Did I hear that right?

Greetings from 7,200 feet above sea level! It has been a busy almost two weeks here at Mission Training International (MTI) doing Program In Language Acquisition Techniques (PILAT). The view out the window of my room is beautiful but the air here is definitely thinner and drier!

View from my window

Our days are full and filled with funny sounds and laughter. We spend at least an hour a day (and many days two hours) practicing phonetic drills. Now for those that haven't done phonetics, especially those sounds outside the 44 sounds that are in the English language, this is a unique adventure in getting your tongue, lips etc to do things they don't normally do. You can take a listen to one of our drills here:

PILAT Phonetics Drill by calistay


We are also learning and practicing using several different tools such as Language Acquisition Projects (LAPs), GLUEs, and Series to study a new language. In my case that language is French. It is not the language I will use in Indonesia but this process gives us a chance to try out the tools. We have had a fabulous volunteer language helper named Trudie, to help us with this process. It is amazing how fast comprehension actually is although speech is definitely much farther behind. It is great reminder that when we are kids we listen to language for a year or so before we ever try to speak.

Using a GLUE to learn how to welcome someone to our house in French

Using a LAP to learn places, pronouns, and transportation

More next week on this process!