I attended a training called "Second Language Acquisition" (SLA). It was two weeks of language learning preparation. Going into it, I was not fully sure what I would be doing. I have a Culturally and Linguistically Diverse emphasis attached to my degree and had taken some classes about SLA although those were mostly focused on assisting students who were English language learners. When I tried to explain what I was doing to friends and family, the main question I would get was "How are you supposed to learn a language in 2 weeks?" I did not think that was possible but had no clue how to correctly explain what I was doing. So when I got into the class and learned that I would be learning Romanian, I was a little confused.
The training was not focused on teaching a language but on teaching us how to learn a language. The instructors of the course wanted to help give us skills to learn a language, whether we were going to go to a language school or have a private tutor or learn online or have a highly informal language helper. Of the 20 of us in the course only the three girls going to the same field would have a similar language learning experience. Since each situation was unique, we needed skills that could help us no matter the language or the language learning situation.
And so, we were all taught a language learning method and then given a chance to practice that method with a native speaker of a foreign language. Thus I spent two weeks learning Romanian.
I learned so much about language learning during those two weeks. I learned that I like to learn everything about one thing before I move on to the next. I learned that I can roll my r's but I struggle to roll my uvula. I learned that Romanian is a Romance language closely related to Spanish and French. I learned that I prefer to listen before I try to mimic sounds. But most importantly, I learned that it is so important to laugh. You will mess up and mispronounce words. You will sound worse than an infant and you will ask people to repeat words so often it will make you cringe at your own annoying self. But through it all, you will only survive if you laugh.
That is what this story is really about: laughing.
My language learning group entered the learning endeavor determined to have fun. We had four sessions with our language helper spread out over the weeks. We created the lesson plans and made picture cards of the words we wanted to learn in Romanian.
We were taught a simple method that minimized the amount of English used and involved lots of listening and pointing at the picture cards. On day one we did some introductory phrase, pronouns, and verbs. Day two focused on words used in a market-fruits, vegetables, buying things, etc. Day three was all about transportation- driving, biking, walking, to the store, bank, school, etc. By day four, the hope was that we could put the words together into sentences to tell a short story.
On the very first day, before we had our first session, one of the guys in my group said that we should do our story about a bank robbery. This led to lots of laughter and questions about what our language helper might ask if we asked her for the phrase "Everyone get on the ground" and "Put the money in the bag". However, as I started to look through the topics we were learning about, I realized that we could easily ask for normal phrases that when put together would create a less than normal story. And thus that what we decided to do.
On day two we learned market phrases. These included potato, tomato, bag, money, buy, put, give. We practiced listening to stories such as "The woman put the potato in the bag", "The man gave the money to the seller", and "Give me a tomato".
Day three, we learned transportation phrases. We learned words like car, driving, riding, fast, family, and more. I have horrible carsickness, so we also learned phrases like crying and getting sick. We learned sentences such as the following: "The family drive to the store", "Grandpa drives the police car", "The girl is sick in the car", etc.
On day four, we laid out all the pictures to create our story. The first thing our help said was, "What is this?" We quickly explained that we had created a story, that it was meant to be funny. Soon we were all dying of laughter as we told the story in English and she repeated it using the pictures in Romanian.
The story in English:
"We are driving to the bank to get money to go to the store. We enter the bank. Grandma and grandpa are at the bank. The man enters the bank. He yells, "Everyone sit down on the floor!" He tells the woman to put the money in the bag. Grandma cries. Grandpa yells, "Help!" The man yells, "Go faster!" He runs to the red car and drives fast to his home. He puts the money in his bathroom. The police arrive at the bank. The woman cries. Everyone talks quickly to the police, telling what happened. The man goes to the store to buy potatoes."
It is rudimentary, reminding me of some of the beginning sentences we created in high school Spanish 1. But by the end, she was able to choose any sentence in the sequence and change one word in the sentence and we could point to which sentence she chose and replace the correct picture with the one she had used. We even began to practice saying some of the sentences. My mimicry needs some work on the pronunciation, although I am not sure when I will need to tell someone in Romanian to "sit on the floor" or "put the money in the bag".
By the end of the two weeks, I had learned the language learning method and had practiced using it. I did not learn my target language but I did learn the phonetic sounds that will be used in my language. I learned different tricks and tips for language learning and what I could do now to begin preparing for it. Most importantly, I learned firsthand the importance of laughter, how to laugh at myself and how to be willing to put myself into situations where others will probably laugh at me.