Steps to Learning a Foreign Language

Here’s a guest post from a friend Anthony Flora – an american who used to be invoved in the church in Badajoz before we got here. He’s been back to visit and I really appreciated his advice on language learning – so I asked him to put it in a post for us. Here’s part 1:

Some perspective from someone who learned Spanish in Badajoz

“The only way to learn a language is to make quite a bit of effort on a daily basis.”

-Robert DeKeyser, a professor of second language acquisition at the University of Maryland.

Step 1: Decide you are going to learn Spanish.

This is important because later it is going to be difficult and you might doubt your capability of ever speaking it at the level you truly wish to. If in the beginning you only decided to try to learn Spanish you might end up giving up. But the good news is this: if you don’t ever give up, you will learn Spanish, or whatever the particular language may be. This step should be intertwined with your decision to move to the foreign land where the foreign language is spoken.

Step 2: Begin acquiring a base now.

This particularly applies if you have not yet moved to the foreign land. The time to start is now. Every morsel you pick up now will be like manna from heaven when you get there (even if it doesn’t seem like much at the moment).

Step 3: Be organized and intentional about your learning.

Many people think language learning happens by osmosis. This is not true unless you are a child under the age of 13. Even then it is not really by osmosis but rather through their brain’s incredible way of creating synapses and something called latent semantic analysis by which children intuitively figure out words’ meanings through context and remember them. As an adult therefore, much effort must be put into the acquisition. If you move to a Spanish speaking land and simply exist in the culture without making any intentional effort to learn, you will learn to speak on some level. A level which will vary according to your distinct ability to hear something and imitate it; but unless you are part of the 1% of the population of the extraordinarily gifted in language, this method with leave you frustrated and will greatly increase the amount of time needed in order to truly communicate with the natives.

Step 4: Recognize that the purpose of language is communication, not perfection.

If you are an adult and not part of the 1% of extraordinarily gifted, you will probably never speak it perfectly (even natives occasionally mis-speak). This should NEVER inhibit you from speaking or attempting to speak. The only way to learn to speak is to speak (and even native children all start out speaking incorrectly). You must have no shame. For a long time you will not have the vocabulary to express what you feel/think and when you finally do remember the word for “olive oil”, you will pronounce it with a distinctly foreign accent. No matter. Embrace the struggle to communicate fluidly, both for the sake of your language acquisition as well as for your need to relate and build relationships with other humans. The metaphor may be overused, but this struggle is akin to the moth struggling to break free from its cocoon. It is the very grappling with your restrictions that produces the results down the road. Do not rely on someone else to express/interpret/communicate for you. This will only prolong your inability to communicate and lead to isolation and loneliness.

Continued tomorrow…

Innovation Required

“The electric light wasn’t invented by continous research and development on the candle.”

Seen here, but no source given.

Which is more helpful, a ? or a .

Thinking mission statements…

I’ve been involved in two churches in the past which had a fairly focussed emphasis on their mission statement – the statements were:

“Connecting people with Jesus Christ.”

and

“How can we see the Kingdom of God come in Sutton?”

Both were helpful in many ways, and, ofcourse, healthily annoying at times as well. The process of working them through was good from a leadership, discipleship and organisational point of view. I think they shaped the communities, one large, one small, to do more than they otherwise would have done.

Here’s the thing with mission statements though: Pretty quickly they have to move down the levels and have legs put on them. “Connecting people with Jesus Christ” has to move through, ok, let’s run an alpha course, and begin that on a Wednesday night in a months time. “How can we see the Kingdom of God come in Sutton?” Has to get to something like pitching up at a local leaders breakfast next Tuesday to try and build some relationships.

As time passes, the seemingly inevitable drift occurs whereby the organisation begins to confuse the methods and the mission. Connecting people with Jesus Christ becomes equal to, or synonymous with, running an alpha course (or whatever practical outworking you had decided on). Then 10 years on we’ve commited to the method whether or not it’s still fulfilling the mission i.e. connecting people with Jesus. It requires leadership to keep pulling people away from methods and back to the mission. You have to fight the natural tendency to continue with the status quo.  The drift towards marginalising the stated mission in favour of continuing with the favourite methods remains unchecked.

If you’ve started with a question though, then over time you should see the methods change, as the question asked in new circumstances produces a new answer. Self critique is built into the organisation. One year you do prayer meetings in night clubs, the next you partner with the local council on a gardening project, all the while feeling connected to the original ‘mission’.

Beginning with questions also leaves open the possibility of ‘successfully dying’ – because at one time the answer to the question may be – ‘disband’ – which you can then do with good conscious. If your statement requires that your organisation exist (as most do) then that possibility is not open to you – and a very powerful goal of self-preservation begins to assert itself in all sorts of ways, not all helpful.

