The other day, when my nine-year-old son returned from biking club, he told me that he understood the conversation a German-speaking family had. My son told me that the young man there told his mom he was hungry. “Ich habe Hunger?” I asked. “Yes,” he responded. Then my son told me that the mother responded that the young man’s sandwich was in the car. I tried to guess what those words were. My son said that he didn’t know what the words were, exactly, but he understood them. To have a direct understanding of one language without the mental translation into his native language was delightful to see.
When we started researching foreign language learning approaches and interviewing people who had become fluent in a foreign language, one of the greatest differentiators for people who really learn the language was being actively engaged in the learning process. I watched my husband and others. They don’t just study at random or follow a scripted course. They are invested in determining the most useful words and phrases to learn and they focus on those.
When my husband and I would go out to eat in Germany, I noticed that he was thinking through what words he needed to know to let the waiter know he didn’t have a reservation and wanted seats. He would look up pertinent phrases. He had no shame in using Google Translate right in front of the waiter, though he usually didn’t have to. He’s thinking three steps ahead and looking up those phrases in advance. My husband is great at improvising, so when he would tell the bakery server in German that he didn’t speak German, they would respond that he did speak German.
His phrasing wasn’t always perfect. That was another commonality among people who learn a second language fluently. They are not afraid to speak imperfectly. As you have likely heard, nearly every European speaks several languages fluently and they know enough of many more to get along. When you live two hours from France, it’s useful to have a general idea of French. When we spoke with Europeans who spoke English we’d speak with them just long enough to determine they spoke perfect English. It was always at that point where they would get comfortable and slip into some phrase with major grammatical errors. I never thought less of them. This gave me the confidence to just speak, regardless of the fact that I sounded like a three-year-old.
The final difference we noticed between those who study and become fluent and those who don’t is that those who become fluent choose real use over safe study. They incorporate the target language into their daily life, either intentionally or through circumstance. This is where the beauty of learning language as a family comes into play. When family members learn the language together, they have a built-in community for practicing the language. They can come to see communicating in this language as word play, making up new combinations and continually seeking to fill in the gaps and adjust while being ok with an imperfect mastery. It’s important to keep this experimentation open. Correcting mistakes that are imperfect attempts at conversation is a quick way to close down learning. We want to keep the learning and experimentation open, while gradually incorporating more and more of the language in its correct form.
Learning a foreign language is, at its heart, a tool for connection. Cultivating an atmosphere where it’s safe to learn and experiment creates an environment not just for learning the target language, but also for building the trust and comfort required for true, deep connection. Learning a foreign language then goes beyond a surface ability to converse with native speakers and delves into true understanding of the people most important to you. This can’t help but spill over into having a more open heart to others with a different worldview. Learning a foreign language in the context becomes a joy! Next time, we’ll share the tool-kit we used for learning language as a family in our home. Until then, bon apprentissage !
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