Chapter 10 – Facing Fears and Finding Opportunities
Visualizing Language Learning Paths
Faith Adler; Bibi Halima; and Keli Yerian
To close this chapter, and the textbook as a whole, we share with you some stories and media that former students of LING 144 have created to illustrate their own or others’ language learning paths. They chose whichever media they wished to in order to tell a story about what language means to them. For example, some chose to make a game board, representing the various unexpected twists and turns that learning a language brings into their lives. Some created artwork or videos to illustrate their experiences. Others wrote poems or sang songs about what made them fall in love with language and how it has changed their outlook on life.
Overall, these stories reveal the spirit and passion of language learners across the spectrum. They also reveal some of the pain and struggle associated with learning languages or simply being bilingual and bicultural. We are sharing these stories with the hope that they encourage you to reflect on your own language learning path, both past and future.
Syurei’s Story
I have been fortunate enough to have grown up immersed in Japanese and American culture and to have had the language passed down to me as well. I would not be who I am without the influences of both. My values and beliefs come from understanding both cultures and I feel I have a more open mind because of it. Though I am very grateful for all the opportunities and experiences I have had because of my multilingualism, it has also followed with much struggle. For example my view of what fluency should look like and what I felt I had to do to fit in.
I created an art piece that showcases what it was like growing up being multilingual and the ups and downs I have faced within my language learning journey due to that cause. The first thing that I want to highlight is the two sides to the face. They have different shapes, patterns, and colors to showcase the very different journeys I have had to take to achieve a level of fluency within both languages. With my English, ever since I moved to America, though I understood English, I struggled greatly with spelling and grammar. I was made to focus intensely on doing things “correctly”, at times being corrected on my pronunciation even when they comprehended what I was trying to say. Eventually, living most of my life here in the States I adapted and learned to achieve the standardized form of English. But doing so, with a fixation on speaking fluent and correct English, I neglected my Japanese. This caused me to forget certain vocabulary words and lose progress in my Japanese abilities. I had originally felt that I had more proficiency in Japanese, but it quickly became the opposite and put me in a position of having to relearn it. Having to face frustration and combating issues such as an identity crisis, questioning if I was still “Asian enough” even if I wasn’t able to achieve “perfect’ Japanese, and at what point I feel I have achieved fluency.
But as I grew older I came more to terms with who I am and understood that I did not have to abandon either of the two languages or identities, and that they can coexist. You can further see this multiplicity in how there are many colors that complement each other and hold unity. I have realized language learning is more diverse and more colorful than I used to believe. By gaining new techniques, an understanding of culture, and importantly, an understanding of oneself, we can reach whole new heights within language learning. We can see that it is not a black-and-white process but rather a more unique one.
Addy’s Story
This comic shows my path learning Spanish. I originally began learning the language in middle school which I represented with the conjugation handouts. From there, my interest and motivation shifted. I started to continue my learning outside of class time by using language learning apps, listening to music, and watching telenovelas. Now I find myself trying to participate in real conversations in Spanish whether by a phone call with a friend or text messages for online language exchanges. At the end of my comic, I show myself studying abroad and living in a Spanish-speaking community which is a major goal of mine that I hope to achieve in the upcoming years.
Sam, Sam and Sadie’s Song
We wanted to create a whimsical song based on an intercultural relationship between an American man and a French woman. Sam D. and Sadie wrote the lyrics and sang, Sam B. wrote the music and accompanied with the piano. The story starts in Paris where the man first sees the woman, and it’s clear that they both have immense feelings for each other. Unfortunately, they cannot communicate in a common language, so the man starts to learn French in order to truly express how he’s feeling. The man uses his metacognitive cycle to work through this hardship of learning a language. He’s aware he needs a process to say something new to her and uses every form of procedural and declarative-based learning so he can learn quickly. He talks to the neighbors, reads and watches the news, all in a massive attempt to express himself and woo the lady of his dreams. Ultimately in the end, he knows enough to finally communicate his feelings in French. This jazz-themed song has a happy-go-lucky feel with hints of yearning pieced throughout it and should be a goal for any language learner. Maybe a piece of your future heart might need to speak another language for love?
