A row of old books. Image from freeimages.com

Social Bookending : Scripting conversation start and end points for better flow

Tim Burton tells us that every story should have a beginning, a middle, and an end. Or was it Jean-Luc Godard – or even Aristotle? Anyway, whoever – and whenever – it was, they had a pretty solid, if obvious, point.

Language enthusiasts face a very particular struggle, and one very close to my heart. It’s that compulsion to run before we can walk. This is not necessarily a completely negative trait. For one thing, it demonstrates our high ambitions and commitment to the subject. But in a one-to-one session when you just want to focus on your favourite topics, it can leave you being middle-heavy – all filling and no bread, in sandwich terms.

For instance, my brain is usually so focused on the material I wanted to cover in conversation (music, language, politics) that I am regularly caught on the hop when switching into intro and outro – or social niceties – mode. The winding up and the winding down of conversation are things I just assume will happen of their own accord. But they rarely do.

First confession: that’s chiefly because I spend so little time on them as a learner.

For me, at least, the reason is simple: learning chitchat is just not as interesting as the meaty, topical stuff. It’s the reason I’m always so tempted to leap three or four chapters in when I start a new language book. We all want to be rootin’, tootin’, high-falutin’ fluent speakers, and so we grab at the highest branches.

That’s totally understandable.

Social bookends: real-life framing

That said, it’s impossible to ignore that social dimension. Sudden starts and full-stops just don’t happen very often in real-life conversation. We don’t meet friends for coffee and immediately launch into a diatribe on the state of things, before disappearing to our next appointment.

Just as we bookend our coffee shop gossip with social glue, our language lessons should also reflect this real-life framing. After all, we hope eventually to communicate with other humans using the foreign language. Part of everyday communication is all that built-in, rote-learnt social interaction – the script of interaction. Effective language lessons must teach us to operate fully within these social scripts, as well as equip us with the vocab and grammar knowhow to decline verbs and rattle off sophisticated arguments. In other words, to operate as living, breathing, social entities within the language environment.

Now, it sometimes feels like talking openly about difficulties and failings is anathema in our online learning communities. It tends so often to be about the biggest, the brightest, the best. So another confession:

I really struggle with the language of social interaction.

Motivating myself to spend time learning various ways of saying hello, how are you doing, goodbye, is not my favourite thing. Smalltalk, even in English, does not happen for me without a lot of coaxing. But after countless lessons fumbling and floundering at the start and the finish, I realised how inescapable it all is.

Curating social scripts

I needed a way in to fix this. A means to make it more appealing. So, as a remedy, I appealed to my inner collector. This is the side of my personality that revels in curating lists of vocabulary and learning arcane grammatical exceptions from two-inch thick tomes. Obsessive, geekish list-writer Rich to the rescue!

I scoured dialogues in textbook dialogues. I mind-mapped the phrases I use in my native language and sought translations of them using resources like Tatoeba. I used subtitles to mine intro and outro phrases from TV and film (although it’s shocking how often phone conversations end abruptly on screen, as opposed to real life!).

There are myriad places to find social glue. When you do, note them all down in one place. (I probably don’t need to add that I use Evernote to store mine.)

A list of social niceties in Icelandic

Learning to ‘do’ social language (my working document for Icelandic)

It’s not just about ‘bye’ and ‘see you’. It’s about the extra stuff like ‘take care!’, ‘keep well’, ‘have a nice weekend’, ‘say hello to X’, ‘enjoy your evening’. It’s all the padding that makes start and end transitions a bit friendlier, a bit less abrupt, a bit more natural.

You may well ask why I still need to work from a list. Well, this stuff just doesn’t happen naturally for me at all. Some people are natural social butterflies. I just get lost in the detail sometimes – even in my own language!

When the time comes, I pop my list up, and have before me lots of ready-made one-liners I can use to ease in or wind things down nicely. And, eventually (hopefully!), these interjections become second nature.

Right under your nose

Yes, this might seem like pretty obvious advice. But aren’t the most obvious things the easiest to overlook? Having a bank of starters and finishers at your fingertips can make lessons so much brighter and less uncomfortable, particularly if you use 100% target language with your teacher.

