In order to avoid learning a second language in college—a dreaded prerequisite—a counselor advised me to take Linguistics 101, The Study of Language, followed by a communications course of my choosing. I jumped at the opportunity. Anything to get out of my Intro to French class where everyone had two or three years of French in high school.
There isn’t too much I remember about that Linguistics course besides the professor’s homosexuality, the older divorcee’s willingness to share her notes, and the TA’s controversial lecture on Black English, or Ebonics, or whatever the hell you want to call it. As for my other elective, Speech 101, or 251, or some other insignificant triple digit number, I learned an invaluable lesson: When writing a piece, consider your audience. Proper English doesn’t matter as much as being able to communicate your thoughts.
Which brings me to my next point. The lovely Spanish lady pictured above came to the United States to learn how to speak and understand English. I’m not sure how her family felt about her living in the Metro Detroit area, but her immersion into our dialect must have been somewhat of a culture shock. "I don’t understand," she repeated often.
My dad, a toolmaker by trade, thought that if he spoke a little louder and a heck of a lot slower, then maybe her comprehension would improve. "Haaaaave sooooome coooorn," he said at the dinner table, thrusting a plate of cobs her way.
I remember her waking up one morning and saying, "I dreamt in English!" and from that point forward her ability to speak and comprehend the language improved immensely. You see, the poor girl had been appalled watching us eating corn on the cob at the dinner table, and after learning a few select words and sentences, she explained, "In Spain we feed it to the pigs."
Immersion is the best way to learn. I say this, knowing that one-week from now, I’ll be training two new teachers the "do’s" and "don’ts" of prison culture. They’ll become my shadows, my understudies, and every thing I say will finally have some validity (or not). As long as they don’t have nightmares, I’m sure they’ll do fine.
12 comments:
Jim, Nice photos! No hablo ingles! :) I remember well our little Spanish siissster. Well, now is history and ho hablo espanol. People learn from their masters and shadowing them for a while. Hey, they'll still get paid IN TRAINING. Have a great day. --Bro, Ron
My youngest went through the French Immersion program in school. The day he had two wisdom removed and freaked out from the drugs administered, we knew the immersion had "taken." He was mumbling and thinking in French the entire time. Very strange.
Ah, shucks ;) Is she back in Spain these days?
The corn bit is priceless.
Love the pictures! I don't learn languages well. As for my linguistics class, it was taught by a man who was considered on level with Noam Chomsky and I also remember nothing about it except that he made us count syllables in poems and brought in some of the worst, most sentimental poetry ever and made us read it aloud. He was very kind and strange, but cool enough.
I know just enough French, Spanish, and Italian to get by but would love to arrange a home stay with a family in each country. It's the best way to learn a language. As is training "on the job" so to speak. ;D
What a lovely smile you have in that photo! I know it's pointless to ask questions here, but how on earth did you graduate from high school without any foreign language studies?
I'd like to try immersion some day.
Once a year for about three hours I immerse myself with my wife's Italian aunt who never learned english.
She is old so I understand but she still won't swear so I can learn to swear in a third language.
She's always to busy crying over her deceased husband and how my father in law is passed as well, but the woman still has never put a canoli out either, immersed in grief I guess.
peace
TWM
Enjoyed the read. Thanks for sharing. MW
"We feed it to the pigs." Love that. ;-) Such a perfect illustration of cultural differences.
On another note: Doing much networking here. Clarence Brown sends his best, enjoys the cite,
I'm getting the hang of this lap top. Keep you posted. MW :)
A good post. I read it last night, I thought I commented, too.
Guess not. I read all over. Nothing like shameless self-promotion...
Hope those new teachers provide some lay-off padding for you, make your seniority worth more.
If you're training teachers, are you still non-essential?
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