Tools of Language Learning

To learn a new language one has to have a lot of tools in their toolbox. At PILAT they suggested we think of our ourselves as Business Entrepreneurs. When you are starting a business (say a restaurant) you organize all that you need like a cook, waitresses, food, and a great location, etc. In the end though, the responsibility is yours. You will be the one there early in the morning and late at night and you will be the one responsible for the bills. Learning a new language is similar in many ways they told us. There might be a language school, language helpers, books to learn from, projects to do, etc but in the end the responsibility to learn that new language is ours.

To really have a ministry and serve one must learn the heart language of the people. That is why this time around, although I have spent time in Indonesia before and do know some of the language I will be spending the first several months at a language school. The school is in Indonesia but on a different island from the hospital. This way I can focus first on the language and not be distracted by the needs at the hospital.

While I was at PILAT they gave us several tools we can use to learn our new language. Here are just a few...

One of the first tools we used was a simple mirror. It allows you to see the movements your mouth is making when you are making different sounds. There are lots of sounds in the different languages of the world that are not in English. If you cannot see what your mouth is doing you cannot change what you normally do. You can listen to us do some of those drills in my last blog post. Which brings me to the next tool....

The next item that will get a lot of use will be a digital recorder. With it you can record native language speakers. Those can then be memorized when the language helper is not available (homework!). Also the student can record herself saying the same thing and hear the difference. So how do you start? That notebook at the top is filled with exercises and activities to do. Here is one example...

You start with four places drawn on a piece of paper. In our case we did home, church, school, and post office. Then you sit with your language helper and point to each place. They tell you the name in their language. You do this again and again until you are starting to become familiar with the words. Then the teacher says the name and the student points to the right place. Then the you go back the beginning with the student pointing and the teacher saying the name but this time the student repeats the name after the teacher. Then you learn the word "you" and move onto the next step...

You draw four modes of transportation on separate pieces of paper and learn those in the same way you learned the places. Then you add the modes of transportation to the places and learn the phrase "you went to ?? on ??" for all the different places and forms of transportation. In this picture for example "you went to church on a bicycle." For each stage you learn it first by having the student point and the teacher says it and then then the teacher says it and the students points and then you do the steps all over again with the student repeating the word after the teacher. Confused yet? It was a bit at the beginning but once we got the rhythm down it was easier than we expected. The final step was to draw pictures for and learn the pronouns "he, she, we and they" in the the new language.

Then you were able to make more phrases like in this picture "she went to church on the bicycle" in the same manner. With mixing just four places, four modes of transportation, and four pronouns you can say a lot! The teacher can also ask questions like who went to the church, etc. In the end, I think we were all amazed at how much you actually learn just by hearing and how quickly your mind actually comprehends things! It made language learning seem a lot less scary and actually exciting, although I know it will still be a lot of work.