Ways of belonging to a group- voices from Italy and Japan

The Student Voices in this issue explore some of the strong, idiosyncratic things that go in within people working in a warmed-up, person-centred learning group.

The first voice is from Japan. S describes how she has dealt with the invitation to correspond with the teacher.

" Maybe you thought I might be a bit shy when I told you that I had written some letters and I was going to give them at the end of the course.

You are right. I am shy. I have the feelings in my mind, but I find it difficult to express. What I want to express is deep inside. However I talk only something on the surface to my classmates.

Self control is one of the values I have been taught to respect.

I write letters when I want to put my mind into words and when I want to spend time thinking about the person. 85% of my letters are either unfinished or finished and not posted.

I enjoy writing , though. It doesn't really matter if I post the letter or not. Having the time to think about the others is more important for me.

I decided to give the letters to you because you said you had had difficulties teaching Japanese people when you started teaching. I thought you needed feedback from me.

Francesca, part way through a course on NLP in language teaching, writes the following analysis of how she has become a near native-speaker of English. This is a Student Voice describing a process that has stretched over 30 years or more. It is partly about being separate within the group.

Reconsidering my own experience as a language learner in NLP terms, I should say learning English was very much a matter of building up rapport between myself and the people who spoke that language. This meant tuning in to their wave length by understanding and tolerating their culture. [ 'Understanding' is probably a better word in this case as 'tolerating' suggests having to put up with something, which you don't have to do if you understand.] Intolerant people have always been bad language learners.

In terms of the Bateson logical levels, appropriate language behaviour stands between the sharing/acceptance of values and the impulses you receive from the environment , whether it is social ( with its cultural implications ) or natural. There has always been rapport between myself and the natural environment in this country ( England). The particular mixture of colours, the gently rolling shape of the landscape, its ever changing sky have always started internal dialogue within me , which is often in English. I have always thought internal dialogue is basic to language learning.

At an early stage learning English for me was a way of day-dreaming, getting away from everyday life, making it easier to be who I was. Teenagers are often too shy to give expression to their emotions and speaking a different language, was, at that time in my life like wearing a protective mask.

Finally, learning English for me was an outcome which I set out to achieve. Self-played drama was a lot of help in achieving the different smaller outcomes of the learning process. At an early stage speaking to myself in English was more helpful than actually speaking to other people. It may not work this way for everybody, though; I am very intrapersonal *

However, there is a risk in moving from this stage to the stage of interaction in a real context unless you are ready to cope with the necessary re-mapping. Of course there are other subjective aspects which vary across people and time and ability also plays a crucial part.

And this is my current fantasy.

Francesca.