How I learned your language – part 4 Turkish

Turkish, from my point of view, is a pretty exotic language. Unlike any language I'd been learning before, it has amazing characteristics such as vowel harmony and a whole complex system of agglutination.

Prior to my settling down in Turkey I spend a year learning the basics from a self study book called ‘Teach Yourself Beginner’s Turkish’. And I did learn only very simple stuff – numbers, colours, days of the week and basic grammar rules. Needless to say, it wasn't enough to get by.

Looking back, I learned most of what I know during my first year in Istanbul. In my former workplace nobody except for the three other language teachers knew English and the students... let’s say they spoke Turkish most of the time. They were my first teachers.

And Turkish surrounded me and swallowed me up.

Without much effort I caught myself picking up words and phrases, occasionally asking for definitions or clarification but most of the time simply guessing. Quite often I had to handle important matters entirely on my own therefore my Turkish phrasebook consists of largely unrelated words such as ‘vergi numarası’ (tax number), ‘fesleğen’ (basil) or ‘duş perdesı’ (shower curtain). The peculiar situations I was in obviously forced me to speak the language without hesitation. I also developed my miming skills to a near perfection.

During my second year I decided to enroll on a course designed for foreigners living in Turkey. It was a disaster. We had 3 classes in a row: 1 – students took turns to talk about what they did last week (speaking – 3min, listening – 47 min), 2 – we checked homework, 3 – we learned a new grammar rule e.g. ‘can’ which was followed by hundreds of mindless gap fills.

I paid for 5 weeks and left. The classes were boring, frustrating and felt like a waste of time.

But there were some bright moments. I realized, for example, that compared to other students that were studying in that school from the very beginning, I was much better at speaking and listening. Sure my grammar was imperfect at times but I covered it up by gesticulation and always got my message across. The only serious problem I faced was writing – I still have a very vague idea about how to write anything in Turkish.

It’s my third year now and I feel like I should know a lot more. I would compare my current knowledge of Turkish to a colourful patchwork. Some patches look nice, some don't but you can still cover yourself up with it when you're cold. Maybe I would have learned a lot more if I had attended courses, maybe not.

Summing up, there are a few things that struck me when I was reflecting on writing this post.

1. There is/ must be/ should be a clear division between T(x)SL and T(x)FL in terms of curriculum development to start with.
2. Any language teacher should experience learning a given language in a native speaking environment first and foremost to understand the students better.
3. It seems like the current trend in today’s ELT is to mirror the kind of ‘natural’ learning I described in regular classrooms. Yet is it actually possible considering the dissimilar nature of both worlds?

Now here's another chance to win something. Below you can see a photo of a popular Polish brand of vodka. 
If you tell me what the connection between the brand and Turkey is, you can claim your prize!
If you are Polish, please give other people a chance to guess :)

How I Learned Your Language – Spanish by Mike Harrison

A potted history of my language learning life – like many, I started learning languages at secondary school. The first was German, followed a year later by French. I had ditched German and I added Spanish when I started university. Each of those languages has been my favourite at a particular time, and in fact, each became my favourite in turn (German, French, then Spanish) – I really am fickle with my languages. I studied German for a total of 7 years, and have studied French for 14 and Spanish for 10 (though my formal education for those two finished in 2006).

Anyway, on to the main part of my post. There have been things in common with all of my language learning experiences (location, teaching styles, learning environments) but I think I have had by far the most success with Spanish, and I want to find out why, in particular why I succeeded more than with either French or German. Come on a journey with me.

First steps in language learning  – German and French 1995-2002
I learned both German and French at school. My teachers were not native speakers, but British. There were the usual activities – grammar gap-fills, listening/reading comprehension, role plays, dictation, spelling – all quite normal, and we did work from text books. Despite not being native speakers, both my German and French teachers spoke a lot in the language they were teaching, right from the start. I thrived in that environment and got As for both languages in my GCSEs (exams you do in the UK aged 16). But after that I started to get confused between French and German and also between the different cases in German (possibly the most difficult thing I have ever studied). I fell out of love with German and eventually dropped it aged 17. I continued with French and went on to study it at university.
The absolute best thing about studying both languages at school was the chance to go on exchange trips (twice to Aachen in Germany and once on a work experience trip to Nantes in France).

