Learning a language
This post was originally inspired by a recent email correspondence with june. Check out their blog!
"A language enthusiast"
It occurred to me recently that despite calling myself "language enthusiast" as is written on my home page, I never really wrote much about languages or language learning. Yes, I do spend time learning languages everyday, but it seems as if it has become such an integral part of my life that I do not feel like sharing it with other people. I mean, who talks about their breakfast with the internet, right? At least I don't because my breakfast is just plain ol' cereal. And when it comes to language learning, it is pretty much the same for me. Plain, old, nothing creative.
A bit about myself. I grew up speaking Mandarin as a native language. I started learning English since the age of 4. My dad did not like how schools would force him into studying for exams, so he decided to send me to a tutoring center where I got to speak with native English speakers every weekend. He bought CDs of his favorite 90s' music (what we would call international pop these days) from local bookstores, and played it all day while I played with my toys. He put on tape recordings of radios in English, although he himself did not understand a single sentence. I watched TV shows and movies mostly in English as a kid. You get the point: there was a lot of input.
I just thought that was it. Input was crucial to learning a language. So, starting first day of French class in college, that became my strategy. I chose to listen to a bunch of French podcasts and tried to get myself to fall in love with French Pop music. I tried watching French YouTubers, TV shows in French. It was fun. At first. There was a lot of novelty, and novelty sparked my curiosity. Except, I couldn't help but notice that something was missing. That curiosity was starting to dwindle, and I had lost interest in learning French entirely, after a year, without getting really far. I think at the time my overall French level was at around A2 to B1-ish, and I had just barely got a 75/100, not so satisfactory considering the exam was designed to make everyone's life easier.
See, acquiring the English language happens to be the most natural process possible for me. And I am more than grateful that it was. But I was taking it for granted. There wasn't really much reflection on how I got to where I am today with language learning, and my methods were mostly not working. If sheer input could lead to learning, I would have progressed so much more with French. But I never did. How come?
"The Gifted Child Syndrome"
The term āgifted kid syndromeā is essentially this. It is every child who was raised with constant praise and higher-achieving than others when they were young. It is every child who grew up, found themselves amongst other high-achieving students, and failed to adapt. It is the idea that you have never had to work for anything in the past, so at last, when you need to, you donāt know how, but you canāt get rid of the overwhelming pressure to be exceptional.
Now, it would be a bit of a stretch to call myself "gifted" in languages. I personally do not think that I am gifted. I just happened to be born with parents that had slightly more vision than other parents of my peers and that do not care as much about test scores. What I will say though, is that I was praised a lot when it comes to language learning. I did find myself participating in English speech contests with other high-achieving kids. And I did feel the intense need to learn French so much faster than everyone else in the class because I thought I knew it all.
What is the problem here?
The problem is the burden of expectations that is placed upon me. I have so many people around me expect (and I have internalized this idea) that "learning a language is easy because it appears to be such a natural process for me" when in fact, acquiring / learning a language takes time. A lot of time. So I went into learning French, expecting myself to be able to read and fully understand the original text of Le Petit Prince after 2 weeks, which is just not possible. I expected myself to work less to live up to my own "language learning potential" when what I really needed to do is to work more. An analogy would be: Yes, I can have a blueprint for a mansion, but if I only put in as little effort as building a shack and expect to get a mansion...guess what? Reality Check! All I get is going to be a shack and nothing more.
To walk the walk
These days, I try to put in more work into building the mansion, just like everyone else. And that is one of the reasons why I don't write about language learning as much here. I don't think I have figured out a set of methodology that works for myself. I could document my learning process here (and I will do that more often, someday eventually), but I also just do not want the documentation itself to be a distraction for me now. English is not the language I am working on refining (although I most likely should), and my Japanese is not yet at a level where I feel comfortable writing in. The last thing I would want is for me to talk about learning a language, and not actually learning it. There are a lot more topics in life that I want to talk about, and those will just suffice for this blog.
To those who are working on their mansions, you have a cool blueprint. Keep up the good work! For now, I will keep building mine, maybe write about it sometime in the future.
If you made it so far, thanks for reading! Feel free to leave me a message on my guestbook or write me an email.