Invent a story

During my MBA, there was a course that I took called "The Art of Leadership". I remember in one class, we had a special guest lecturer, who had a background in theater, and the topic of the day was "teamwork". In one exercise, the teacher lined up 6-7 students in front of the class and proceeded to explain how to play the game. Essentially, the teacher decides on a random title and points to one student, who would then have to start inventing a story based on the title. Once the story starts, any of the other students can jump in and take over the storytelling at any time.

Here, the lesson in teamwork is helping each other and self-sacrifice. It's hard enough to invent a story out of the blue, not to mention being in front of the whole class and all attention is on you. Not many students can start a story and make it past a few sentences. So when the narrating student starts to lose momentum with the story, other students need to step up and take over, putting themselves under the heat instead.

Now, I thought I could take this game and apply it to language learning. Think about it, a conversation with other people in a foreign language puts you in the same emotional state as the narrating student in the game. A given topic is at the center of the discussion, which of course can go in any direction at any time, and you are tense because you need all your attention to understand everything, but you must also find the right timing to jump in and take the discussion in the direction that you want.

So I tried it out on my English students, lining up a few of them in front of the class, giving them a scenario, and just letting them play. Seeing them play is pure entertainment. Sometimes they have a great scenario in their head, but they just don't know how to say it in English. But they would make the best out of their limited vocabulary, and add in a few gestures here and there and somehow move the story forward. And they would come up with the craziest stories, from Snow White fighting Godzilla to submarines going into the human bloodstream. Knee-slapping laughter guaranteed!

I think this is a game that is perfectly aligned with CLAP, in that it simultaneously allows you to improve your English and enriches your imagination.

Language teachers out there, try it out in the language that you teach!

Elderly ladies = best language practising partners

Some students are very motivated to practise their newly acquired language and are able to overcome their fears to initiate discussions with complete strangers when they go to a foreign country. I admire this kind of courage and believe that it's a big step toward fluency. However, unfortunately it's not easy to meet people who have the patience it requires to talk to students who are not very fluent. For these people, what is important is to move the discussion forward, so they will quickly switch to English and completely disregard the efforts of the poor student. But students, don't be discouraged! I know people who will be very happy to talk to you and let you practise your new language!

Next time you go overseas and want try out your new linguistic assets on somebody, find old people, especially ladies. Yes that's right, old ladies. These beings have all the attributes of the perfect language practising partner:

1) The mere fact that they are women means that they will tend to like talking. That's a good start.
2) Most old people have time.
3) They are more patient and understanding.
4) They have so much life experience to share.
5) Your chances of meeting an old lady that speaks good English are much lower than if you met a young person.
6) If they have slight hearing problems, that's even better, because you then need to learn to articulate clearly and speak loudly. (How's this for out-of-the-box thinking?)

When I went to Ecuador, my Spanish was still in its infancy. But my buddy Greg's host family, including the grandpas and grandmas spent hours talking with me. When I visited Portugal some decades ago, I stayed in a B&B run by an old couple. I still remember one night, I was watching TV with the old lady, and there was a wedding scene. So she started talking to me about her daughter's wedding and enthusiastically took out photo albums to show me. I had so much fun and practised so much with the very limited Portugueuse vocabulary that I had.

Complete memorization of texts

First of all, this is NOT my idea! I cannot take credit for it. But I believe it can be a very effective method. If you don't believe me, check out Uncle Polyglot, the super multilinguist who told me about this method. He is a Japanese living in Singapore, and is fluent in many languages, of which I am particularly impressed with are his English, Mandarin, and French. His blog is mighty informative so I urge you to go take a look, especially his videos are a great source of edutainment.

The reason why I think this method should be very effective is similar to why I think taking notes (during classes, seminars, meetings, etc.) in foreign languages (which I wrote about previously) is an effective language learning exercise. Just like you need to understand what you are hearing before you can translate it in your head when taking notes in foreign languages, you should understand a text fully in order to memorize it. Of course, one can argue that it is not a necessity, but understanding the text will make it much much much easier to memorize it. Also, going through the exercise of memorizing requires "repetition". There's no better way to make new words stick. Repeat profusely.

Thanks Uncle Polyglot for a great idea!

Sora-mimi

"Sora-mimi" is a funny way of saying "mishearing" in Japanese. I came up with this little exercise for teaching English. Nothing fancy. I would find a short YouTube clip, usually a funny commercial like the one shown (the Budlight series are my favorite), and tell my students to transcribe what is being said word for word. Then on the day of the lesson, I'd get them to write what they heard on the board. Let me tell ya, some of the stuff they hear are h-i-l-a-r-i-o-u-s! It's always a blast.

Two things can be expected from this exercice. First, to transcribe, the students will have to listen to the clip over and over and over and over and over.... Of course, this gets their ears accustomed to English words in bite size portions, which is much more effective than listenting to English in long portions, such as in a TV series or movie. Second, often the funniness of the students' answers and the "aha moments" (a.k.a. "eureka effect") created by my corrections really make the answers stick.

But this exercice, as simple as it is, is tough. Just a few minutes of clip can take hours and hours to really transcribe correctly. Even the one shown above, which is the very first one that I used, took my students a long time to transcribe. The dialog consists of only 3-4 lines!

This can be done of course with your favorite videos and DVDs also. It's easier if you have someone to control the clip for you. Play-stop-rewind-play-stop-rewind...(ad infinitum)

Foreign babysitters

When I was about the age of the little girl in the drawing, my parents got me a babysitter who only spoke Taiwanese to me. I don't remember much of those days other than the fact that she had children about my age and we'd take baths together all the time.

Note taking in foreign languages

So today I begin to give you concrete examples of what I had done or what my parents had done for me to learn languages. This first one is a perfect example of applying CLAP, i.e., finding language learning opportunities in things that you do anyway in your daily living context.