Language Learning in Ministry

Preparing for Cross-Cultural Language Acquisition

Jan Edwards Dormer

• Publisher: William Carey Publishing
• Year: 2021
• ISBN:
  9781645083269
• Topic: Théologie et religion
• Subtopic: Ministère chrétien

Chart a Path for Language Success Are you excited to minister in another culture, but worried about learning the language of the people you are going to serve? A new culture and a new language will change you and your family in dramatic ways. But in this book, Jan Dormer, veteran missionary and language learning specialist, dispels common myths about second language acquisition (SLA) and shares a hopeful outlook. Language Learning in Ministry is essential for learning a new language. With chapters on both formal and informal language learning to guide the selection of language schools, programs, and methodologies, Dr. Dormer walks you through the options, opportunities, and challenges ahead. Special attention is given to: Viewing language learning through a ministry lens Language development of children and families' needs, including schooling options and opportunities for MKs to learn the local language Personal application—walking readers through decision-making processes to chart a path for success in language learning Rich resources, such as language proficiency scales, language learning methodologies, and online resources A task-based language learning curriculum that can be adapted to any language Do not let language learning be a desert of waiting, but rather a launchpad for ministry opportunities. Utilizing the knowledge and guidance provided in this book will minimize your stress, increase the potential for your success in acquiring a new language, and fuel your ministry.

Misconceptions
about Language Acquisition

PHIL

I really tried to learn the language for the first two years after we got here. But I just couldn’t get it. I don’t know why I thought I would. I’ve never been a good language learner. Now my kids, on the other hand—they’re the lucky ones. Kids pick up languages easily, right? You should have heard our little Kaitlin when she was only four, jabbering away with the lady who came to clean our house. I wish it could be like that for me!

Like Phil, many people have preconceived ideas about language learning, and these notions usually have some basis in reality. Phil may have taken Spanish in high school, yet not emerged from those classes speaking Spanish. And now Phil sees his four-year-old responding very differently to a new language environment than he is, and he quickly surmises that the difference has something to do with age. To complicate matters further, he assumes that he isn’t a good language learner, because if he were, he would have learned Spanish in high school, right?

Upon closer inspection of Phil’s beliefs, we see many unexamined assumptions. Among them are:

• that Phil’s high school classes provided him with good language learning opportunities

• that some people can learn new languages and others can’t

• that Phil could not have learned the same language that Kaitlin learned had he been exposed to the same interaction with the housekeeper

• that Kaitlin was using extensive and diverse language when she was “jabbering away”

• that Kaitlin did not experience stress from the new language environment like he did

Are these assumptions correct? What if they aren’t, or what if they are just partial truths? Would that change Phil’s perspective about language learning?

In this chapter we will examine commonly held beliefs and assumptions about language learning with the intent of determining if they are grounded in fact or if they stem from unexamined assumptions and experiences.

To begin, let’s discover your current perspectives. Read the following statements, and then put an X somewhere on the line between “True” and “False” to indicate your level of agreement with the statement. Don’t overthink your answers, but mark each line according to your initial reaction.

What Do You Think?

1. Children are better language learners than adults.

True … … … … … … … False

2. Children have fewer inhibitions than adults about using new language.

True … … … … … … … False

3. Children can hear and reproduce new sounds better than adults.

True … … … … … … … False

4. There is a “critical age” above which it is more difficult to learn a language.

True … … … … … … … False

5. Language aptitude tests are good at predicting language learning success.

True … … … … … … … False

6. Success in language learning is measured by the ability to communicate.

True … … … … … … … False

7. Some people can’t learn new languages.

True … … … … … … … False

8. Language learning is quick and easy for some people.

True … … … … … … … False

9. The more you are immersed in a new language, the faster you will learn.

True … … … … … … … False

10. We learn a new language in a predictable sequence.

True … … … … … … … False

11. It’s not important to understand how the language works; we just need to use it.

True … … … … … … … False

12. It usually takes no more than two years to learn a new language in an immersion setting.

True … … … … … … … False

Hang on to your answers! In the last chapter of the book we will revisit these statements to see what you have learned. Here, in this first chapter, I will address five commonly held misconceptions about language acquisition. I will present the basis for these beliefs and how a closer look at the complexity of language learning reveals that these statements can’t simply be taken as fact.

Misconception #1: Children Are Better Language Learners than Adults

I teach a graduate course on second language acquisition, and one of the first tasks I assign my students is to ask their family and friends this question: Who learns language more easily—children or adults? Inevitably the response comes back that everyone they asked believes that children learn languages more easily. Can something that nearly everyone believes actually be wrong? Yes! There is no shortage of examples of how something everyone believed was eventually proven false. For example, take the belief that the earth is flat, or that getting caught in the rain causes the flu.

