What Actors Can Teach Us About Learning a Foreign Language

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!

Michelle Obama says all of America's students should interact with kids from other countries

No surprises:  GAPP is right on target!

April 28, 2015 | 12:50 p.m. EDT

First Lady Michelle Obama and Akie Abe, wife of the Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, are welcomed by student at Great Falls Elementary School in Great Falls, Va., Tuesday, April 28, 2015, during a vist to the school and its Japanese immersion classes. The Japanese immersion is part of Virginia’s Fairfax County Public School’s World Languages Immersion Program, where elementary students learn math, science, and health through a foreign language. (AP Photo/Manuel Balce Ceneta)

By DARLENE SUPERVILLE, Associated Press

GREAT FALLS, Va. (AP) — Michelle Obama said Tuesday that all of America's students should have the opportunity to interact with kids from other countries so they can learn about each other and realize what they have in common, instead of focusing on their differences.

The first lady told a group of Northern Virginia elementary school students who are learning Japanese and studying some of their subjects in the language that Japanese students like the same things they do: hanging out with their friends, having fun, playing sports, listening to music and reading.

"My wish for all of you and for young people across America is that you have the chance to engage with kids from other parts of the world, that you learn about each other's lives, that you understand one another's hopes and dreams so that you can truly see for yourselves, first hand, just how much we all have in common around the world," she said at Great Falls Elementary School.

The school has a long-running Japanese immersion program in which some students learn science, math and health in Japanese.

And, according to Karen Garza, the superintendent of Fairfax County schools, about half of all students graduate with competency in at least two languages.

"That is truly the model that we all should be living up to in educating our kids here in the United States," Mrs. Obama said.

Mrs. Obama, who made an official visit to Japan in March, was accompanied on the school visit by Japanese first lady Akie Abe. Abe's husband, Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, was meeting with President Barack Obama at the White House. A state dinner also was planned for Abe Tuesday.

Mrs. Obama said the students are doing important work.

"You guys are playing an important role in bringing our two countries even closer together," the first lady said after she and Mrs. Abe listened to students sing "It's a Small World" in Japanese. They also took in a thunderous taiko drum performance.

Mrs. Abe, who spoke through a translator, commended the students for their interest in Japan and its culture.

Language Learning and the Law

From Wikipedia:


Meyer v. Nebraska, 262 U.S. 390 (1923),^[1] was a U.S. Supreme Court case that held that a 1919 Nebraska law restricting foreign-language education violated the Due Process clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.

On May 25, 1920, Robert T. Meyer, while an instructor in Zion Parochial School, a one-room schoolhouse in Hampton, Nebraska, taught the subject of reading in the German language to 10-year-old Raymond Parpart, a fourth-grader, the Hamilton County Attorney entered the classroom and discovered Parpart reading from the Bible in German. He charged Meyer with violating the Siman Act.<sup>[3]  **

**</sup>
On April 9, 1919, Nebraska enacted a statute called "An act relating to the teaching of foreign languages in the state of Nebraska," commonly known as the Siman Act. It imposed restrictions on both the use of a foreign language as a medium of instruction and on foreign languages as a subject of study. 

• With respect to the use of a foreign language while teaching, it provided that "No person, individually or as a teacher, shall, in any private, denominational, parochial or public school, teach any subject to any person in any language other than the English language." 
• With respect to foreign-language education, it prohibited instruction of children who had yet to successfully complete the 8th grade.

Meyer was tried and convicted in the district court for Hamilton county, Nebraska, and fined $25 ($294 in today's dollars). The Nebraska Supreme Court affirmed his conviction by a vote of 4 to 2. The majority thought the law a proper response to "the baneful effects" of allowing immigrants to educate their children in their mother tongue, with results "inimical to our own safety." The dissent called the Siman Act the work of "crowd psychology."^[3]

Meyer appealed to the Supreme Court of the United States. His lead attorney was Arthur Mullen, an Irish Catholic and a prominent Democrat, who had earlier failed in his attempt to obtain an injunction against enforcement of the Siman Act from the Nebraska State Supreme Court. Oral arguments expressed conflicting interpretations of the World War I experience. Mullen attributed the law to "hatred, national bigotry and racial prejudice engendered by the World War." Opposing counsel countered that "it is the ambition of the State to have its entire population 100 per cent. American."^[4]

Majority opinion

In his decision, Justice McReynolds stated that the "liberty" protected by the Due Process clause "[w]ithout doubt...denotes not merely freedom from bodily restraint but also the right of the individual to contract, to engage in any of the common occupations of life, to acquire useful knowledge, to marry, establish a home and bring up children, to worship God according to the dictates of his own conscience, and generally to enjoy those privileges long recognized at common law as essential to the orderly pursuit of happiness by free men."

