Revisiting Language Learning 4 of 5 (Dr. Brent Lindquist)

Hello again. This is our fourth program in a 5 part series on Revisiting Language Learning. I say 'revisiting language learning' because every year I try to do at least one series on language learning. I think it's very important that you work regularly throughout your career in learning to speak what the other people are speaking wherever you are. It just think it makes sense and so that's why I do it.

Today I want to focus on another barrier to language learning. You might remember from last time that I talked about perfectionism and shyness. Today I just want to talk about one topic and that's difficulties in making friends. Now there is a mouthful and a can of worms. Friend-making is very difficult. Most of us have our own little stories of successful or mostly failed attempts to make friends. It starts about the time we can walk and talk, continuing with gusto right through our teenage years, and with more or less failure and success throughout our adult life. I think if you were to ask 10 people what the hardest thing to do in transitions was, they would tell you it was making new friends. It's very difficult to do. I'm not going to white wash this for you. I'm not going to say, 'Oh it's easy. Just do these 2 things' because there aren't 2 things, there are actually a lot of things to do.

I put this whole friend-making on a continuum. I divide it up into little steps. The first step is to find acquaintances. What are acquaintances? An acquaintance is someone you haven't made friends with yet. It is somebody that you just happen to meet. You might be introduced to someone somewhere and they're an acquaintance. You might say, 'Well that person over there is an acquaintance of mine'. Maybe you don't pay attention to that but an acquaintance is not a stranger. I want to move from making a stranger into an acquaintance and that acquaintance is somebody that I know. I may not know them well and at my advanced age I've probably forgotten their name, but they are somebody that I can use to get to the next step. The first step is making strangers into acquaintances and the second step is making acquaintances into friends. Now here's the problem. An acquaintance is somebody that you kind of know, so how do you find out about acquaintances? What are some things? There are a lot of questions that you have to ask about that. Now you're going to stop me here and say, 'Well Brent, that's really great. I'm really interested in this but there's a slight problem here. I don't speak their language'. Yeah, you're right, but if we always fall back on that we're never going to be able to do any of this. There is an awful lot of language learning that occurs outside of using that language. You want some proof? Okay, I'll give you some proof. You read words on a sign. You listen to somebody speak to a friend. You overhear a conversation as you walk by somebody on the street. You watch TV or more importantly, you listen to TV. If you have a problem listening while you're watching you listen to language on the radio. All of those are sort of passive ways in which you pick up things. You learn stuff from that. I don't understand a whole lot of Spanish, but over the years I've learned a lot more. Do you know how? Mostly from watching Spanish language football. I know what happens when they kick that ball through the net. The guy says, 'Goal!' I learned what ball means in Spanish – pelota. I catch those little words. While I'm not using Spanish, I'm still learning Spanish because I'm becoming familiar with it. There is a lot that you can do, even outside of speaking someone's language, to learn.

Now let's get back to the acquaintance thing. You can find out a little bit more about what someone does and then you move towards friends. How did you make friends back home? Some of us aren't very good at it, but most of the time we make friends by finding ourselves in a similar space. That is, we were sitting by them, we were working with them, we were traveling with them, we were in the same college or class, and so there are those kinds of things that you're sharing. Activity is important. Once again, activity relates to getting out of your room. If you think you can just sit in your room and learn language, it won't happen. You're going to have to be out with people.

How do you find out other parts of friendship? There is learning to ask questions. If you think that all you have to do is memorize vocabulary, it's not going to help. Does memorizing vocabulary allow you to ask somebody questions? No, because you can't just learn vocabulary. You learn vocabulary with structure, with statements, with questions, with commands...all of that comes together and works it out. You can't do any of this in isolation. You're sitting there saying, 'I don't know anybody and I don't know how to know anybody. What should I do tomorrow?' That's a good question. What can you do tomorrow to help you learn and make friends? I think you need to figure out – can I make friends in what it takes me to get through my life? Yes, you can. Well, what does that mean? That means that you go and make a friend at the little store that you buy your bread at in the morning. You buy a newspaper...I would say don't subscribe to a newspaper but go buy it everyday. That's too expensive? Well maybe don't buy it every day but buy it often enough that you'll be able to get to know, to recognize, to smile, to greet the person selling them. 'I don't know how to practice greeting'. Well this is where your language process comes in. You build your language based on being part of your friendship development. It isn't really rocket science, it's just putting a purpose to what your language learning tasks are going to be. I know this is hard. You may think, 'I'm shy and perfectionistic and now you're telling me that I can't make friends the way I want to'. Well, I hope I'm not but I am saying, 'Try and be directed in how you do your language learning'. If you do language learning in a way that makes you turn strangers into acquaintances, those acquaintances over time, as you practice and master something by making mistakes, will become friends. They may not be your best friend. They may not be somebody that you do all kinds of stuff with, but they are people that know you. People do know you. They notice what you're doing. People don't go around every day trying to learn language from ordinary people. That's a very powerful place to learn because it really helps you to build relationships with people.

My assignment for you is to think through how many of your daily activities over the next week you can turn into a language learning experience. You may think that you already know the language. Well, guess what? Probably sometime this week, if not sooner or later, somebody's going to say, 'I'm having trouble learning the language. What did you do?' Then you can say, 'Well, you know I was listening to this radio program and they said to try to make it like this...' and then you can tell them the story of looking at what you're doing and trying to turn each interpersonal interaction into a language learning experience. By doing that you will make strangers into acquaintances and acquaintances into friends. Think about it. It's not too hard and I think you can do it.

Talk to you next time!