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In This File
We all
know about the variety of languages spoken in the world. But most people
do not actually think about what is involved in learning another language
until they are faced with the need for it in order to live in another country.
Even then, awareness of the task and its gravity often dawns upon the learner
only after beginning the experience.
One limitation in dealing with the language is the idea that you "study" a language. The concept most Americans have of language learning is the high school or university language courses some of them had to take. The popular term "language study" reflects this concept. Most Europeans have a more dynamic concept of language learning than Anglo-Americans, since many have needed to learn more than one language simply in the course of their daily lives. Yet I have observed that Europeans as a whole also have a very academic concept of language learning.
Many Westerners going overseas are completely oblivious to the cultural and social dynamics they will have to deal with when they arrive in their new country. Sadly many organizations also fail to realize the importance of these factors for their newly-arrived colleagues. They consequently make inadequate preparations for the new arrivals. It is still all too common to find a program in which language is taught totally in the classroom, then when the course is over, the student is sent out into the real world, which does not follow the structure and limitations of the classroom.
Much better to be a learner than a student. An adequate program of language learning will focus on cultural and social dynamics. This means that an adequate language learning program must give attention to cultural awareness and social involvement. This means, in turn, that the academic approach is inadequate. Language is best learned in contact with the people who speak that language and in a society where that language is the medium of social interaction.
Language is a social skill. Language is a cognitive skill. Most language "courses" focus on only the latter. The cultural and social side is often neglected.
It seems more adequate to think of a language learning program in terms of an orientation program in which the language being learned is the channel for learning the culture and gaining social skills. That is, an orientation program built around a target language, or around a language and culture of a target people.
The cognitive skills in language are somewhat incidental, since what
you are learning is not information, but a new format for organizing information.
This format is the worldview of the target people
An orientation program should orient people to a new living
and working environment and a new cultural setting. Orientation to the
new community is accomplished through guided experience, which is incorporated
into the language learning part of the course, as well as through systematic
formal study of various aspects of the culture, including family structures,
religion, political systems, inheritance and other aspects of the social
culture.
The Society
The orientation program should help to incorporate the newcomers into the society, the people and country as a whole. The foreigner, the newcomer, the outsider must learn the cultural foundations of the society, the general patterns of living and relating. She must begin to work towards acceptanceand begin to earn a role in the society. The newcomer must learn to relate and communicate in the new setting.
The new society has different assumptions and different social requirements. It has different patterns of communication. This means that two primary considerations must be
(1) handling social situations and
(2) building relationships with local people.
General Approaches
Culture-Learning and Personality
Scheduling Learning Activities
Language, not Academics
Confidence with Experience
Language-culture learning should center around meeting people, developing friendships, earning a place in the society, and gaining acceptance by the local people. The newcomer has to slowly gain their confidence and show himself trustworthy to the local people.
Keep in mind the following basic approaches, which are addressed to the learner.
First, be seen in the community. Show yourself interested and avail able. (Do not stand aloof, do not be just a "tourist.")
Then, initiate contact. Cultivate a learner role. Put yourself in contact with the people and offer opportunities for the people to respond helpfully to you. (You must become vulnerable to some extent to be an active learner. But this elicits the help of the people.)
Cultivate the concept of managing encounters. The learner should learn phrases and texts which enable him/her to manage situations, expressing the role of learner, need for limited information, need for help, slower speech, repetition, etc. This will enable the learner to learn from normal people in normal situations creatively and productively for practice and help.
Cultivate some continuing contacts for growth in practice. There should be certain people to whom you return regularly for practice. Always add some new contacts, but return to those who can see your progress and encourage you, can be your resources for cultural and language help. Some will become good and lasting friends.
Continue to make new contacts to challenge yourself and to provide more unstructured practice and settings. Try to engage new contacts in an ordinary way, without specifically stating (at first) that you are a learner. This will enable you to expand your ability to communicate in an unplanned setting, as well as to continue to get help from certain people. (Cultivate the learner role with certain people, and try "normal encounters" with others.)
Develop your contacts in terms of your being a learner and their helping you, letting you practice with them. Distinguish between contacts for practice and those related to your job assignment. (Have some contacts who are justlanguage helpers or cultural informants.) Work to develop the critical skills of general communication.
