 |
| Mission Training International in Palmer Lake, Colorado |
 |
| PILAT class |
 |
| Language helper small group |
For the last two weeks, I've been exploring concepts of language acquisition training at Mission Training Institute in Colorado. Like the tropical medicine course, I've definitely learned a lot that would have been helpful before (in learning Swahili), but I'm thankful to now be able to build on that language learning experience with new techniques and ideas. The course is tailored for missionaries preparing to live in another culture who will need to learn one, two, or even three new languages to be able to live, work, and communicate the gospel effectively.
One portion of the class involved phonics drills. The English language contains 44 sounds (Spanish has 29 and French 36 sounds for a reference point). One family in our class is learning a Cambodian language with more than 100 sounds! At birth we each had the capacity to produce any of hundreds (thousands?) of sounds the human mouth can make, but we didn't need them all, so we "locked in" to our language's sounds. But the point of the phonics training was to retrain our ears and our mouths to hear new sounds and to make non-English sounds that we may need in our new languages. We learned how to watch our helper's mouth and decipher what their tongue, lips, etc. were doing will making the new sounds. ("You can't speak French with an English mouth.") And we did lots of mimicking - sounding like infants (gagaga), but enjoying the challenge! I did discover three big things I was doing wrong when speaking Spanish, so hopefully my pronunciation will improve there! (Not that I'm speaking a lot of Spanish these days, but you never know when it will come in handy.)
The other major portion of the class was exploring techniques and ideas for learning a new language, especially in a non-language school setting (like me learning Kirundi in Burundi). The main point driven home was that it is up to us, the language learners, to take ownership of our learning rather than sitting back and waiting for someone to teach us. Listening and listening activities are a huge part of that, but so are techniques to begin practicing language in the community from the first day. We each practiced some of these activities with sample language helpers (from the community here who spoke French, German, & Russian). The point was to learn techniques and see them applied, but it worked out well that our group had a French language helper. I enjoyed getting started on French and understand a few more phrases than I did two weeks ago!
One of my classmates described the course as being "soberly encouraging". I agree. The course facilitators definitely didn't sugar coat the difficulty that is language learning, but they also presented it as a do-able task. They encouraged us to persevere, to take breaks when needed, to view the language learning time as
part of God's calling (rather than only
preparation for His calling) & to jump into the community and practice our new language daily with nationals (identifying ourselves as language learners).
You may remember when I visited Burundi last year and the Faders and I tried to play a simple game with the medical students. It took four languages (English, French, Kirundi, Swahili) before the game was fully understood by the students. We purposed then to learn all four languages (well, I think we have English down by now) in order to communicate as comfortably as possible in our new community. That's a pretty daunting task, but I'm ready to get started - in God's strength!
1 Corinthians 14: 9-12
"...if with your tongue you utter speech that is not intelligible, how will anyone know what is said? For you will be speaking into the air. There are doubtless many different languages in the world, and none is without meaning, but if I do not know the meaning of the language, I will be a foreigner to the speaker and the speaker a foreigner to me. So with yourselves, since you are eager for the manifestations of the Spirit, strive to excel in building up the church."
