A lesson about learning languages

My first class as a TEFL teacher felt very much like my first day at school. I felt ner­vous and scared. I opened my class­room to squeals, laugh­ter, one lit­tle girl was cry­ing, an­other lit­tle boy was under the table and one had a school bag on his head. I spoke no Span­ish, they spoke no Eng­lish. I took a deep breath, walked into the class­room, sat down on the floor and started to play with a pup­pet. The chil­dren qui­etened down and came and sat be­side me. I saw that they were ner­vous, too. We played a few games, danced, sang and ended by sit­ting in a cir­cle play­ing pass the pup­pet. The bell rang and my first class was over.

Learn­ing a lan­guage is much like our first day at school in that we are brought back to an ear­lier stage. In our own tongues we are fully ca­pa­ble of com­mu­ni­cat­ing, we feel con­fi­dent and can ex­press our­selves per­fectly in an adult way. How­ever, in a new lan­guage we don't have those skills. We again ex­pe­ri­ence those feel­ings of frus­tra­tion, shy­ness and the fear of mak­ing mis­takes. We are out of our com­fort zone. We are start­ing over again.

Chil­dren don't seem to share the same ob­sta­cles many adults do when learn­ing a lan­guage. Per­haps be­cause they are mas­ter­ing life every day and are more com­fort­able with not know­ing or learn­ing how to do some­thing. As Ken Robin­son says, if chil­dren don't know, they'll have a go. Ken Robin­son is a very fa­mous ed­u­ca­tor and writer. He has given speeches all over the world and is a pi­o­neer for cre­ativ­ity in learn­ing. He has an amaz­ing talk on TED Talks called 'How schools kill cre­ativ­ity'. Through my own ex­pe­ri­ence of teach­ing, I see this very often. He be­lieves that our ed­u­ca­tion sys­tems cre­ate an en­vi­ron­ment where a mis­take is the worst thing you can do. We have exams that are based on an input and out­put model of cram­ming for exams, where there is only one right an­swer. We are afraid to make mis­takes. How­ever he claims that it is through mak­ing mis­takes, through cre­ative learn­ing that we can break down bar­ri­ers. That there are al­ways more than one way. That we all have dif­fer­ent tal­ents and un­for­tu­nately not all are recog­nised through the ex­am­i­na­tion process.

In Eng­lish class, young kids get ex­cited, we sing to­gether, we play games and they are al­ways re­spon­sive and will use the lit­tle lan­guage they have with pride. They will try and make mis­takes and will try again. If you cre­ate a lively in­ter­ac­tive en­vi­ron­ment they be­come in­volved in the learn­ing process and enjoy it. Lan­guage should be ac­ces­si­ble to every­one. No one en­joys sit­ting down in front of a large text and study­ing. Well, maybe some do, but the ma­jor­ity of us don't. Chil­dren im­me­di­ately switch off and be­come pas­sive. It sug­gests some­how that the teacher or the text book will sud­denly trans­mit the lan­guage into their minds. Un­for­tu­nately it doesn't work like that. And it's re­ally bor­ing. For every­one, in­clud­ing the teacher.

This type of learn­ing has given learn­ing a bad rep­u­ta­tion. It has also cre­ated a 'I'm no good at it' at­ti­tude. I my­self have bought into this con­cept and have fre­quently said I'm no good at lan­guages or I'm no good at maths. Thus cre­at­ing a block­age to my own learn­ing. I have worked in dif­fer­ent lan­guage schools using a va­ri­ety of meth­ods and I have found any method that gets the stu­dents in­volved and think­ing cre­ates a bet­ter en­vi­ron­ment for learn­ing.

A lan­guage has many ways to be ac­ces­si­ble. Through music, art, trav­el­ling, drama, cook­ing, heck, any ac­tiv­ity can be­come a les­son in Eng­lish. Any­thing that gets a child or an adult talk­ing, play­ing think­ing in Eng­lish works. It also gets them think­ing in­de­pen­dently as they don't have the safety of a book to look at and an an­swer to read. They have to think on the spot, find the lan­guage and go for it. Lan­guage learn­ing is an ad­ven­ture, it re­quires prac­tice, re­spon­si­bil­ity and open­ness, and with the ap­pro­pri­ate en­cour­age­ment and sup­port is ac­ces­si­ble to every­one.