Look for cultural insights on certain topics (1) As they come up in conversation or (2) As you feel a relationship enables you to request help from people on items you want to learn about.
Remember this important principle:
"To learn the language" is too broad and indefinite a goal. Pick specific aspects of language to learn and master. Identify reachable goals by the week and month. If a certain skill or situation to handle is identified, it is easier to tell when that goal has been reached, when that assignment has been fulfilled.
A corollary principle is this:
Social skills accompany language skills--thus you cannot expect to learn the language perfectly in the classroom before trying it in the field, in the "real world."
Do not allow fear of failure to keep you from trying out each little bit of the language as it is introduced. This fear of failure is the most critical cause of failure in language learning. Perfectionists often create their own stumbling blocks by entertaining unrealistic expectations for themselves. They may then have to work harder than the slow but motivated learner, to reach those unattainable, or unrealistic, goals.
Language cannot be approached as a laboratory science or an academic
subject. One cannot learn the language without using it at every stage
in learning. The community must be the laboratory. If one avoids
the risk of failure, one also forfeits the possibility of reward.
Culture-Learning and Personality
Learning a language means learning a culture. Being a language learner means being a culture learner. To learn the language well and to relate and communicate effectively, a language learner in Africa has to learn to think as an African, to feel as an African and to react as an African would in a certain situation. This means that the individual's personalityis involved.
Relationships and Roles. What we are dealing with is the total complex of the relationships and roles the learner is having to cope with in the new society and in the process of learning the new language. Whatever the objective situation when we come to a new country, we are not in the same situation we were in at home. We are not in control of the situation, and that is really the key. The new person is not in control of the factors most affecting his or her life at that time.
Our personalities developed in response to cultural forces we were unaware of, influences from our first days of life. The way we relate to others was learned subconsciously. Patterns of cultural roles and relationships were internalized in our early years, and we do not think about it now. This is a "natural" part of who we are. The problem is that these same patterns of relationship are not going to work for us in the same way in the new culture. What is "natural" differs. Standards of what is "normal" are different. The language learner needs to be aware of this.
When a person's competence in society is tested, when one's self-identity is challenged, there is a sense of threat. The person under pressure to make deep changes in relationship patterns and thought-forms will feel vulnerable and, to some extent, defensive. If the learner recognizes that this is normal then maybe it will not be so frightening.
Irritated Personality. It can be a positive experience which will enable the language learner to grow beyond that feeling of disorientation and threat. The learner need to realize that whenever growth is occurring, the edges of the personality are irritated until they wear off, then the new pattern settles in and new psychological calluses form to give some sense of protection, security or comfort.
These new patterns are developed by experience. Thus some acculturizing experiences must be incorporated into any initial language course or orientation program for new arrivals. This will get newcomers started in the process of making the gradual adjustment consciously, becoming aware of the process and fostering it throughout the period of orientation.
Comfortably Uncomfortable. Some of the orientation provided and the cultural experience gained can gradually diminish the need to be in control. The participants can begin to feel comfortable with feeling uncomfortable, to feel satisfied with feeling unsatisfied. As they gain more insight into the acculturation process, they will gradually feel more and more adjusted and at ease in their new social surroundings, with the new cultural demands on them. This will help in personality development in the local cultural setting.
Culture Shock. People often do not recognize what is happening when they go through culture shock. Everything is new, and there are many small irritations, challenges and frustrations, which individually would not be so bad. But the great number of such experiences, the high level of minor but constant irritations is disorienting. People in this situation usually do not know why they feel the way they do, what is causing their frustration, their depression, their restlessness.
The new learners will be going through culture shock, and it will have causes unrelated to the actual language learning. But the most obvious place to react is against the class, the teacher, the language helper or other "authority figure."
The most prominent thing in life at that time is language learning, so it offers many points of focus for blame: either what you are studying or the pace you are going or the teacher you have or the difficulty of the language. The learner may simply feel unsettled but unable to identify a cause; but it is the whole adjustment problem.
Preparing the Learners. Some of these adjustment problems can be eliminated, or minimized, if there is a supervised and well-organized initial orientation, during the first week in the country. Then in introducing the program, learners should be given some indication of these kinds of tensions and problems that are normal in any language learning process.