Students, start your own crib notes to start and finish your lessons smoothly. And teachers, help your students to level up in these skills. Banish that social awkwardness by learning your lines like the linguistic actor you are training to become.

Soon you’ll be running like a well-oiled social machine!

A picture of a window taken from inside. Two houseplants sit in pots on the windowsill. Isolation needn't be limiting. Picture from freeimages.com

Learner Isolation : Rethinking Language Strategies in Difficult Times

What a week. It is no longer a distant item on the evening news. Everybody is starting to feel the impact of Covid-19 containment and delay measures. And as language learning can be such a social activity, the isolation blues are beginning to bite.

Wherever you are in the world, you are probably feeling the repercussions, too. For me, it has been a week of setbacks to meet with a resigned, accepting and understanding shrug. Isolation measures to deal with the pandemic have deflated my little social learning bubble, and there is little to do but sit tight.

Isolation nation

The crunch came on Friday. After a fair bit of deliberation, I cancelled a long-anticipated language practice mini-mission to Norway, as the country started to close its borders. For one thing, it seemed wrong to fly in the middle of such uncertainty. For another, the last thing I wanted was to burden another country’s system as the demand on resources was hotting up.

It was a close call. I was due to fly the very day the army was later deployed to assist in turning back – or quarantining – foreign national arrivals at Gardermoen airport. Thank heavens for small mercies – that would not have been a pleasant situation to get caught up in.

That evening, news – not completely unexpected by now – arrived to confirm that our beloved Gaelic classes at Edinburgh Uni, for this and the next term, are off. Our informal Gaelic chat pub group will go the same way, too. Given the pattern, I am bracing myself for a series of language conference cancellations over the next couple of weeks. Sad, but necessary.

Bit by bit, these extraordinary circumstances are dismantling the familiar and the normal.

Perspective – but continued self-care

Now we face an indeterminate period of isolation, and a radically different world – at least for the time being. It is now getting harder and harder to plan to visit our target language countries in a world we had grown used to being so easy to navigate. Even the cultural institutions we study as language learners and budding travellers, like the Norwegian hytte tradition, are facing suspension of uncertain length.

Our worlds suddenly feel a lot smaller.

But a bit of perspective here: these are, in the grand scheme, minor inconveniences. All these small sacrifices are for the greater good, since there are much more important things at stake than learning timetables. They are infinitesimally insignificant in the face of a serious global health crisis. 

But in frightening times, we all reach for what gives us comfort. When global events threaten these comforts, it leaves us feeling helpless and stressed. And there is no shame in missing the things that make us feel better, or even feeling angry that they are taken away.

Don’t feel guilty. In difficult times, we need to exercise the self-care to look after our emotional and intellectual needs, as well as the physical.

The time is right

Fortunately, there has really never been a better prepared age for the learning community to overcome these challenges of isolation. Namely, for the first time in human history, social meet-ups are not bound to a single space, thanks to social media.

For a start, we have the fantastic online polyglot community. Much of the interaction here takes place over Twitter, and it has been a particularly replenishing waterhole of solace and comfort these past weeks. I am part of a fantastic circle of friends and fellow aficionados there, and now that network is proving invaluable.

We will see online learning communities and tuition exchanges really come into their own now, too. Sites like iTalki are a perfect fit for these times. Social interaction with a native speaker has never been easier.

And the forced, slower pace of life, without the hectic to-and-fro, has an added benefit. Now, I have more evenings freed from the mega-commute, ready to Skype teachers without the time pressures of cramming them in here and there. Who knows – I might even finally get round to giving remote EFL teaching a go.

That’s a lot of extra time not spent on trains for me, by the way. At least some of that will be dedicated to discovering more nifty Excel tricks too!

Becoming better people

And what about all those other goals and aspirations beyond language learning? As for me, it means doing something I have intended to do for an age: cooking more from scratch. A former meal deal addict, I am now reaching for the cupboard a lot more. That beats nipping out to Boots or Tesco for a pack of sandwiches every lunchtime.

