Experiment In French Language Based Learning Of Guitar - The Personal Dimension
Learning French In Order To Better Play My Guitar...
Maintaining Motivation
As Connie Malamed's blog post points out, maintaining Motivation of adult learners often requires special attention, . She lists 25 ways to keep e-learners motivated (addressing contnet providers) but this same list can be reverse engeneered to find ways to motivate ourselves in language learning as adults. How many of these are we using? Are there other methods we could use in order to boost our motivation when things get draggy for us? Harnessing Learning Styles
While doing academic advising at Brandon University, I often used the "Gifts" model as a way for students to quickly acquaint me with their dominant motivations. Later in the year they often returned with a variety of issues , and I noticed certain patterns in learning styles which clustered with their strong gifts. I jotted these down as I became aware of them and have now posted them on this site.
We have all the gifts, it is more that we are strong in one or two and not so strong in the rest. In getting ideas for how we might personally go about learning a second language, we might find that certain "packages" of approach be more appealing to us than others. Take a look at preferred learning styles these sudents commented on, as well as other aspects of their lives, like how they respond to difficulties, etc. and work out an approach that works best for you.
Your Cultural Base In The Larger World
Learning an aditional language frequently involves (or arises from) crossing into another relationship /country / culture / location within the same country. Most people do not like doing this for extended periods of time, much less permanantly. We prefer the safety and security of whatever culture we call "home culture", and when we leave our "home", we really like coming back to what is most familiar to us.
Factoring in the emotional aspects of crossing cultural boundaries is almost always a powerful aid to second language learning, as is pointed out below.
There are many resources on the Internet relating to each of he following dimensions of cultural transitioning. Look especially on sites where multi-national corporations, Government and non-government organizations (NGO's), Churches, Educational Institutions, United Nations, (etc) regurlarly have staff working internationally, as they often have excellent resources to help people make the cross-cultural adjustment successfully.
01. Culture Shock
Crossing Cultural barriers / walls / boundaries can be emotionally disruptive. Our social cues are either gone or distorted with new meanings. The technical term for the phenomenon is "Culture Shock". The emotional adjustment required to adapt to the new surroundings (usually two years or so) demands a lot of energy, and that can inhibit language learning, especially if you are breaking into a new job at the same time.
The good news is, that a huge part of "recovery" or "adjustment" within the new surroundings is facilitated by second language learning. As we get to know the social cues embedded in the language, we feel less out of place, and our emotions settle down a bit. Daily life returns to its usual mix of ups and downs, but at least the huge "down" is getting back up to a more familiar range.
Becoming more at ease with moving out beyond the boundaries of our "ex-pat" community into the host culture is hugely rewarding, although the growth which it usually demands of us is still often unnerving. Most of us find it a bit of a shock to discover that there are many ways of doing life, and looking at the world and its people, and that it is a bit of a stretch to put ourselves in another's shoes. Language has many of these shifted points of view embedded in them. Such new insights can be exhilerating when we stumble on them.
For Example, the French have a way of saying "from now on"..."a partir de maintenant". There was a surge of excitement when I made the connection, while looking at cognates, that our English word "maintainance" is related to thier word for "now". Isn't that so right..."from now on" usually signifies a change of major importance to us...and indeed involves "moving on from", or "leaving off " a life of "maintainance"...sort of like embarking on (or upgrading our level of) second language learning.
02. "Re-entry Shock" or "Reverse Culture Shock"
Going back to the culture of our origin, or "home culture" is frequently a mixture of emotion. There is high excitement and anticipation, followed by euphoria at being "home" followed by a huge crash when we realize that it is not what we expected. The stages are very similar to our entry into the other culture, but the impact is often more devestating emotionally.
One woman, in charge of orientation and debriefing programs for international workers, said,"If we had to cut one of the programs due to shortage of money, we would cut orientation, and keep de-briefing, because it is far more destructive to individuals, families, and society if problems in this area are left unaddressed."
