Experiences in Language Learning (Part One)

My recent reading about languages and language learning theories, as well as the recent blog post at http://blog.thelinguist.com/ (Aug. 29, 2012) has gotten me thinking more and more about my own language learning experiences and what they indicate about how I can best learn languages when participating in a formal class, as well as when learning independently.

My first experience in second language acquisition started when my family moved to Mexico when I was six. Having no previous experience with Spanish, moving to a tiny town in central Mexico was quite a shock at first. No one spoke any English, and I soon discovered that if I wanted to make friends, I needed to learn to communicate. I learned via immersion, playing with kids in the street. By the end of two months I could understand most of what they said, and could make myself understood too. By the end of a year, I was speaking nearly fluently. A year after that, when we moved to another town, most people thought I was Mexican.

My second attempt at a foreign language, German, was quite different. When I was ten, my mom bought us a language course containing a phrase book with amusing pictures and a set of tapes with audio for each of the sentences in the book. Although I really enjoyed reading the book, looking at the pictures and trying to copy what I heard on the tape, the material was not practical or useful. There were no Germans living in our town in Mexico, and eventually I forgot most of the phrases. The only thing left now is—pardon the spelling—‘Mein tee ist gut abbe meine tasse ist tsu klein’ [My tea is good, but my cup is too small]. Beyond the fun of trying out a new language, and possibly the exposure to a new set of language sounds, I think the attempt at learning German was a pretty dismal failure, and contrasted quite sharply with my resounding success in learning Spanish. 

Back in the States, I enrolled in a public alternative high school. Having already mastered Spanish, the only other language course available to me in our small town was Russian. I wasn’t terribly excited about it, but my mom insisted and I needed the credits, so I signed up. This was my first formal language learning experience. The class met a couple times a week and was led by a charming and friendly Ukrainian woman. Unfortunately, the language made absolutely no sense to me, and aside from memorizing some vocabulary, I felt totally lost. I had never encountered noun cases before and had no idea how they worked. Also, I was distracted by a really cute boy, who I later persuaded to tutor me in Algebra and eventually married. Aside from memorizing vocabulary and reading the practice sentences from the book, I did no other study in the language on my own. I didn’t think to look for other sources of language input which may have been available, such as the Russian-speaking community in our town or books on tape.

Since this post is getting quite long, I have decided to describe my more recent language experiences in my next post. Stay tuned!

This is me, signing off...