What I listen to in English in a 24-hour period
Things are silent for me in the morning. The only human voice I hear is my own, talking to myself, but since I’m talking I’m not really listening. In Real Life I can go hours or days hearing nothing in English. Here at school, the first English I usually hear are greetings from classmates, updates since the previous day and questions about assignments or other scholastic matters.
Then I listen to the teacher talking. Sometimes I’ll overhear one student whisper to another. I’ll hear students replying individually — some speaking a lot more than others, particularly we US students speaking more than the international ones. When we do small-group work I’ll hear my partner(s) against the backdrop of other voices, some of whose words I can pick out while I’m listening to my own cohort. Not infrequently I find myself tuning out from where I’m supposed to be and listening in elsewhere.
Between classes I’ll talk to SIT staff about administrative matters, to the man in the bookstore or the woman in the post office about those things, to the techie guys about that.
Often I’ll join classmates for lunch. Usually I exchange a greeting with the lunch staff, and then settle in with compadres. I’ll often be listening to school issues — plans, work, internship ideas, cranky teachers — much more than to personal tales. However, when I’m alone with a student, the conversation will often veer to the more intimate. I’ve heard from classmates about their religious beliefs, their native countries, their families, their health…
After hearing bits of life stories from colleagues I’ll usually hear more instruction and other direction from teachers, both in lecture form and activity explanation. I’ll often ask for and listen to clarification from my fellow-students.
When I come home I may exchange a greeting with a neighbor if I see one, but more often I’ll say hello to a dog. Again, I hear English but only peripherally, since the damn dogs still refuse to speak, in any tongue.
Since I’m out in the boonies and don’t have a radio or tv or decent Internet, I don’t hear English from those. Occasionally I will open iTunes and hear the lyrics to a song. Otherwise, linguistically all is silent till the next cycle begins.
Oh, and of course I hear English in my dreams.
In another language I hear little. I rarely hear my classmates speak in their native languages. I hear lots of Kiswahili during class: instruction that I don’t understand, the occasional isolated word that I do.
Does anything strike me about that list? Well, most English (and other language) that I hear is through interaction with other humans. Except in my dreams (where I do hear different languages, some of them probably not human) and when I talk to myself and hounds, language does not exist in isolation. Even with dogs, it’s always used to convey a message.
Language Learning in the Past
In my early years of learning language, all four skills were addressed, but the strongest focus was on reading and writing. We did only a little conversation (listening and speaking) in class, except for vocabulary. Our language labs after class were speaking in a way, except it wasn’t to a human — it was, embarrassingly, to the air — and the context was set and artificial: repetition, transformations… all very boring. And we also were to write responses to auditory cues, as I recall. I do remember a strong emphasis on writing and accuracy. There was little reference to a language being used as a way to communicate with people from other places. I never knew why I was studying the language, really.
Later, the focus shifted to conversation … uh, and I guess there’s a reason for that. Because classes started to be called “Conversational Spanish,” for example, rather than “Spanish Literature,” etc. We didn’t used to have that option. So as an adult, I always chose conversational classes. There has been writing. Some reading, depending on teacher (but others, like in Guatemala, have left out reading entirely). Some book grammar. In Central American language schools it seems the focus is on listening and speaking. In these cases, the goal has been to improve fluency so we can get by in everyday situations: quite contrary to the studies of my younger days.
How my skill in L1 and L2 will influence how I teach them in my internship
Hard question because I don’t know where my internship will be and haven’t learned enough to know how I’ll teach. Because I have native fluency in English, I have the ultimate flexibility with the language to use it creatively. However, I don’t yet have the experience to know how to teach it, in its infinite complexity. My experience trying to learn other languages — Latin, French, Spanish, and more recently Turkish, Kiswahili and Afrikaans — is confusing the issue for me. Because I’m a very slow learner, much slower than my classmates, I will have a hard time knowing what pace to set that keeps those more facile from getting bored while not leaving behind those like me. So it’s not my skills in other languages that will inform my teaching, but my experience trying to learn them. This isn’t much of an answer to the question.
What did I learn today about myself as a user of the four skills
Nothing, really. I know I listen well. As a native English speaker, I was able to paraphrase the life story of my partner will little reference to my notes on paper, while speakers of other languages tended to refer more often to — or read directly from — their notes. I didn’t learn anything about reading and writing. My writing today was scrawled, its only purpose to jog my memory in speaking.
What did I learn about teaching the four skills
Well, this isn’t specific to the four skills, but today’s exercise is useful to teaching in general. We split into pairs, choosing someone we didn’t know well, and for ten minutes each we listened without interruption to the other describe one event or person or idea that is important to/has influenced them. It fostered community-building as we all got to know each other a little better, and gave us the chance to laugh together and empathize together as appropriate. Another positive characteristic of today’s lesson, indirectly referenced above, is that — by taking notes (and calling it a “poem”) on the other person’s story, people with more difficulty in the language have additional scaffolding should they need it. That is, they can read from their paper. And since native speakers also do that, they don’t feel alone. One phase of the process involved taking two minutes after a person had finished their story for the other one to reprise it aloud. This demonstrated to the speaker that s/he had been listened to, and gave the storyteller the chance to fine-tune or correct as necessary.
I did something different in my telling of Yajuan’s story. I told it from the first-person perspective, which I felt gave it more immediacy. When one other person did that later, I was able to attend much better than when it was in the third person. Of course it was easier to listen when a story was recounted largely from memory rather than from paper, though some (like Yajuan) were interesting readers.
I liked this method. We discussed how it could be used in larger groups: breaking up in pairs as we did, but then “debriefing” as a group over a period of days, since one classtime wouldn’t be enough, for example.
And as I said, it is good for language because the written word (the notes) serve as a security blanket for anyone who is conversationally less secure. Similarly, Person 2’s recap at the end of Person 1’s story is a good test of the former’s quality of listening. While reading and writing are used, it is a good exercise for speaking and listening.
What helped/hindered my learning?
The only thing I noticed was that I was emotional today. I got teary when I heard about Moloko’s children because I missed my own. This came after my story, which was about my father, who is incredibly dead, about which I’m not happy. So while I was unexpectedly grieving, I wasn’t listening much. I was more worried about myself, and wondering if anyone noticed my glossy eyes.
Feedback from Elizabeth:
Dear Ginna,
It’s interesting to me that you focus only on language when you write about what you listen to: what about all the other noises that allow you to make meaning—the sound of wind telling you about the weather; the barking of the dog telling you to watch out; the singing of birds going south. All of those sounds—although not language—create meaning for you, and for others, although the message may be different based on each listener’s own experiences.
It sounds as if your language learning experiences were similar to mine: lots of reading and writing and very little speaking—and when there was listening and speaking it was all ALM oriented with little real communication involved. The listening module gives you the chance to think about other ways to teach—and perhaps to realize why it was difficult to be successful in your own learning of listening.
Re: your future teaching. I think that what you’ve learned about yourself as a learner will be extremely helpful to you in your teaching. You know what has worked and what hasn’t worked for you and you can use this knowledge to help your students learn more effectively.
Excellent insights about the Told Poetry activity. Each person who wrote to me about it in their journal entry has been touched by the experience. I know that this activity is emotional for many and I agree that the emotion involved can get in the way of listening intently. But perhaps the community building and the listening to really communicate can’t happen if we don’t feel emotionally involved with the other person’s story.
Thanks, Elizabeth