Stages of learning a foreign language
Our consultants are mostly concerned with teaching science and mathematics, claiming no expertise in the very different skill of teaching language. They have, however, learned several, which gives some insight into the process.
Inspired by one consulatant’s recent discovery that a foreign language learned long ago has not been completely forgotten, there have been discussions at Five Colors recently about the process. We count several languages among our skills, at different levels. For the sake of simplicity, we confine ourselves to describing three of the latter.
Fluency is, of course, the objective. There are levels of fluency (defined and sub-defined by the State Department), but our astronomer offers his own: if you use a dictionary that has words in only one language, you are fluent. He adds the discouraging note that, unless you started and continued your studies from an early age, you will never be at the native-speaker level; there will always be things to trip you up and subtleties you’ll miss. But you can make your way without trouble among people who speak no other tongue. This is a wonderful feeling for our consultants who, in other lands, have felt themselves enclosed in a bubble of not-understanding, closing them off from the people around.
Beginner is, to some of our consultants, the most interesting time. Faced with saying something in a new structure and with new words, your mind finds itself thinking in unfamiliar ways. It’s like opening a new book or moving to a new city. The prospects are limitless, though so far unrealized. And sometimes even a word or a phrase opens up a window and a conversation: you’ve shown interest in someone else’s background, which can be immensely comforting to them or to you (depending on who is the foreigner).
Intermediate is the most difficult to define and the most deceptive. You have reached here after, say, two or three years of classroom study. You have assimilated the basic rules as well some of the more advanced. In a classroom environment you are perfectly capable, getting excellent grades on the quizzes and tests. In fact you may think yourself Fluent. But if placed in an unstructured environment, with people who speak no other language, you are at a loss. Part of it is your limited vocabulary. Most of it is the fact that the language as a school subject, a veneer you assume between 10:00 and 10:50, is very different from the same thing encountered in the wild. (Also important are courage and attitude: we have seen students with mediocre grades enjoying conversations with locals, while those with excellent transcripts are silent. A willingness to make mistakes is important.)
The Intermediate stage is, in a sense, the maximum of inefficiency. You have put years of study into the subject, and yet you cannot yet carry on an unstructured conversation, or read a paragraph without much laborious reference to the dictionary. After much work, you are still (in a general sense) useless. When asked whether you speak Spagorian, you have no ready reply.
And if you drop the study for an extended time there are different consequences. If you are a Beginner, you lose just about everything; but you had little to lose and you can pick it up again quickly. If you are Fluent you lose your edge, but it comes back again with some work, and a basic ability never really goes away. Intermediate is once more a troublesome case. Coming back to the subject, you find yourself answering some questions quickly and correctly without thinking; but you’ve forgotten the explicit form of the general rule and so can’t apply it elsewhere. It’s not clear whether you should go back to the very beginning and drill yourself in verb conjugations, or work on advanced compositions looking things up as you go.
Our consultant has memorized some old songs to sing to himself as he waits for the bus.