Actually, orientation and adjustment begins with the first contact the new assignment has with the new appointees in the homeland. Preparatory letters before arrival get the psychological transition process started. Early correspondence should set the stage for the experiences in store and introduce the whole language/culture-learning situation.
The new language learner may not know whether what he is experiencing
is bad or not, whether it is normal or not. It will help the newcomer to
know that others have had or are having the same experience. I think a
lot of the uncertainty contributing to culture shock can be diminished
by having a positive, supportive approach to the total orientation program.
Scheduling Learning Activities
Some people prefer the structure and stimulation of a class setting, while others prefer a freer schedule centered around informal learning in natural settings. To the former I say language and culture learning can occur quite adequately without a school or class approach. There are some things you cannot learn in a classroom. Language is a social skill. Structure is not equivalent to a class.
To the latter group, I point out that progress is insured only when progress is planned and evaluated. There must be a pattern to community contacts and practice, to enhance the value of informal contacts, which are indispensable to adequate language learning.
Varying the Schedule. The boredom of study or learning activities, also, can be alleviated by breaking up the schedule. For instance, in my Swahili program, for the second half of Wednesday morning, I scheduled a guest speaker on a cultural topic, or a field trip for cultural orientation. Then Wednesday afternoon was free, providing a good mid-week break. Some participants in the Swahili program schedule ministry-related learning activities as a part of their Swahili learning program. These include spending Thursday with a family in a village, or working one day a week in a clinic.
You might schedule Wednesday morning or a periodic night session for cultural reading assignments. The program could include guided reading assignments, or just scheduled time for free reading. But such time could be allowed in the schedule, rather than being considered an extracurricular add-on.
Complementary Activities. In one country, we found a language institute with a minimal course, oriented around basic conversational skills. I designed a one-year language program using this four-month course as one component. The institute course included activities over six days of the week, but gave Wednesday afternoons off, with only two hours of language class on Saturday morning. Thus Wednesday afternoons could be used for field trips, cultural study or individual language assignments.
The institute activities took only three hours a day the other days. Thus there was time to add one hour of personal conversation practice on Monday and Thursday, and half an hour for three or four mornings a week for individual student presentatoins of short reading assignments. Exercises could be scheduled so as to vary the activity, increase attention span and interest or vary the ways in which each learner had to use the language, or encounter the culture.
For instance, for church workers, in the sixth week of the Standard Curriculum, students start reading simplified Bible materials (new reader literacy series). Thus a devotional aspect, a worship experience pertinent to their expected working assignment, is added to the program.
A new dimension of group relationship, and hopefully of motivation, is added to the "class." However few or many there are in an orientation group, all can participate. So the first half-hour of the day learners are reading materials together, with each brief review or reading led by one of the class..
Minimizing Frustration. Some tension and frustration can be avoided simply by good organization of the course, some minimized by variation of the components and some handled by individual counseling or guidance in the day to day context. I prefer an informal and low-key approach, with a few planned sessions for formally dealing with language learning and cultural adjustment as part of the orientation throughout the course.
I do a lot of individual counseling with language learners, helping them interpret their personal goals and the goals of the course. I try to help them recognize some of the tensions they feel. Then we have some specific sessions with each class as a whole to help them recognize learning problems and plateaus, and to help them gain perspective in situations where they feel overwhelmed and material is not making any sense.
It is common to have periods in language learning when the more the
student learns the less she understands. There seem to be so many seemingly
unrelated patterns. But then after persevering and pushing on ahead, the
student gets over the hump to where, suddenly, it all seems to fall into
place, it begins to make sense. The learner has moved up to another level
and progress is faster. Then things begin to slow up again, and the learner
experiences another plateau of consolidation, after which there is another
spurt of progress.
The stresses and tensions of cultural adjustment and the challenges of language learning take their toll. Some people are more susceptible to the pressures than others. Some take the stresses in stride with little effect.
Language learners are often harder on themselves than they should be. They often judge themselves by academic standards based on previous performance. Language learning is not an academic discipline. Perfectionists, who were good in academic pursuits, often have more learning problems than "average" students. Because of the unique factors involved in language learning, they have no frame of reference by which to judge their progress.