The issue, in brief, is that going into another culture (including learning an additional language) changes us, and when we return, we are not the same people...which upsets the people around us in what was once our "home culture". We want to talk, and few want to listen beyond a few brief comments..."stick to the high points"...or "tell us we're still superior / more developed"...grin. The more advanced our additional language learning, the deeper we have gone into the host culture, and the more we have become changed by the experience.
The good news is that our real blessing which comes from second language acquisition, comes after we go through re-entry shock. Some folks regard re-entry as the beginning of the rest of our lives. It seems to intensify the issues, and make our awareness of both cultures more acute. The additional language becomes even more precious to us as we find our lives increasingly enriched by the additional language.
Fred Kahn, a Swiss Theologian and hymn writer said at a workshop that all his best writing of hymns was done in English, his second language, because he could play around with the words with a freedom of movement he did not feel in his first language. As a artist, I find that this is indeed true, for we now have a different perspective or point of view from which to observe "the ordinary". One of my favourite definitions of "artist" is "someone who sees something in something else, then holds it up for the rest of the community to see and appreciate". Additional language learning is all part of that exciting experience of gaining a new perspective in life.
03. Being A Third Culture Kid (TCK) / Adult Third Culture Kid (ATCK)
I'm a TCK, a "third culture kid". Google it. It is a fascinating phenomenon.
When adults go from a home culture into a different "host" culture, and raise thier children there, the children only hear second-hand of the parents' "home culture", and usually are on the periffery of the new "host culture". The "culture" which they will forever regard as thier "home base" is actually an amalgum of the two cultures around them. They will stand on that base for he rest of their lives and speak into their adult world from that point of view. This so called "third culture" is a very common phenomenon, but the particular mixes of cultures which make it up, are always quite unique.
I refer to my "third culture" as "Echoland" because it echoes off two massive cultures like the walls of a canyon on each side of me, but the land I stand on is my own culture, and it is just as valid a culture as any of the "biggies". Being from Echoland, gives me a totally idfferent point ov view on life from the other people around me. As an artist, that is an automatic freshness of viewpoint without even trying. I just look at the world differently.
Children pick up the language of the host culture very rapidly, and I am no exception. When I hear Cree spoken, it has a strange vibration or resinance in me of "home". My first language is "Creenglish", a mix of Cree in English words. My second language is English (of he straight kind), and I do indeed "play in it", like Fred Kahn. Many TCK's feel they "live no-where". Actually, we are "world citizens", "feel most at home at 30,000 feet looking down on he world", and tend to hang around people from other cultures, or other TCK's. One year I was recruting students for the University and had to travel back into "Cree country". I landed in Thompson airport, where there were a mix of Crees and northern White people meeting the plane. I had a strong feeling of "home" sweep over me, but as everybody drifted off, and I went to the hotel alone in a cab, I realized my home was in fact wherever I walked each day, and the rest was "echo" from two huge cultures. A large part of the echo I heard that day, of course, was linguistic...two huge language groups.
New tools for additional language learning, for me, is such a great development, enhanced now by the resources of he internet. What a great time to be alive!"
Some Insights From The Faith Dimension
1. A New Twist To An Old Activity - Apostleship"
Apostles (aka "Missionaries") are "intentional culrutal boundary jumpers". This site is focused on that activity mainly. I prefer the term "apostle", primarily because it dumps the cultural baggage of western cultural silliness, and cuts to the chase in terms of additional language learning, particularly when cultural boaundary jumping is also involved.
I am an "Apostle", that is I am a cultural boundary jumper of a particular sort. As a TCK, I automatically jump boundaries and view Canadian dominant society as "host culture" not "home culture". But I am also an "Apostle", which is someone who usually goes over a cultural wall intentionally, rather than accidentally, or as a fluke of birth. Being an Apostle frequently involves "language learning" of the host community.