Analyzing in that context the liberty of the teacher and of parents with respect to their children, McReynolds wrote: "Practically, education of the young is only possible in schools conducted by especially qualified persons who devote themselves thereto. The calling always has been regarded as useful and honorable, essential, indeed, to the public welfare. Mere knowledge of the German language cannot reasonably be regarded as harmful. Heretofore it has been commonly looked upon as helpful and desirable. Plaintiff in error taught this language in school as part of his occupation. His right thus to teach and the right of parents to engage him so to instruct their children, we think, are within the liberty of the amendment." And further: "Evidently the Legislature has attempted materially to interfere with the calling of modern language teachers, with the opportunities of pupils to acquire knowledge, and with the power of parents to control the education of their own."

And finally: "That the state may do much, go very far, indeed, in order to improve the quality of its citizens, physically, mentally and morally, is clear; but the individual has certain fundamental rights which must be respected. The protection of the Constitution extends to all, to those who speak other languages as well as to those born with English on the tongue. Perhaps it would be highly advantageous if all had ready understanding of our ordinary speech, but this cannot be coerced by methods which conflict with the Constitution​—​a desirable end cannot be promoted by prohibited means."

He allowed that wartime circumstances might justify a different understanding, but that Nebraska had not demonstrated sufficient need "in time of peace and domestic tranquility" to justify "the consequent infringement of rights long freely enjoyed."

SOUNDS LIKE A CLOSE CALL TO ME!  Not sure if other languages besides German have been targeted in this way.   Check out this further article regarding challenges which teaching the German language has had to overcome.  -- rsb

Call To Ban Teaching German Language Split Allentown Board During Wwi School District's Compromise To Keep It As An Elective Was Eventually Overruled By State Legislature, Which Forbid It.

March 27, 2000|by FRANK WHELAN, The Morning Call

 

On the evening of May 27, 1918, a thunderstorm pounded the Lehigh Valley with rain, wind and hail. Inside the Allentown School Board's meeting room, the mood was almost as stormy. The members had the most controversial subject on their agenda that they had ever faced, it combined a volatile mix of patriotism and the teaching of a foreign language.

School Board Chairman J. Dallas Erdman was demanding that the members forbid the teaching of German in the public schools. If not, they would be siding with the nation's foes who were killing Americans at that moment in World War I.

The Catasauqua School Board, Erdman pointed out, had already banned German. It was up to Allentown to follow.

Board members William F.P. Good, Oliver A. Iobst and Charles A. Reber were in Erdman's corner. But members Wilson Arbogast, Harry G. Correll, William J. Dietrich, the Rev. Charles J. Rausch and Oliver T. Weaber could only be pushed so far.

Make German an elective rather than the required high school course it had been since 1858, they argued. But don't do away with the teaching of the language of Luther, Goethe and the German ancestors of everyone in the room.

The board's argument grew heated. When their loyalty was questioned, the dissidents protested. `I am an American," said Rausch after a cutting remark in German by Iobst. `Do you challenge my patriotism?` said Weaber, rising, `menacingly from his chair," the Call reported.

The argument raged on, but the German supporters would not budge. Finally, the board agreed to the compromise of making German an elective. Part of the agreement was replacing the course's textbook, `Im Vaterland," which means `My Fatherland,` with something that sounded less pro-Germany.

The roots of this argument went back to the earliest days of the city and region's education system.  Until the Civil War, German was the first language of the Lehigh Valley. Newspapers were written in it, God's word was preached in it and school children were taught in it. It was not unusual to find rural schools in the Lehigh Valley where Pennsylvania German was the only language spoken into the 20th century.

This was not confined to public schools. Into the 1900s, Muhlenberg College's faculty and administration were deeply divided between those who felt all its courses should be taught in German and those who believed that only its theology courses -- the school was founded to train students for the Lutheran ministry -- should be taught in German.