Finally – and perhaps most importantly – the pandemic is a reminder that each of us is one amongst many. This is a chance to reach out to the people around us, ask how they are doing, see if they need our help. In so many ways beyond language learning, this difficult experience can make us better people.

We have the tools and the enthusiasm to succeed in the face of challenge. However your everyday may change, you can flourish in the new normal. 

A classroom ready for teaching

Teaching to learn: boost your studies by helping others

The idea of learning through teaching is nothing new. We find the idea in an old Latin proverb, docendo discimus (by teaching, we learn), possibly handed down to us from Seneca the Younger. The premise is simple: being able to explain what we know turns that knowledge from passive into active smarts.

We might also argue that the skill of teaching is facilitating learning, rather than bound to the actual content of that learning. It’s not necessarily about what you know, but how well you can explain (and re-explain) material – even new material. In this light, a natural next question is: can we teach without being experts in that content already? And are there learning benefits for us in doing so?

Primary Languages

The Primary Languages model rolled out in many UK schools is a great example of learn-while-teaching. Many teachers are not language specialists, but rather using teaching materials that allow them to stay one step ahead of the students.

The very best materials, like Linguascope‘s elementary resources, are packaged like ready-made lesson plans, which can be reviewed before class and form a roadmap for the teacher. Great teaching in this context is the skill of presenting, explaining and reviewing content, even if you’re just a few steps ahead of your class.

Peer teaching

In the classroom setting, learning through teaching can be just as powerful between peers. Students may be tasked with learning material in order to teach it to other students, either contemporaries or those in lower year groups. The resulting ‘altered expectations‘ – the knowledge that you’ll have to teach the material you’re learning to others – transform motivations and sharpen focus on really understanding. Also dubbed the ‘protégé effect‘, educational scientists have noted how preparation to teach results in students spending longer on material. One study provides empirical evidence for this ‘teaching expectancy‘ effect.

The idea has achieved some institutional acceptance already; educationalist Jean-Pol Martin has helped to instill the Learning by Teaching (Lernen durch Lehren) model as a popular method in German schools. The modern ‘flipped classroom‘ also has elements of student-turned-self-teacher, too, reversing traditional roles.

Build teaching into your own learning

So, teaching as learning has a long pedigree, and already has some good traction in the real world. But what lessons can we take from this for our own language learning?

Bug friends and family

Share with friends and family what you’re learning. They don’t ‘do’ languages? Then break it down as simply as possible. Tell them about a quirk of your target language that you find unusual. Think you’ll bore them to tears? Then find some way to make it interesting to them. The more challenging, the harder you’ll have to think – and the more that material will stick.

To get the interest of family and friends, I’ve actively looked for things that will make them laugh in the past. Never underestimate the power of humour in learning! Funny-sounding words (Fahrt in German is always a good one), weird idioms (tomar el pelo – literally ‘pulling the hair’ for ‘pulling someone’s leg’ in Spanish) and other oddities speak to the imaginations of the most reluctant listeners. “You’ll never guess what the word for ‘swimming pool’ is in French…”

Find a learn-and-teach partner

You can go beyond sharing humorous factoids and foibles. Find a fully-fledged language partner – someone who is as motivated as you to learn the language – and devise a schedule where you take turns in teaching vocabulary or grammar points each week. You’ll be activating those ‘teaching expectancy’ effects that worked so well in the classroom studies above.

Create resources for other learners

A revision technique I learnt as a student was to condense important points into simple explanations for others. If you can explain something complicated in a new, simpler way, then it’s a good sign that you really understand it.

Something I’ve been doing recently is to revisit my Castilian by creating Spanish revision videos for beginners. It’s been a form of revision for me, activating old knowledge bases that were starting to fade through lack of use. And because of the interconnected nature of knowledge (the neural networks of our brains), switching on a few buried memories triggers and refreshed many more connected informational blobs.

It’s easy to find a platform to share your homemade revision resources these days. Starting a YouTube channel or a Facebook group could be the perfect platform for your own learning through teaching.

Teaching is connecting

At the heart of it, learning through teaching embodies what languages are all about: making connections, building bridges. Try working some of these ideas into your own learning, and enjoy the social splashback!