Academic Need. Learners often ask analytical questions, feeling an academic need for grammar explanations. This gives them information about the language, which is satisfying to most Western students, due to their academic orientation and limited language experience. But it does not help them much in speaking and hearing.
Functional Questions and Answers. Learners can make better progress by asking functional questions, which can clarify what you say when. Functional answers can alleviate the need for detailed explanations, which may be intellectually satisfying, but draw energy away form learning to communicate. Learning is eased when function is in focus, and the meaning of a phrase is learned from the inside out (not from an English meaning in).
This problem is a part of the cultural perspective, the way of thinking.
The learners are thinking in their foreign perspectives, and trying
to interpret the local language into the language categories they know
from their native language. If you approach the local language on its own
terms, you can begin thinking about how the language says what itsays,
by-passing the English (Western) thought. Much of the change in perspective,
however, is simply a function of time. It takes experience to gain
an intutive "feel" for the language. Function is critical; information
supports function.
In one French-speaking African country, some parents were filled with anxiety because they had to go down and talk to the teacher at the children's school, in the first week or so. These Americans had come directly to their African country without learning French, but they needed French to communicate with the teachers and school officials. They felt a lot of tension.
After their first time or two with some help, as they learned their
French, they gained confidence. You don't get this kind of confidence
in a classroom.
Host People's Perception
Language and Personality
Work in Orientation
Dynamic and Relational Approach
Relational Skills
Some people have an idea of missionaries as cultural imperialists who work through translators without any real idea of what the people are like or believe. Maybe some are.
But on the whole, I've found missionaries to be more culturally aware, linguistically competent and anthropologically trained than other foreigners working outside their home country. In addition, most missionaries really love the people they work with for themselves, and develop deep personal relationships with them. That is, they become accepted and trusted as insiders, not outsiders.
Role in Society
The matter in focus here is the function of language in the role the foreigner is developing in the society. In fact, most foreigners have a focus on the money they can make, the dissertation they will write, or other motivations. The more oriented toward a change in the society a foreigner's goal is, the more critical it is to understand the way the people think and make decisions. The deepest decisions are made in the deepest recesses of the psyche, in terms of the mother tongue and worldview.
What we are concerned with is becoming a member of the society before trying to accept the responsibility of being an agent for change in the society. The foreigner, missionary or otherwise, who wishes to foster some kind of change must first gain an acceptance in the society. The language aspect is important, because the way we speak determines to a large degree how people perceive us, what place we will have in that society.
Missionaries come to a new country for the purpose of making some contribution, of fostering change in certain areas of life. But change imposed from the outside is not usually as effective as change fostered from within. And change in behavior (to fit the formal requirements) may not indicate a change in belief.
In addition, the outsider does not initially know the procedures and
social mechanisms for change in the new society. Thus the most effective
initial role for any foreigner (who expects to stay very long) is the role
of learner.
The foreigner is going to be limited to the host people's perception of who he is. That means what they require of a foreigner may be different from the foreigner's expectations. Missionaries, who wish to make contact with people at the deepest part of their being, where life decisions are made, may have a greater challenge than others, to know the worldview and learn the language and understand decision-making formats of the target culture. Let me address some comments to missionaries. Others are free to listen in! Much of it will apply to you.
Role Deprivation. The role they are able or willing to give the newcomer may not match the one he or she wants. Will the newcomer know how to deal with that role deprivation? This will be especially acute during the early stages of language learning. The ultimate implication is that he or she will actually have to be a different person in the host people's world than in the world he or she came from.
When we first arrive, and for some time afterwards, we cannot talk so we cannot express our ideas. Thus we are going to be (to the local people) a person of limited education, of limited social status at first. This can bring frustration. But frustration can be diminished if the learner understands that this is normal, and is aided in using this frustration as a positive opportunity to adjust expectations and develop the learner role, to accept that it is all right to be limited, and to work systematically to overcome those limitations.