But after the Civil War, the region was becoming more and more bilingual. English was the language of business and the popular culture that surrounded the Lehigh Valley. It was clearly being heard more often, mixed with the Pennsylvania German dialect, in the region's cities and towns. Perhaps for that reason the city's educational leadership, particularly clergymen, wanted German as a required part of the public school curriculum.

As the German Empire rose to a position of world power, many people in the Lehigh Valley were proud of it and their German roots. Teaching German in the schools was a part of the community's ethnic heritage that few questioned.
But World War I and the anti-German hysteria that followed America's entry in April 1917 changed all that. Sauerkraut became liberty cabbage and anybody who spoke the `Hun's` language was as good as a traitor.

The Allentown School Board's decision was made the same spring that the most popular movie in the city was a propaganda film, `The Kaiser -- The Beast of Berlin." Ads for the film in the Call showed a sinister Wilhelm II with blood dripping from his hands.

The day after the board's decision, the Allentown chapter of the Past Presidents Association of the Patriotic Order, Sons of America, denounced the members and demanded German be dropped.

Eventually, the board's compromise decision was overruled by a higher authority. In April 1919, six months after the war ended, Pennsylvania's Legislature banned the teaching of German in the state's public and normal schools. Although the law eventually lapsed and German came out of hiding, the debate of 1918 is a reminder of how volatile a mix language and politics can be.

Your Brain on Books

10 Things That Happen to Our Minds When We Read 

Wednesday 16th January, 2013  OEDb: Open Education Database     LINK HERE

Any book lover can tell you: diving into a great novel is an immersive experience that can make your brain come alive with imagery and emotions and even turn on your senses. It sounds romantic, but there's real, hard evidence that supports these things happening to your brain when you read books. In reading, we can actually physically change our brain structure, become more empathetic, and even trick our brains into thinking we've experienced what we've only read in novels.

1. We make photos in our minds, even without being prompted:

   Reading books and other materials with vivid imagery is not only fun, it also allows us to create worlds in our own minds. But did you know that this happens even if you don't mean it to? Researchers have found that visual imagery is simply automatic. Participants were able to identify photos of objects faster if they'd just read a sentence that described the object visually, suggesting that when we read a sentence, we automatically bring up pictures of objects in our minds.

2. Spoken word can put your brain to work:

   Critics are quick to dismiss audiobooks as a sub-par reading experience, but research has shown that the act of listening to a story can light up your brain. When we're told a story, not only are language processing parts of our brain activated, experiential parts of our brain come alive, too. Hear about food? Your sensory cortex lights up, while motion activates the motor cortex. And while you may think that this is limited only to audiobooks or reading, experts insist that our brains are exposed to narratives all day long. In fact, researcher Jeremy Hsu shares, "Personal stories and gossip make up 65% of our conversations." So go ahead, listen to your coworker's long and drawn out story about their vacation, tune in to talk radio, or listen to an audiobook in the car: it's good exercise for your brain.

3. Reading about experiences is almost the same as living it:

   Have your ever felt so connected to a story that it's as if you experienced it in real life? There's a good reason why: your brain actually believes that you have experienced it. When we read, the brain does not make a real distinction between reading about an experience and actually living it. Whether reading or experiencing it, the same neurological regions are stimulated. Novels are able to enter into our thoughts and feelings. While you can certainly hop into a VR game at the mall and have a great time, it seems that reading is the original virtual reality experience, at least for your brain.

4. Different styles of reading create different patterns in the brain:

   Any kind of reading provides stimulation for your brain, but different types of reading give different experiences with varying benefits. Stanford University researchers have found that close literary reading in particular gives your brain a workout in multiple complex cognitive functions, while pleasure reading increases blood flow to different areas of the brain. They concluded that reading a novel closely for literary study and thinking about its value is an effective brain exercise, more effective than simple pleasure reading alone.

5. New languages can grow your brain:

   Want to really give your brain a workout? Pick up a foreign language novel. Researchers at Lund University in Sweden tested students from the Swedish Armed Forces Interpreter Academy, where intensive language learning is the norm, and medicine and cognitive science students at Umea University. Both groups underwent brain scans just prior to and right after a three-month period of intensive study. Amazingly, the language students experienced brain growth in both the hippocampus and the cerebral cortex, with different levels of brain growth according to the amount of effort and learning students experienced in that period of time.

