I’m Rob, one half of Spanish Obsessed,
where my Colombian partner Lis and I have recorded a series of Spanish
podcasts for all levels and help people to learn Spanish. I myself
started learning Spanish just before I decided to move to Spain a few
years ago to teach English. After a while there, I moved to Colombia
where I lived for about a year, and since moving back to London in
2012, I’ve been running Spanish Obsessed with the beautiful Lis!
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You’re in The
Old Vic
(most famous theatre in the world). You’re waiting in the wings, and
you can hear the audience shuffling in their seats. A bead of sweat
drips slowly down your forehead, and you’re practising your first line,
over and over. You’ve been preparing for this role for a long time and
know you’ve fully stepped into the character. You know how they think
and feel, you know their past, and you’ve lived in their shoes for the
last six months. You’ve become one with the character – you’re a true
method actor. When you do make your way on to stage, you hear your first
line. What comes out is not your own voice, but the voice of this
character you’ve been working on, this new person that you’ve actually
become.
See
where I’m going? When we speak foreign languages, we all do this to a
certain extent. We’re all performers, and we’re all acting. We all take
on new identities, and speak and listen from them. What I want to argue
is that this is essential in being able to speak a language well, and
those that go furthest with their second language tend to be those who have managed to step into a new identity the best.
Why is this? Let’s have a look at what’s involved in speaking a language really well:
Vocabulary
It’s pretty difficult to speak any language if you don’t know any of
the words in that language! Just as actors have to prepare for their
role by learning a script, so too we need to build up a base of
vocabulary. It’s the necessary groundwork. However, what makes the
script really come alive is when it’s placed in context – when the
actual performance takes place, and these words take on new shades of
meaning. That’s the same with a language. We can learn the vocabulary,
but it’s only by using it in a variety of situations that it really
comes alive.
It’s often thought that actors have phenomenal memories. When actors learn their lines they look at the “
throughline” –
the intention, emotion, and context behind those lines.
As well as this, they often tie in a certain line to a physical action,
helping to anchor it and give it more meaning. As language learners, if
we can tie emotions to the phrases we learn and anchor them with a
physical movement, we are also more likely to retain that vocabulary.
How often have you experimented with the delivery of a phrase in another
language, imbuing it with emotion and giving it a context? Give it a
try, and you’ll be surprised by what you retain.
Register and Appropriateness
Having a good grasp of vocabulary is not necessarily about knowing all the words in a language. It’s about knowing
when
to use them. This is known as register, and being aware of register is
one of the hardest things to get right in a foreign language. If you
walk into a pub in London, you probably wouldn’t say to the barman
“Would you mind possibly pouring me a pint of beer”, and similarly, in a
business meeting scenario you wouldn’t call the CEO “mate”.
Being aware of these differences and being able to use them
requires a deep feel for the culture.
A feel of what’s accepted in each given scenario. In a way, this
requires stepping into different characters’ shoes, and getting a feel
for how to act and what to say in each situation. As language learners,
we can create mental “language buckets” for different registers and
situations, and as we learn we can place them in these buckets according
to how appropriate they are. As an English learner, I might have a
mental bucket “pub phrases”, and another “formal meeting phrases”.
This
is also a classic trick used by politicians (arguably, the best actors
of all), who on answering questions, frequently give the answers that
they want rather than answering the actual question. They group their
knowledge into similar “buckets”, and draw from these when answering
questions.
Confidence
Not necessarily the kind of confidence that you need during public
speaking, but the kind of confidence that let’s you be who you want to
be, without worrying about being judged. Actors need to be able to be
the character they are portraying without worrying about what people
think, and as language learners we need to try to inhabit that space as
well.
At a beginner level this translates as a certain fearlessness in
making mistakes, butchering the language, and dealing with frustration
at not being able to communicate as you would like. At a more advanced
level, it means a confidence and ease in speaking, which leads to lower
inhibitions, and hence better fluency.
Cultural understanding
When Daniel Day Lewis was preparing for his role in the Last of the
Mohicans, he learned how to build a canoe; when he was preparing to be
Abraham Lincoln he didn’t break his Lincoln accent for months. He went
deep to understand those characters’ lives, how they think, and where
they come from. To really speak a language well, we have to do that too
(live the culture that is, not build a canoe!). You can only get so far
by studying books and audio – at some point you have to put them aside
and step into a certain lifestyle and culture.
Language fluency and pronunciation is deeply tied in with identity.
If you can identify yourself as a Spaniard, or Colombian or whatever
you want to be, this will actually help you to bed in to the culture,
and even speed up your language learning. It would be very difficult to
learn perfect Spanish without knowing something about Spain and Latin
American culture.
What to do now
I don’t want to fall into the trap of talking about learning
languages without actually giving any practical advice! So, how can we
adopt an actor’s mindset, and use relevant acting techniques to give our
language learning a boost?
- Join an acting class. This might seem like a big
commitment, but I’ve done an acting class and would definitely recommend
it to anyone. It deals with all of the points above, helping to build
your confidence, lower your inhibitions, inhabit new identities, as well
as training you in certain memory techniques. Give it a try – I
guarantee the results will surprise you.
- Failing that, grab a willing friend and try the Meisner technique.
The focus of this technique is on spontaneity and “getting out” of
yourself. It’s a fantastic way to lower your inhibitions, which can be a
great help in speaking more fluently, one of the hardest skills to
develop! There’s a great (albeit lengthy) description of different
Meisner techniques here.
- Invent an alter-ego, a native in your target language.
Spend time thinking about that character’s background, culture, and the
way that he/she express themselves. Imagine stepping into their shoes
when you next speak the language, and see how different that feels!
You’ll be surprised – it’s often easier to speak a foreign language when
we don’t quite feel ourselves.
- When learning or memorising vocabulary and phrases in your target language, try to find ways to give them deeper meaning.
Imagine a context and a “through -line”, a reason and emotion behind
those phrases. Try tying them to a physical movement, as this helps to
anchor them in your mind.
I realise these might be some of the wackier ideas out there about
language learning, and you probably will think that they’re just a
little too far out. I don’t care, it works for me! I’d love to hear any
strange techniques you use that you wouldn’t normally tell people about – let me know in the comments below!
