject areas. Homes are still the one place where parents, if they want to, can single-handedly decide to make foreign language instruction happen. School administrators have very little room or money to work with at this time.
Act Like A Baby?
Wednesday, March 3rd, 2010Software producer Rosetta Stone has an ad, Act Like A Baby, that encourages people to get back to the natural way of learning language.
I love the phrase, but babies actually learn reeeeeeally slowly compared to when they’re older. I have demonstrated the advantage of age to children themselves about a zillion times. It’s easy to do. So what is it that babies do that IS good to keep in mind?
1. They don’t ask unnecessary questions that slow things down. We’re always told there are no stupid questions, but we all know there are lots of stupid questions. There are also lots of unnecessary questions. That’s actually what babies do. I mean, they do not ask unnecessary questions. They just take everything on the chin, so to speak, and absorb the environment, like a diaper.
2. They absorb the language around them for a long, long time before being required to talk in understandable native language. It’s a great idea to absorb language for a long time before trying to create your own spoken sentences, unless you have time for both. If your time is strictly limited, I advise holding off on trying to construct your own sentences until they practically pop out of your mouth on their own. Nothing is lost, much is gained.
Nevertheless, if you compare how much time a baby is around language to how much a school kid is around a new language if such a course is offered, the student would appear to have practically zero exposure to the language. Yet the student can be taught to understand and speak far more quickly than the baby, who has to wait up to two years and even then is frequently indistinct, sloppy and inaccurate. School courses are superior in this sense. Throw students of any age into a good immersion experience and they’ll outlearn a baby by a long shot when you compare time and outcomes. People learn how to learn as they get older, and this advantage is easily seen when comparing grade 1 to grade 3 or grade 8 to grade 10, though increasingly less as those students age.
I’ve always been a fan of Rosetta Stone’s photography. They use such great pictures. Our Max and Max stuff is based on totally different ideas about language, but we encourage people to use any learning materials they can get their hands on. Whatever you use, acting like a baby is a very good thing when it means you don’t interfere with learning by acting like a fussy high school student or adult who has to have everything figured out every step of the way. That slows the learning. A word to the wise: act like a baby, act like you’re older than a baby.
Do Children Learn Faster?
Wednesday, March 3rd, 2010I heard it again today: “children learn so fast.” People who say this usually mean that kids learn faster than adults. They mean that the younger you are, the faster you learn.
One of the great advantages to getting one year older each year is that, if you are gaining the usual academic and life skills, you get better at managing your brain. You do this by learning how it works, where to put things and how to get them back out of there. You learn strategies from other people for organizing information before it goes into your brain and while it’s going in. You accumulate experience and knowledge from more and more areas of life that help you quickly get a handle on new concepts such as a crucial grammatical concept or appropriate greetings.
A whole lot of beautiful things about language can be learned only after a certain amount of life has been lived. Some researchers have unintentionally contributed to the fables about how fast kids learn. As I said before, adults slow their own learning by asking unnecessary questions that should wait. Adults also have more to juggle in their head and schedule. Working another language in is tough, as many immigrants discover to the ultimate degree. But people–humans–are wired to learn vast amounts in a relatively short time. The main thing to remember is that humans are tailor-made for learning, whether you are very young or not so very young.
They Can Get the H— Out of the Country
Tuesday, March 2nd, 2010If today is like other days, I just might get to hear one more person complaining about people in the U.S. who can’t speak English. An Ohio school administrator came by our convention booth and said, “They can learn to speak English or get the hell out of the country.” One such person often prevents an entire school district from having foreign language in K-8, which is one reason we now offer home subscriptions.
People in most parts of the country didn’t talk like this 15 years ago, at least not nearly so often. It has become like an epidemic. The monolingual citizens are thinking, “Before I have to learn another language, make those illegal immigrants learn mine.”
What does that have to do with anything?
I walked into a print shop to order some business items and, to my total surprise, the owner said to me from her desk, “I think they should all learn English.”
What does that have to do with anything?
Not one of the people who talk to me like that ever says, “I think the citizens of a superpower that has its hands in every nation on earth should learn to actually speak and understand at LEAST one of the other countries’ languages. You know, for visiting, studying, doing business, etc.
I make it a point to tell people that our instruction is for preparing people for friendships and smart adventures in the world. It is the opposite of expecting everyone to speak our language. Even American tourists expect the foreign merchants to speak English. And they usually do. As the joke abroad goes, What do you call someone who speaks one language? Answer: an American.
It doesn’t have to stay that way.