After 10 hours of immersed field work each day, two hours of personal study at night, and with much prayer to Jesus (who speaks every language, and then some), I may have achieved some breakthrough in my language acquisition adventures. Although I’m no where near fluent, I could, theoretically and eventually, get a Spanish-speaker to understand what I’m trying to say with enough grunting, wild hand gestures, and interpretive dancing.
Before I fully confess where I went wrong and the lessons learned from this experience, first let me say that most Dominican’s were NOT helpful in teaching me Spanish (that’s right, I’m blaming them for me not knowing their language). For some reason, everyone on this island talks as if they are training to be auctioneers, and no matter how often I ask them to speak more slowly, they just can’t seem to understand my cry for help. If anything, I come away from this experience with a renewed patience and consideration for those who don’t speak English fluently. To all you ESL kids, I am your new best friend.
Now, I still stand by my original thesis, that adult’s can learn languages and quite quickly under the right conditions. Two months to attain even mediocre fluency in Spanish was a little overzealous, I’ll admit, but if I could do it all over again (and when I do it again), I would enact these changes:
1) Take language classes in the immersed country: Whereas when I lived in Italy, I had Italian classes but no immersed environment (I lived with 50 Americans in a Florentine villa), here in the DR I had the immersed environment, but without the necessary Spanish classes. Both theory and experience are imperative to language acquisition. I lived virtually every moment of the last two months in an immersed environment and was memorizing several dozen new words every day, but since I wasn’t trained in the grammatical theory behind sentence structure, I simply knew a lot of words that I would haphazardly string together to form a patchwork of grunts and murmurs.
2) Aggressively guard yourself against your native tongue: English is my enemy. And yet every day when the going got tough, I would nestle up to its bosom of comfort and familiarity. Even on the outskirts of the Dominican Republic’s most remote villages, I would still meet those who spoke English. I don’t know how to necessarily change this, except for being diligent to set the following expectations very early on in your relationships with the locals. Expectations: 1) (Slowly) speak to me in Spanish all the time, and 2) Gently, correct me when I’m wrong.
3) Don’t be afraid to sound stupid: Thank you all. This was the most common advice I received on my blog from all of you, and it is undeniably true. Learning a language in an immersed environment is one of the most humbling experiences you can endure. Perpetual embarrassment is the inevitable consequence; what matters is how you react to those embarrassing situations. I suspect that the best language learners actually pursue these embarrassing mistakes, while the slower learners are typically more timid and restrained by such opportunities.
4) Community: After three years of serving as a Residential Advisor at Pepperdine University, the last thing I wanted to talk about was the clichéd concept of ‘community’. Now, it is all I can talk about. While the totality of the subject is far to grand to address here, my time on Hispaniola has only served to reinforce the necessity of community in my life—particularly when traveling.
This week, I met with a friend of mine named Gregg Tucker. Missionaries from the United States, Gregg and his young family relocated to the DR nearly a year ago to partner with a local church in La Victoria, and I was fascinated to hear about his journey to fluency with the Spanish language. First of all, he followed Lesson #1 and took 6 weeks of private Spanish lessons for four hours a day. I also learned that his home church in Colorado actually sent down another family to help guide his project. Having two families not only guards against missionary burnout, but it also creates an innate learning community from which to learn Spanish. Although there is great value in developing relationships with locals and connecting to their communities (whether through local churches, companies, sports teams, etc.), how great is that to have at least one other friend or loved one to share the experiences of learning a language together. This can certainly be a double-edged sword, however, in that unless there are strict expectations governing the partnership, Lesson #2 will be hard to uphold.
5) Arguing is the best way to learn a language: My most significant breakthroughs in learning Spanish would typically occur during one of the frequent arguments with my host grandma.
Let me begin by saying that I have never had this much difficulty communicating with a woman before, and folks, that’s saying a lot. Her rapid-fire, unannunciated words and noticeable impatience with my conversational shortcomings were certainly manageable challenges. Conflict arose when the Honeymoon period in our relationship passed, and she went OCD on me so that nothing I did- whether washing the dishes, bathing myself, or even drinking water- was up to her expectations. Things got heated when I learned enough to start questioning her unrealistic expectations, thus quickly leading to raised voices and wild hand gestures by both parties. Although I think I lost every argument simply from a lack of potent vocabulary, I can’t think of a better way to hone conversation in a foreign language than on the playing field of intercultural debate!
Learning a language in an immersed environment is a lot like playing golf, it demands the utmost mental clarity over a prolonged period of time, but all it takes is one good shot to keep you coming back for more. Spanish may have won the battle this time, but I am determined, and quite certain, that I will win the war.
[My Whereabouts: I am currently in Washington, DC, although I wish the same could be said of my luggage. After this brief visit, I will head back to the motherland (Seattle) tomorrow night to begin wedding festivities for my lil’ stinky sister.]
there must be more 