Imagine how it would affect the organisation if the statement became:

‘connecting people with Jesus Christ?’

Built in then, without leadership assistance, is who is Jesus? Where is he? Where are people? and what does connection mean? It’s very difficult to get married to a method from that point. Self critique is embedded in the organisation.

Ofcourse, this isn’t a sliver bullett, and wouldn’t work in every situation.  It also has a danger of over analysis, but I’ve found it to be a helpful way to outwork the idea that we are seekers of a Kingdom (Matt 6.33).

What do you think? How would it affect your organisation if your changed your sentence to a question? Or, if you’re starting something new, why not gather round trying to answer a question?

Well Watching

This was from the well’s blog today – worth checking out Nat’s explanation. These guys have been walking this path for coming up 5 years now, and it is good.  Keep digging!

Prayers for Spain

“I’d been giving a talk on redigging the wells of revival, at the end of it I had about 10-15 spaniards come up to me and say, “It’s been great what you’ve said but from our perspective we have no revival wells in Spain. So, what are we to do?” And it really threw me because you spend an hour talking about redigging the wells of revival, and they come and tell you, ‘great talk, but really totally irrelevant, so what are we to do?’ And I’ve always found that God is such an optimist, he’s not stumped for an answer, he’s not like, “oh blow, I forgot about Spain”… and I said to them, “You don’t need wells of revival, I said, name to me the nations of the earth that know without a doubt they’ve got first century apostolic prayers for the nation. Paul walked the Mediteranian saying, ‘I want to get to Spain’. Now I don’t think he ever got there, but I’ll tell you what, his prayers are alive for Spain…”

Martin Scott heard here (Facebook sign in required).

Paul in Romans 15, “I plan to do so when I go to Spain. I hope to see you while passing through and to have you assist me on my journey there, after I have enjoyed your company for a while… after I have completed this task and have made sure that they have received this contribution, I will go to Spain and visit you on the way. I know that when I come to you, I will come in the full measure of the blessing of Christ.”

Schooling vs Education applied to Discipleship

“I have never let my schooling interfere with my education.” Mark Twain

Been mulling over the difference between education and schooling in reponse to reading some of John Taylor Gatto‘s work, and Seth Godin’s free ebook – stop stealing dreams.

In broad brushstrokes both veer to a definition of schooling as being a method of mass control, which systematically trains compliance. As opposed to education which is a tailored approach of liberating people through equipping them with the tools and desire to train themselves.  It’s the acknowledgement that drilling a student in a manner that will produce a good grade isn’t the same as helping them to develop mastery of a discipline. Before agreeing or disagreeing, please go to thir original sources – my definitions haven’t done their arguments justice.

What I want to do here, is take their analysis of the american / western eductaion system, and mull over possible applications for discipleship processes.

I fear too many times, particularly in youth ministry, my strategy erred towards ‘schooling’ people into a fairly narrow culture of the e/c model. My approach was basically to move people from outside of the room (not involved), to the back of the room (playing on mobiles and chatting), to the middle of the room (interested and involved), to the front of the room (part of the worship band / helping with the talk / leading a small group etc).

So far, so standard, but after seeing this play out over a few years two disturbing facts kept rearing their heads.  Firstly, going through this process ‘successfully’ proved to indicate very little in terms of ongoing discipleship, if anything i.e. the kids at the back on their mobiles had a habit of walking on with Jesus well into their twenties, others giving talks and at the front of the room had a habit of walking away. Not always, but definitely enough to make you question the srategy.

The second fact was the feeling question that perhaps I should be doing exactly the opposite… and moving people from the front of the room to the outside. This seemed to correlate slightly more closely to the strategy of Jesus and the early church than what I had been doing… oops. In other words, I had been trying to produce good grades amongst the students, when I should have been training teachers.

The problematic part is ofcourse that most church youth workers (or leaders for that matter) aren’t paid to start a missional movement among young people, as wonderful as that would be. They’re paid to get more young people into the church. This obviously isn’t limited to youth ministry, and isn’t always the case – but there is something to it, isn’t there?

To bring it full circle, the main critique of Godin’s manifesto, and Gatto’s preaching is that they don’t really offer an alternative, or atleast there isn’t an obvious answer to how to educate the masses, rather than simply school them.

Ofcourse, as the church, shouldn’t we have greater freedom to lay down our industrial style attempts at ‘schooling’ the masses and return to a discipleship driven approach tailored to educating individuals to walk with Jesus themslves and go on to help others?

Worth asking?

Where are we now?

Where are we going?

How do we get there?

What is the next step?