Humanising Language Teaching
Year 6; Issue 1; January 2004

Analysing a successful Language Learning Experience

Jane Arnold, University of Seville, Spain

On a trip home to California via London this summer my seatmate was a lovely young woman from Australia, a special education teacher who worked with deaf children. As I have always wanted to learn to sign, I asked her if she would teach me to say some things. It was a great learning experience. And it was all squeezed in between 3 movies and a couple of meals, perhaps no more than 20 minutes of “class time”. Yet now, a few months later, with no reinforcement, I can remember how to say quite a few things in Australian English sign. I've about tried to think about why. Some of the reasons I've come up with:

1. All she taught me was what I asked her to teach me (Like Sylvia Ashton Warner 's technique with her Maoris learning to read). But wait, even before that, I was the one who asked her, “please will you teach me something I really want to know?” We were starting from my established motivation. Unfortunately, we can't count on this in the classroom in many or even most cases but if we can find ways to develop it, we are already moving towards square two.

2. Not only did I want to learn sign, I had something with a very strong personal and emotional connection I wanted to learn to say, even though I did not plan to say it to anyone. (Again, Sylvia's young students did not want to learn to say book and desk – they wanted to learn ghost and kiss.)

3. One of the big problems in learning a 2L was eliminated: pronunciation. So often learners are afraid of pronouncing – either wrong (they are making a mistake and can be laughed at) or even right (they sound different, in some case, like a language group they don't find compatible with their own identity). Of course, this is something we can't avoid as English teachers, but we can be aware of what obstacles there are for communication in a 2L due to pronunciation (Stevick has interesting comments on this in Memory, Meaning and Method).

4. A big plus for us kinaesthetics: we can move as we learn, even in a tourist-class airplane seat. For me, the movement I think really fixed the meaning in memory. (Maybe someone could write Memory, Meaning, Method and Movement). (A fifth M for me would be Mental Imagery – it was easy for me to visualize and learn the sign for “very”, for example.)

5. The teacher was enthusiastic, willing, empathic, kind, fun.... need I say more?

6. I wasn't exposed to an hour's language input with no time to process, as many students are every class. I asked her a few things as I thought of them, she told (showed) me and I practised both mentally and physically between eating or changing movie channels during the flight. I had down time to let things roll around on their own and under-consciously be processed.

7. She was there to answer any doubts and for me to check my knowledge but when I wanted and asked for it, not when she, the teacher decided to test me. She corrected what I did wrong when I asked, or rather helped me to correct it, didn't overdo the praise when I got it right and then left me to continue repeating what I knew. Yes, lots of repetition, but it wasn't boring. I was driven internally to do it. Maybe like the “din in the head” phenomenon but here very grounded also in the body.

8. As I went over what I had learned, new things would occur to me (I knew how to say open but then wanted opening...) and I asked and got an immediate response. So I was building on what I knew and asking as new needs occurred to me, not being led by a pre-determined syllabus.

9. I felt confident I could learn and progress. Who knows why. Some things I have forgotten a bit – maybe what I'd sign would look to a competent signer like “he goed” sounds to a native speaker of English – but most of it has stayed with me. I didn't learn a huge vocabulary or fine tune much syntax but I know I have something that will stay, including the desire to learn more.

(editorial note: dare I say that maybe a tenth reason for this being such a successful learning experience was Jane's intense interest, as an outstanding methodologist, in how people learn. I doubt she lived this experience without this “meta” level hovering in her mind. Jane, if I am wrong about this, this note will get deleted! How marvellous to have cyber-flexibility, rather than the rigidity and finality of print. )