As a society, we continue to build our knowledge, and commonly believed ideas continue to be challenged. To provide a more recent example, it wasn’t long ago that coffee was seen as bad for you. Now, thankfully, through more research we know that coffee has some good properties as well. As a regular coffee drinker, I am grateful for that change in perspective!

“Second language acquisition,” the term given to the learning of a new language after the native language has been acquired, is a relatively new field of study. Only in the past fifty years or so have we started to see scientific studies contributing to our understanding of how new languages are learned. We have learned a great deal about how the environment, the type of language being learned, and specific learning activities impact language acquisition. For example, we now have more understanding about how a child’s interactions differ from those of an adult, and how this difference may explain why a child seemingly “picks up a language effortlessly.”

Returning to our opening story, Phil’s daughter Kaitlin likely heard simple and repeated phrases from the housekeeper every time they were together. Had Phil’s housekeeper interacted with him in the same way, he might have been “jabbering” right along with Kaitlin!

Before we dive into some new understandings about child and adult language learners, let me define what I mean by a child language learner. Up to age three or four, one of a child’s main tasks is the acquisition of his native language. When I refer to second language acquisition, I’m not talking about a child learning his native language. That is first language acquisition. And a child can have two first languages.

Children raised in bilingual homes truly do experience “effortless” language learning, in the sense that learning our native language(s) is unconscious and natural. (See more in chapter 5 about raising children bilingually—i.e., with two native languages.) In this chapter we are considering the scenario in which a child is learning a new language after the first language has been fully acquired. A four-year-old usually has good command of all the basic word sets (body parts, colors, frequent nouns and verbs, common adjectives, etc.) and the simple sentence structures of his native language. If he is exposed to a new language after this foundation in his native language has been acquired, we would call it a second language.

So what do we now know about the second language acquisition of children and adults? Let’s consider the advantages that language learners might have at different ages.

Advantages of younger learners

For years, many have thought that there is a “critical period” in childhood beyond which language cannot be easily learned. This idea came from research on first language acquisition. It was theorized that a child who did not receive adequate linguistic input by a certain age (sometimes thought to be puberty) would not be able to acquire a native language. The idea of the “Critical Period Hypothesis” (CPH) was quickly adopted into common thinking about language acquisition. And unfortunately it has often been understood as applying to second language acquisition, even though this has not proven to be the case. In fact, Hakuta, Bialystok, and Wiley (2003) conducted a study designed to test if there is a decline in language acquisition after puberty, but found no such decline. They concluded that the CPH was not supported for second language acquisition.

There is one area of language, however, in which the notion of a “critical period” actually does apply: pronunciation. Children do appear to have superior ability to hear and reproduce new sounds. Some say that this ability also extends to the use of native-like speech in other areas as well, such as reductions (for example, shortening “going to” to “gonna”). The problem is that this advantage in pronunciation, or “native-like speech,” is treated as more significant than it actually is. English, for example, has many dialects. What constitutes “native-like pronunciation”? And how important is that? An adult language learner might lament that she will probably never sound like a native speaker. But in the bigger picture of what constitutes communicating through a new language, it’s just not that important.

Advantages of older learners

So … Do adults have any advantages over children? Yes! In practically every other way, older learners—teens and adults—have the upper hand. Snow and Hoefnagel-Hohle (1982) conducted research with native English speakers of all ages who were learning Dutch as a second language. In their study, children three to five years old scored the lowest, in all categories, on language tests. Older children, teens, and adults all outperformed the youngest group of children.

One key area of superiority is in learning skill. Adults have been learning new things for many years. They have honed some learning strategies, understand the role of their own motivation and discipline, and have the ability to comprehend structure and organization. Children typically require far more repetition in order to remember a new language than do adults, because adults can consciously rehearse, practice, and memorize in a way that younger children normally cannot.

All this means that over the same period of time, given similar opportunity, adults are likely to learn far more words and language structures than a child.

Some cite emotional factors in claiming that children are superior in second language acquisition. For example, children are frequently said to have “fewer inhibitions.” This does not jive with my experience of teaching children English in several different countries. Children are often shy and reluctant to use a new language. In fact, experts on English language learning in American schools affirm the “silent period”—a period of up to about six months during which a beginner in the language should not be required to speak. Contrast that with some very lively adult language classes in which students are willingly speaking out from the beginning, such is their investment in their learning.

The fact is, all personality types are found in all age groups. But older learners can consciously step out of their comfort zone to engage in an activity that will facilitate language acquisition.