Next steps in language learning – French and Spanish 2002-2006
When applying to go to uni, I didn’t really know what I wanted to do, and ended u applying for languages because I was good at them (despite the break up with German). However, I did know that didn’t want to do just French. I toyed with French and War Studies (don’t know where that came from); French and Italian; French, Italian and Spanish at Bangor, and what I ended up doing – French and Spanish.
I really enjoyed the shift in how I studied at university. The onus is more on the student than at school. You have to put in the work in your own time or you won’t improve. I found studying a new language stimulating. All the while surrounded by highly educated people teaching about matters related to the language (literature, film, geography, history...) and native speakers (part of the key to REAL progress here) for conversation and grammar classes.
The best bit was being able to live in Spain for a year, which I did working as a language assistant. I had a room in a flat just down the road from the beach,  and not 10 minutes walk from the school I worked at.

Learning on my own – Spanish 2006 onwards
I don’t think I’ve stopped learning my languages, and I was lucky to be able to make use of my Spanish language skills fairly soon after graduating. I moved to Pamplona in 2007 and worked there for a year teaching EFL. My French to some extent, and certainly my German, have fallen a bit behind and I think I know why. The language I have lived more is Spanish. Living and working in Spain has meant that I have had to use the language and also I have had to learn new things about the language (more conversational, more idioms, more vocab.) and I’ve been able to do that in a native speaker environment. I also had an Argentinean girlfriend which helped motivate me! If you’re not sure about that, check out Ken Wilson’s comment at the end of this video by Lindsay Clandfield:



So there you have it. My tips for language learning are:
be motivated or find an environment that motivates you
living the language is key – if you have to use the language in your day-to-day life it will become part of you

Mike Harrison is an ESOL teacher in London, in the UK. In his spare time he tries not to fall over while doing capoeira. He is on Twitter at http://twitter.com/harrisonmike and blogs at http://mikeharrison.edublogs.org

How I Learned Your Language – part 3 Russian

This is going be to be the saddest and shortest of my posts in the series. Despite many of the similarities between my mother tongue, Polish, and Russian, I never learned to speak that beautiful language.

I started my Russian classes in grade 5, just because the school couldn’t find an English teacher. I don’t remember a lot from that period – we learned the Cyrillic alphabet, the teacher was strict and we dreamed of learning English.

Russian returned in high school. As the majority of students were total beginners, we learned the alphabet again and the teacher, hmm... For three years she was constantly watering the flowers in the classroom making us, at the same time, create various dialogues in pairs. I don’t remember learning anything more than the present tense.

The classes, as you can imagine, were identical and dull. It was very easy to get the highest grade as the very rare tests she had been preparing were extremely easy, not to say banal. Consequently, none of us made any attempt to study or revise the language at home and our level of motivation to learn Russian at that time was close to zero.

Looking back, what an utter waste of time it was.

I came across on opinion once. The person who expressed it claimed that students’ motivation is inherent and the teacher cannot influence or change it no matter how hard s/he tries.

What are your opinions on this matter?

How I Learned Your Language – part 2 French

Although French is typically seen as the most romantic language, my journey with the mother tongue of Balzac and Hugo was not romantic at all. My intentions, on the other hand, were of a very passionate nature. It was my second year at university and a guy I had a crush on chose French as a second language to study. Needless to say that was my initial motivation to take up that particular course.

Here are some basic facts for you understand what I'm writing about:

-         the teacher was Polish but spoke French 95% of the time

-         we had four 45min classes a week

-         the group consisted of real and false beginners

-         we used a book called ‘Tempo’ from time to time relying mostly on some photocopied worksheets

-         the teacher never used miming, pictures or realia to set up contexts or explain vocabulary

-         he spoke most of the time and constantly urged us to do so

-         the most difficult areas of French for me were: the pronunciation and the tenses (not really the usage but verb forms)

-         the most difficult skills: writing (as we spoke most of the time I had no clue how to write in French) and listening (I was able to figure out which verb someone used but had no idea in which tense)

Without further ado, I’ll simply say that I hated these classes.

The teacher talked. We listened. He would then choose a person he wanted to talk to. In the meantime he would write some words or grammar items on the board, explaining it all in French. We would note it down, guessing we had just learned passive voice or reported speech. Then he would choose someone else to talk to and ‘teach’ us some other things. If you asked you clarification – you got it, in French.

Looking back, the main problem was combining real and false beginners. The false beginners very quickly remembered what they had lost and became the stars of the class. The rest of the people, including me, were sitting with their mouths wide open most of the time trying to figure out what was going on. You can’t imagine how frustrating it felt.

And then there was the end-of-the-course exam. I nearly failed the grammar and writing part. But, as I was told, I almost reached level B1 in speaking. Some people might say that the teacher was doing a great job then! Fluency triumphed over accuracy.