Foreign Status. On the other hand, in today's world, with international travel, movies and broader awareness of other cultures, there is a sort of acceptance, or tolerance, for a foreigner in many cultures. There is an acceptance of the symbols of status that go along with the trappings of modern life. There is a separate category for the person who owns an automobile, for instance, whether the person is a foreigner or a local. This can provide status for the Westerner who comes to a Third-World country, and moves around the major routes in a Peugeot. It will also carry judgemental baggage in the host culture. This person may be judged by different standards than whether he or she can speak the local language.
This presents a problem that may go even deeper than the simple cultural and linguistic ignorance mentioned earlier. The "Peugeot missionary" in Africa may have accepted a status or role in the society that will actually hinder assimilation into the society and even learning of the language. The projected image or role, or the perceived role imposed upon the missionary by the local people, may be so at variance with the missionary's self-concept or desired role that the missionary is actually kept outside the cultural network. This may be a more acute problem for a religious worker than for someone in business or aid work, whose work may be more technical and involve less interaction with the local people.
Active Learners. Active learners will accept the limitations of language and cultural ignorance as a positive opportunity. Language learners should foster the learner role as a positive opportunity to develop personal ability in language and social interaction. They do not have to talk like professors or pastors -- they can do that later. Colleagues more experienced in the culture should help new people to feel good about themselves in this learner role.
The learner who persists in making it clear that he or she wants to
really become a part of the people's life and identity can succeed. This
means being a real learner then earning a valid role within the
society, not accepting the deceptive and cheap status provided by money
and goods, or a vehicle.
All these personality factors are closely related to and largely dependent on the language skills a person has at a given time: who he is in society, how he appears to the host people, what he can do and how he relates to people. At this point the orientation program must help newcomers become active learners. This should enable them to accept that role and the limitations it implies, but help them to develop as far as possible their ability to change.
As the learner progresses, the learner aspect of his or her identity becomes a smaller and smaller portion of their social role. But in order to make good progress, the learner role must be maximized from the beginning. The orientation program should include certain components that would help the language learner participate more meaningfully in community situations, to understand basic matters of daily living, buying and selling, and events like worship and family meals that illustrate the social depth of the people and their self-identity.
Particularly religious workers will need to learn to pray and worship in local terms, as part of their learning, before they attempt to take charge of anything. These normal life activities then become a part of the learning and foster the development of the learner role in a natural social context.
True cultural orientation is a development of a new version of the personality,
appropriate to the new cultural setting and worldview. Otherwise,
real interpersonal communication will be limited and frustrations will
be many.
Things aren't done in the new culture the way they were "back home." Orientation should foster an understanding of ministry or other technical work as it is carried out in the local context, particularly to learn major differences from the foreigner's home culture. For instance, in a program design for a mission agency in Rwanda, I suggested an introduction to the "Counseil Protestant" (Council of Evangelical Churches). This would provide an indigenous point of reference, along with other specific areas and activities of ministry in the country and of the host denomination in that country.
This would gradually enable new missionaries to understand what a Christian
person has to be in that country, how one may be involved in Christian
ministry there and what life involves there. In addition,
orientation should include experience and actual involvement in ministry
activities as learning opportunities.
Dynamic and Relational Approach
This brings us now to consider the approach to Christian witness. Americans tend to think that witness means communicating information and and eliciting a decision based on that information. I do not think that is particularly Biblical. There are ways we can help newcomers to share part of their life, to build relationshipswith people and tell the story of what has happened to them.
They can begin to do this before they gain the linguistic ability
to speak in conceptual, abstract terms in the new language. A personal
Christian testimony does not necessarily enable you to convey theological
information, but it does enable you to tell who you are and
what God has done for you.
New missionaries willing to build relationships and share what they feel God has done for them will be less dependent on language skills and more dependent upon relational (relationship) skills. Sharing theological information is really a second level, not a first level, witness. In most cases, this approach is both harder and less effective.
If language skills (and communication of information) can be based on relational skills (building individual personal relationships and gaining acceptance in the community), the psychological tensions can be greatly diminished and the new missionaries can more easily and quickly assimilate the culture, and thus more quickly and naturally make a real contribution in their new setting of ministry. This should be a major goal of any cultural orientation program.
OBJ
05 July 2000
Copyright ã
Orville Boyd Jenkins 2000
Permission granted for free download
and transmission for personal or educational use. Other rights reserved.
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