6. Your brain adapts to reading e-books in seven days:

   If you're used to reading paper books, picking up an e-reader can feel very awkward at first. But experts insist that your brain can adopt the new technology quickly, no matter your age or how long you've been reading on paper. In fact, the human brain adapts to new technology, including e-reading, within seven days.

7. E-books lack in spatial navigability:

   Although your brain can adapt to e-books quickly, that doesn't mean they offer the same benefits as a paperback. Specifically, they lack what's called "spatial navigability," physical cues like the heft of pages left to read that give us a sense of location. Evolution has shaped our minds to rely on location cues to find our way around, and without them, we can be left feeling a little lost. Some e-books offer little in the way of spatial landmarks, giving a sense of an infinite page. However, with page numbers, percentage read, and other physical cues, e-books can come close to the same physical experience as a paper book.

8. Story structure encourages our brains to think in sequence, expanding our attention spans:

   Stories have a beginning, middle, and end, and that's a good thing for your brain. With this structure, our brains are encouraged to think in sequence, linking cause and effect. The more you read, the more your brain is able to adapt to this line of thinking. Neuroscientists encourage parents to take this knowledge and use it for children, reading to kids as much as possible. In doing so, you'll be instilling story structure in young minds while the brain has more plasticity, and the capacity to expand their attention span.

9. Reading changes your brain structure (in a good way):

   Not everyone is a natural reader. Poor readers may not truly understand the joy of literature, but they can be trained to become better readers. And in this training, their brains actually change. In a six-month daily reading program from Carnegie Mellon, scientists discovered that the volume of white matter in the language area of the brain actually increased. Further, they showed that brain structure can be improved with this training, making it more important than ever to adopt a healthy love of reading.

10. Deep reading makes us more empathetic:

    It feels great to lose yourself in a book, and doing so can even physically change your brain. As we let go of the emotional and mental chatter found in the real world, we enjoy deep reading that allows us to feel what the characters in a story feel. And this in turn makes us more empathetic to people in real life, becoming more aware and alert to the lives of others.

EUROZONE CRISIS Southern Europeans flock to German classes

Deutsche Welle   TOP STORIES

• Date 19.08.2012
• Author Kathrin Erdmann (nh)
• Editor Sean Sinico

(The) German (language.... has a reputation for having) ....grammar.   (Duh!  But after years of dwindling interest in foreign language learning in general), the European debt crisis seems to help German to some sort of a renaissance.  German language courses are in high demand.

It's three p.m. at the adult evening education center VHS in Hamburg. A long line of people has formed and one after the other, they take a number from the machine and join the crowd already sitting in the waiting room ready to register for the German language classes. Over the next three hours, Anna Neves from VHS and her four colleagues will work non-stop.

"The demand for language classes started rising about a year ago," Neves said. "Every day, we are now dealing with an average of 100 people who we consult and whose language skills we assess."

In comparison to 2010, the number of applications for German classes has increased by 30 percent at the center in Hamburg. Neves said people from southern European euro crisis countries, in particular, are now coming to learn German.

"Many come to us from the Spanish-speaking world, from Spain itself or from South America, who reside in Spain," Neves said, adding that Portuguese and Greeks didn't come at all in the past while now their number is also on the rise.

Large crowds at registration

The Office of Statistics for Hamburg confirms Neves' observations. In 2011, Hamburg saw a considerable rise in the number of residency registrations. Some 2,200 people moved to Hamburg, 600 more than in 2010, and most of them from Spain.

The air is stuffy in the waiting room at the education center. Susana Millan Prol holds a slip of paper with the number 78. There are 30 people still ahead of her. The 31-year-old came to Hamburg two months ago. "In Spain, I study tourism," she said, "but I only ever have a job in the summer. I came here to learn a bit of German. I believe that'll be good for me."

TED Talks: Patricia Kuhl: The linguistic genius of babies | Video on TED.com

Patricia Kuhl: The linguistic genius of babies | Video on TED.com

Time for us to adjust our "culture-bound listening" skills.  With practice, of course it can be done!  We also have many more thinking skills than an 8 month old, so no worries about our ability to learn a foreign language in high school.

But how exciting that this is being studied.