Yet prior to the test, I had spent weeks learning vocabulary and basic grammar with the help of a computer programme called ‘Learn basic French in 4 weeks’. It gave me an opportunity to systematize what I had acquired and take some control over the chaos.

Maybe I’m an exception but I like to know exactly when and how to use a language. Guessing and uncertainty are a nightmare. That’s why I believe that it makes sense to introduce things gradually and practise them long enough to ensure retention. Otherwise, even if students are ready to get the meaning and usage of something ‘beyond’ their level, they will not be able to or willing to use it. Why?

a)      because they won’t remember it

b)      because they will remember only the narrow context in which it was explained

c)      because they will be struggling to formulate it accurately

Obviously you can throw, let’s say 3^rd conditional, at beginners occasionally but not all the time and as matter of principle.

On a final note:

-         I have never spoken to a native French speaker and have always dreaded doing so

-         The best part of the course was watching the musical Notre Dame de Paris and guessing what the people in it were singing about

-         My level of French now is most likely A0

-         A LEARNER wrote that post, not a teacher

-         That cute guy I mentioned at the beginning eventually chose Spanish so we never studied together L

So, how shall we interpret that?

How I Learned Your Language – part 1 Kashubian

This is going to be an interesting post for two reasons:

a)      most of you have never heard of Kashubian

b)      I myself don’t remember learning the language so it kind of doesn't fit into the series

To begin with, in order to raise your interest, here are some little-known facts about Kashubian(s) :)

• Kashubians are believed to have black palates
• A typical Kashubian wedding lasts 3 days. Day 1 (usually Friday) – on a wedding day's eve everyone gathers in the bride’s house and breaks empty bottles on the doorstep and drinks vodka. Day 2 (usually Saturday) – the actual wedding takes place and everyone drinks vodka. Day 3 (usually Sunday) – everyone has fun at the after-the-wedding party and drinks vodka (in shots). 
•  Kashubians have always felt Polish and never strove for independence
• There is a Kashubian community in Canada

And here is my story:

Until recently, Kashubian has been considered a dialect of Polish, spoken in the north of the country in a region called Pomerelia. A few years ago it has been granted the status of an official regional language and nowadays students can learn it at school. There are many sites dedicated to spreading Kashubian culture, language and traditions. You can even listen to Radio Kaszebe.

Years ago, on the other hand, the situation was totally different. My parents’ generation was picked on and punished for speaking Kashubian at school. They spoke Kashubian at home but never learned to read or write in it. Obviously they know Polish as well so I guess they might be called bilingual.

I grew up in a village (crucial factor - that’s where the language is usually spoken) and all the people in my family know Kashubian. I always thought it’s almost the same as Polish but apparently speakers of Polish, who don’t know it, can’t understand it at all.

My parents talk to each other, their siblings and parents in this very language. Yet they never spoke it to me. Even when my grandma asked me questions in Kashubian I always answered in Polish and nobody saw anything strange in it. As a result, me and my cousins i.e. the younger generation fully understand Kashubian but can’t speak it.

By ‘can’t speak it’ I mean produce extended stretches of utterance without hesitation causing strain. To be honest, any real ‘Kaszeba’ will immediately figure out that I’m not a ‘native’.

Who am I then?

Can I consider myself bilingual?

I always thought of myself as a weirdo but maybe that’s what happens to children brought up in bilingual families?

What do you think? Have you had similar experiences? 

As always, I'd love to hear your stories :)

New series: How I Learned Your Language

Many recent posts (especially this one and that one) made me think a lot about learning languages and how the process affects teaching. Many books have been written about SLA but I haven’t come across one written by a nonNEST discussing how he/she learned English.

That’s why I’ve decided to start my first series called ‘How I Learned your Language’.

Although my teaching experience is limited, I’ve been learning languages for more than 20 years. First came Russian, then English, French and Turkish. And there has always been Kashubian.

I have enough material for at least 5 posts but I’d love to hear your stories. If you want to share your experiences please contact me using the button in the top left hand corner or email me directly.

Here are a few things you might consider:

• is the language you have been learning similar to your mother tongue?
• how old were you when you started learning?
• did you learn it as EFL or ESL i.e. in a native speaking environment or not?
• was you teacher a native speaker or not?
• which methods did he/she use?
• what was the language of instruction?
• which coursebooks did you use (if any)?
• what was the most difficult/ easiest part of the language to master?
• what is your preferred learning style?

Now which language should I start with? Any suggestions?