Jesus sarted this "apostle" caper in order to turn the flow around from "inbound" to "outbound" in his home culture. Lots of peole in his day had "disciples" ie people whom they "mentored" as we would say. But He started something new. For two thousand years ore or less his extended family had attained a huge number of insights and had jotted them down in a series of books. Their attitudeto those from other cultures was "if you wnat to know about it, and live according to it, come join our group. Jesus realized that most people are adverse to changing cultural groups for any reason. So he trained up a dozen "apostles" (or "sent out ones") to intentionally jump over thier cultural wall into the other people's cultures with the essence of what his group had learned over the years. He regarded his "stripped down Judiasm-lite" as the equaivalent of "salt" (for other culture's porrege), "light (for their rooms), and "leaven" (to fluff up their bread). He had no problem with other cultures, or languages; he just wanted to make the insights from his home clture available to others.
The task of an "apostle" is primarily to "decode the host culture". That means to discern what question each clture had not been able to resolve, andthen see if something from his home culture would fill the gap. Ie. "if you ain't stuck, you don't need a tow truck; but if you are, it is noce to have one around". I love the other way of looking at the Greek workd "Apo" to push away from you, and "stolos" someone who is stalled. A glorified tow truck driver...
Of course, now, with every one moving around from what was once a series of homogenius cultures with fixed barriers, the same "decoding" task needs doing by "apostles" but we need not leave home. Through the advances of transportation, and communication, as well as social disruption and globalization of the market, there are plenty of cross-cultural dynamics for everybody , anywhere.
Now, when an apostle, living in Canada, looks at a group of people, s/he is often looking at just one from each culture, each needing "decoding". At first that seemed to be pretty ineffecient. In the past once a group was decoded, and some piece of insight helped enrich their lives, it spread amongst that culture group. Now it seemed to be "one at a time". Then I remembered the internet and Facebook...everyone sitting there has a few hundred "friends"...they were just spread around. So how effecient is that! Decode a room full of folks, one at a time, and bingo insights you bring to thier attention, if they are helpful, spread instantly around the world.
To me, being able to leanr a number of languages easily because of all the linguistic developments, just makes Apostolic work that much more interesting. And besides, we get to do our "culture shock" adjustments in the comfort of our own homes...
2. Inter-gift Allergies and Their Andidote
An Early insight of the Jewish community relates to language learning and world affairs (like the destruction of he environment). In the opening poetic chapters of their collective Journal, they noted that pepol,e right from the first, chose to go their own way, and being selfish by doing so, showed little care for the social and physical world around them . The author a few chapters later notes that God was concerned that people were just a little to co-operative with each other in their foolishness, so He thought He'd better slow them down a bit...not stop them from acting together, but just make them a little bit ineffectint. It was, from this author's point of view, a way of buying humanity enough time to smarten up.
The Author notes how God hit on the idea of making each of the "gifts" just a bit "alergic" to each other's personality, making it harder to co-operate with each other, thereby generating a little healthy ineffeciency in our silly schemes. It seems that as some people were out in the hot sun making a building, each compained about the others...that is not level; we are behind schedule; we've lost sight of the purpose; we are out of budgte; this is not the way it is written up in he book; what the heck are we doing it this way for?; and so on. Finally the gentle types said, "well, if you are going to behave like this, I'm taking my trowel and going home...and each cluster did likewise...going off to form nations centered around thier way of doing life as a "personality of preference"/ "style of preference".
From this point of view, language differences, the guardians of group boundaries, were God's gift to buy us time to smarten up as a humanity. The implied antidote to the alergy between gifts, is God being restored to the center of life in a person, which changes the flow of love and life outward from God through people to others, rather than inward, self-centeredly.
So cultural boundary-crossing was a good thing; but taking away the alergy without addressing the selfishness issue, was definately not a good thing. This meant that when folks went into another culture's turf, they had to deal with thier own alergy as well as that of the host culture. The solution was "acknowledgement of God at he center of life" , resolving the flow direction issue. But just because it is resolved for the person entering the host clture, does not mean it is resolved for everyone in the host culture.
