Hi Whizzes!
So, this blog is about to blow your notion of Practicing into a billion bits. Are you ready?
So, in the middle school for gifted humans that I had the privilege of working at, we ran a college-level Spanish and French Language Acquisition program. Slay. We had our in-class reality, in which we mastered the most incredible Warm-Up Circles on Planet Universe and its environs, processed input from compelling stories that last at least a semester long (it’s like living in a telenovela!)📺📺📺, and we also have our out of class reality, that takes place on a learning platform called Canvas - a lot of colleges use it.
Outside of class, students must read for 100 minutes a week in the Target Language. As Chair of the World Language Department, I purchased💰💰💰 every novela written for language acquisition on the market. We scanned them using Adobe Scan, put them on a Drive, separated them by level, shared our students to the Drive, and also provided them each with a fabulous Digital Notebook.
The Notebook is an online Excel document where they put a Word Count Reading Goal up to graduation, and kept track of every novela they’ve ever read. Once they finished reading a novela, they inputed the Author, Title, Total Word Count, and they got a percentage number of how close they were to their Word Count Reading Goal. It’s poetry (British accent).💡💡💡
In the Spring💐💐💐, students participated in a Discussion Series (five total discussions for five weeks) on Canvas. They read a lecture in English about Language Acquisition, and then had to make a primary post by Thursday and respond to two other humans by Sunday. These Discussions were (and am sure still are) Fascinating. FASCINATING. FASCINANTES.🎏🎏🎏
Why the Discussions? Because we wanted our students to graduate with a basic knowledge of how language acquisition happens and what best classroom practices are, so they can gauge whether that high school or college class is something they really want to invest time, brains and money on, or at least so they can advocate for themselves and also know how to go about continuing their language acquisition journey in case they HAVE🙈 🙉 🙊 to take a language in high school that will leave them with a weak mental representation of the language and therefore little to no communicative ability (most likely the case).🎎
The Discussions were FASCINATING. Oh, wait, I already said that. Right. Most of the students got the gist of the YOU NEED INPUT to build those neural pathways, but some of them still needed guidance. This was my question to a student during one Discussion:
Maestra Constanza:
“So, Peppa Chancho, what do you think you would need to do if you wanted to keep strengthening your mental representation of X Language?”
Peppa Chancho:
“I think I would need to go out and find people to practice with, like native speakers of it, and just have some conversations.”
I asked the same question to another student whose name is Hello Ditty and this is what she said:
Hello Ditty:
“I would need to read a lot in the language. Books that are just right above my level, and also maybe learn songs in it.”
Good job, Hello. Ok. Here’s the deal. You’re like…this lady is CRAZY🪅🪅🪅📯📯📯.
Indeed.
No objections there.
I'm livin' la vida LOCAAAAAAA.
But, hear me out. When you have a conversation with someone, ANYONE, even in your NATIVE TONGUE, what that conversation does is give you a MARKER, some PROOF, some NOTION of your communicative ability AT THAT MOMENT, in that language. 📋📋📋
FEW new neural pathways get built, because the amount of new vocabulary present even in a conversation amongst two native speakers is marginal, if any at all. The point of a conversation, truly, is to get either informational or emotional 🔥 ❤️🩹 💔(or both) messages across. By all means, HAVE THE CONVERSATIONS. In our department we TRAINED our students in courage, in caring not an IOTA what anybody thinks of them, in just diving right in if they find anyone who speaks the target language. 🃏 🎴 🀄All the wigs and props and humor really helped in this! And oh they do, but they understand (or they will…by JOVE), that that exchange is not going to significantly strengthen the mental representation of the target language.
Let me give you a fun analogy.
You like Flamenco 💃🏽💃🏽💃🏽and decide to take some classes. You’ve taken five classes. Suddenly you encounter Carmen Amaya Amaya (reincarnated, of course), and decide that dancing with her is a good way to keep learning flamenco. To up your game, you know? The scenario is ludicrous. Most of us would pee and poop💩our pants😵 before we would even APPROACH HER.