Contexts for learning

All language acquisition is contingent on effective methods within an appropriate learning context. For example, an adult’s superior learning ability won’t be of much value if he has very little time and opportunity to use the language. And a child’s natural ability in pronunciation can actually work against her if she is not exposed to proficient speakers.

Contextual differences are often at the root of the perception that children acquire languages more easily than adults. Imagine a child going to a new country and being placed in a local school. If the school has appropriate services for a child who is new to the language, this can be an ideal language acquisition context. (If not, it can be a very stressful and damaging experience. We will explore this more in chapter 5.) If the parents of this child are spending their days using their native language, and not engaged in learning the new language, then of course the child will outpace the parents in language acquisition.

However, the opposite can occur as well. Sometimes children are placed in international schools in the native language and have little contact with the new language. Their parents, on the other hand, may spend a rigorous year in language study. In this case the parents will learn the new language much more quickly and thoroughly, and the children may be at risk of not learning the language.

A final contextual reality is that childhood language use differs tremendously from that of adults. Childhood language is marked by very limited sentence types, a lot of repetition, and concrete rather than abstract language. The fact is that most adults could “pick up” this limited and concrete language in a very short time if they were permitted to interact like four-year-olds. This, more than any of the other issues, is likely what gives rise most often to the perception that children pick up language effortlessly. We fail to see that a child who is chattering away is actually using a very limited vocabulary and set of language structures. We also hear the native-like pronunciation of the child, and the hesitations of the adult, and leap to a false conclusion: the child has “picked up” the language easily, and the adult has not.

Misconception #2: Some People Are “Good at Languages” and Others Are Not

A tale of two missionaries

I was ten when our family moved to Brazil. Our first year in the country was in a large city, where my parents were enrolled in language school to learn Portuguese. My mom loved academics and school. She had loved studying Latin in high school and had made excellent grades. So she thrived in the grammar classes, which characterized much of the language school experience. Her verb tense worksheets were perfect, and she consistently made A’s.

Then there was my dad. He was not an academic; he thrived on interaction with people and getting things done. He had come from an active farm life and found it extremely hard to sit in a classroom facing a thoroughly uninspiring grammar book. Naturally, my father struggled. The verb conjugations baffled him. And whoever heard of gendered nouns? How could shoes be masculine and pants be feminine? It made absolutely no sense! And so he floundered in language school.

At one point, a well-meaning teacher came to him and said, “Mr. Edwards, you will never learn Portuguese. You should go back to your farm in America.” But … there was no farm to go back to. My parents had sold everything to go to Brazil as missionaries.

After prayer, my dad returned to the teacher and said, “I know God brought us here. I will keep doing my best, and if he doesn’t give me Portuguese, so be it. I am following God.”

The year of language study came to an end. My mom passed with flying colors. My dad barely made it. But then we headed out to our place of ministry in interior Brazil, where my dad was going to develop a youth camp. My parents began interacting with the locals, and an interesting thing happened. My mom couldn’t understand anyone, or be understood. You see, these people had never been to language school to learn “correct” Portuguese. The painstaking verb conjugations my mom had memorized? Not really a thing there!

You can imagine that my dad was in his element. He began making friends right and left. Everyone loved talking with him. His rudimentary Portuguese was a source of amusement, and my dad used this well. Our little church was packed when he preached because he elicited help from the audience. His sermons became very participatory, as people tried to help him find the right words.

My dad did not excel in grammar, but he did excel in communication. To this day, when I return to Brazil, people recount his language bloopers and speak of him fondly—even reverently. He had an impact on so many people. His impact was not diminished by his imperfect Portuguese, but quite likely was greater because of the humility he displayed through it.

People are differently gifted

I share this story to make the point that there are many different aspects of communication through a new language, and any given individual will have both strengths and challenges in these different aspects. My mom was clearly good at language from an academic perspective. She excelled at the book work. She understood the structures. She memorized well. But my dad was good at communicating. Unfortunately, we sometimes treat the language as an end in itself, rather than a vehicle for connecting with people.

And this is the main failure of traditional “language aptitude” tests. They measure one’s facility with language structures and new sounds. But they don’t measure a person’s willingness to reach out and connect with a stranger through a new language. They don’t measure one’s flexibility in using gestures and facial expressions to make up for words that are unknown. And they don’t measure one’s heart and compassion for the people one has been called to serve.

I’m so glad my parents weren’t given language aptitude tests to measur...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Contents
• Introduction
• 1. Misconceptions about Language Acquisition
• 2. Principles of Language Acquisition
• 3. Formal Language Learning
• 4. Informal Language Learning
• 5. Children’s Language & Educational Needs
• 6. Opportunities for Ministry amid Language Learning
• 7. Applying New Understanding to Chart a Path for Success
• References
• Appendices
• Acknowledgments