Apostles, who are intentional boundary crossers, tend to get shot out of he warer a lot, both at home and abroad. Fun job! Language acquisition is done within that broader cross-cultural context, even though it is done for "good reason".
3. The Kingdom-layer Insight
Another ancient Jewish story icomes out of their collective past. It seems that God wanted to lead them twoards a relationship with Him as a group, in which direction for quality living acme from Him within their cultural context. They referred to it as the "Kingdom of God". At one poinnt the folks decided they had had enough of that and asked for a "real king". They prevailed, and got their way. The concept of "Kingdom of God" fell to the sidelines, carried forward by only a few folks.
I'm not sure exactly how they viewed their world, except it was flat to them, and what they viewed as "Kingdom of God" seemed to be in their mind a "place" where one could stand to grow up amidst the otherwise chaotic world...at least for the few who seemed to put any stock in the idea of God being "King" of one's life, let alone a group's life.
When Jesus came along, he picked up on that older idea, and said it is upon us, climb up and enjoy its benifits of a place apart in which to grow up as individuals and group. He seems to have seen His home culture as being like a kid in school called up to the front of the class (the other world cultures) as a demonstration, in order to get some concepts across for the rest of the "students" more easily. He saw it as being the right time to involve the other world cultures. After training his dozen men, and thier mentees as well, he arrived in Jerusalem to find a small group of Greek speaking folks wanted to talk with him but were not allowed into his culture's temple. He told his disciples that their arrival was a sign to him that his work was done, and thier cross-cultural work was about to begin..."you deal with them; that's what I trained you all this time to do". Shortly after he was killed.
To me it is interesting that it wa a cross-cultural and cross-linguistic event which signaled the shift in Jesus work...He was finished his part, now it was up to the "cross-cultural boundary jumpers" to hit the road.
It is also interesting to me that several times he told them to "go into the other nations and cultures" but in one quote of him saying this, he used the participle (at least in the Greek account of his speach), and not the imperative. That is, he said "having gone" not "go" into all the nations and cultures, and the only imperative in the statement was to "disciple/mentor". Even there it was in a form they did not have to do necessarily, or even do more than once. What seems to be said is, "having gone across cultural walls, because of business, or persecution, or refugee status, or holliday, or whatever, and you get there, and find folks in need of salt, light, or leaven for their life, and you don't know just how best to help them you can always try discipling/mentoring as I did with you...have a great time!"
To me that is the sort of clarifying insight which comes with at least some of us acquiring another language. To me it is a great incentive!
4. The Disruption of Relationships On Crossing Cultural Boundaries - And thier resolution
It was my gandfather, grandson (?) of a family of Irish imigants who had fled the Irish potato famine, who commented to a friend of mine, the nature of social disruption which comes very frequently when one crosses cultural and geographic boundaries. Either our horizontal relationships get messed up, or our vertical ones do. That is , either our sex life gets messed up or our religious life...God gets left across the pond in the mists of the old country.
Since the comment was passed on to me, I have found it to be so thought-provoking. Like, why would that be? What part does a change of language-base play in it? Where does inter-group alergies and the need to address them fit in? To what extend does our mis-understanding of the role of "cltural decoder" for the Apostle (cultural boundary jumper) play into this dynamic? How does this insight mesh with Dr. Yonge Cho's observation at the Ottawa, Canada airport, that he, as a Korean, saw Canada as being a place where folks from every other culture could come and find out from those of us already here and were living in freedom, how "Kingdom-layer life could be played out , sot hey could go back where they were not so free to live as they wished, and live better quality/enriched lives?
Language...it keeps coming back to language, and communication issues in our newly globalized village.Hmmm. So much to think about
Thanks Lord for this.
navigation