And perhaps, most important to this analogy, Carmen Amaya Amaya was not a teacher of flamenco. She was a virtuoso dancer, singer and performer. Watching her perform 100 times would help you more than getting down and dirty with her (or trying, so help you Goddess), one time.
Barring mental impairments, all humans speak at least one language. This does NOT mean they can teach it. Barring any impairments, we can all do lots of things, like poop 💩 (here we go, again), but this does not mean we know how digestion works nor that we could teach it to others. 🧠 (Imagine that's an intestine, not a brain).
Let us face reality. Your mental representation of your desired language is not going to get stronger because you “find people to talk to”. What you need is what? That’s right, copious, MEGALOADS, embarrassingly large amounts of input. The amount of input you need would put even capitalist greed and fast food “big-grande”🍔 🍟🍔 🍟🍔 🍟 (oh wait, same thing) to shame. And here are some things to think about when you do have those lovely convos that will show you just how much communicative ability you do have (and please do, that’s why you’re acquiring the language, anyways, right?).
🪀When—face reality. How often do you ACTUALLY find anyone to talk to in the target language and you ACTUALLY TALK TO THEM. Count the times. Keep a journal. And when it does happen, it’s almost never at a time when the other person HAS time to dedicate to coaching you because…
🪀Who—whomever. 99.999999999999999999 times out of 10, someone who speaks the language, but has not the slightest idea nor interest in how to teach it. Also, think of Quality of Input. Yes, most humans speak a language, but not all humans speak it in the same quality. All humans have different cultures, educational levels, ranges of vocabulary and grammatical ability. Do the random humans you encounter who speak the Target Language you are acquiring speak the language at the calibre you want to learn it?
🪀How—naturally, situationally, and not in an educational setting.
🪀What—quick communication, to get some relational piece of info across.
🪀Where—wherever, but not in an educational environment where it is understood that strengthening your mental representation (if you’re lucky enough to be in a research-based classroom) is the goal.
So yes, rejoice 🤾🤾🤾when you encounter the dude in the place and are like “¿En dónde están los aguacates?”🥑🥑🥑, and you understand when the dude says “Allí, mano.” Rejoice, feel that warm tingly “I can speak Spanish!” 🌮🌮🌮feeling, but let the delusion end there.
Or, do a “I can speak French!”🥐🥐🥐 pirouette 🩰🩰🩰 when you encounter that dame and are like “Est-ce que vous avez du pain au chocolat? 🍫(even though what you Really wanted to say was Voulez-vous coucher avec moi?🛏🛏🛏)”, and she says “Non, desolé, pas au jourd’hui!”. Yes, you leave the café with hope (I can see you grinning like an idiot (French accent)🐸, because in your mind you asked her what you really wanted to ask her, and instead of slapping you in the face she said “not today”. Keep the relational delusion (again, you have a therapist for that), but not the linguistic one---THAT'S WHERE THIS CRAZY LADY named MEEEEEEEE COMES IN!!!
To put it bluntly--your mental representation DID NOT JUST GET STRONGER🧲, only your fantasy love life did.🧨
Hey, I’ve been there. In high school (and I was already GOOD), a native French speaker called my French ERSATZ. I had to look the word up. It killed me with embarrassment.
Yes, BOTH having to look it up and then finding out the meaning. Don’t get me wrong, that did not stop me from having convos with any French speaker I have ever encountered, but it was reading, copious amounts of reading, watching movies 📽 🎞📽 🎞and singing songs in the language in the subsequent decades that now has French humans asking me whether I am French myself. It wasn’t the conversations. The conversations simply show me the effect of all that input I put my brain through.
Ok, have I beaten the horse enough already? 🐴🐴🐴Sorry, Rocinante. You’re viejo, débil y delgado, and here I am beating you. LO SIENTOOOOOOOO.
Constanza Ontaneda