Quinlynn’s Board Game
Language Paths Board Games Rules
Prompt
Congratulations! You have just made it out of middle of school and now are beginning your first year of high school. One of your classes this term is French class, and you are sitting at a table with a bunch of kids you have never seen before. Each person has their own history with language learning and brings a unique perspective to the knowledge journey you are all going to depart on shortly. Shuffle the player cards and deal 1 out of each player at random.
Goal
You goal, as a player, is to reach the end of the board first.
Rule
The youngest player starts, then the turn continues clockwise. At the beginning of each turn, you must roll one D6 to determine how many spaces you should move forward. If the player rolls a 6, they do not move 6 spaces and instead draw an additional event card. After rolling the die, the player must draw an event card and read the prompt aloud.
Event cards
Event cards vary greatly. Some may only pertain to the player who drew the card, some may apply to all players, or some may apply to a few characters with specific characteristics.
Note
The nature of the board game as a medium portrays a distinct discrepancy between the message of the game I have created and the reality of a language learning journey. While I have tried my best to represent many walks of life both through the events that affect the player’s and the stories told through the playable characters – all of which are based off people I know in real life, the biggest inaccuracy lies in the fundamental rules of the games: there is no finish line in language learning.
Logan’s Story
In this free verse poem, Logan (one of the authors of this book) describes their experience in Spain as a person using a Mexican variety of Spanish.
“Suena como tienen una mosca en la boca chicos”
“You sound like you have a fly in your mouth”
I sat in the unairconditioned Spanish classroom,
lined by bricks painted with bright colors
And a television displaying a tour of the biggest cities in Spain
Our project: Report on a city assigned to us, and talk about a specific tradition
I practiced and practiced my presentation
Producing the sounds that, to my tongue, felt unnatural
I orated to the class, putting on my best mask
“En Valenthia, hathen muchas cosas en la playa, y cothinan un plato de vegetales con
marithcos y arroth que se llama paella”
I was proud of myself for having pronounced the words correctly,
or so I thought
because before long my teacher retorted,
“The word mariscos doesn’t have a ‘th’ in it”
I made a mental note and tried again the next day, and the day after, and the day after
Only to find out that my accent would never be good enough
Because I grew up speaking the dirty Spanish, Mexican Spanish
There was no winning unless I was one of them
But maybe I was happier being an outsider
I was welcomed with open arms the minute I stepped into my Kindergarten classroom
Though I didn’t speak the language and was greeted with
“Hola, como estas”
And didn’t know how to respond
Everywhere I looked someone was smiling at me,
with me
There was never a doubt in my mind that I didn’t belong there
I didn’t know about prejudice
I didn’t know about colonization
All I knew was that the language that I was learning was a language of
Love
Compassion
Empathy
And yet upon going to Spain
the place that colonized the country that embraced me
I felt
Colonized
My accent was colonized
My likes were colonized
My personality was colonized
And it’s impossible to not be a product of colonization
Yet I wanted more than anything to return to the Spanish I knew and loved
The Spanish that hugged me when I learned it
Because it isn’t just a language
It’s a people
A people that had been hurt by the very same people
That hurt me for sounding like one of them
And to be clear
I don’t believe that Spanish people now are colonizers like they were
I don’t believe that they go and pillage villages and take gold anymore
I don’t believe that they extort indigenous populations for cheap labor anymore
I do, however, believe that they tell you your accent is wrong
I believe that they are held in a higher light internationally
I believe that they will humiliate you for being a product of them
I believe it because I’ve seen it firsthand
As we were walking through the airport coming back from Spain
Our eyes sagging
Our brains foggy from a lack of caffeine – or maybe that was just me
We pulled out our passports as we approached the line that spanned the better half of a mile
We looked up at the signs
One read “EU CITIZENS ONLY”
One read “THESE PASSPORTS ONLY” with various flags next to it, including the US
The last read “ALL OTHERS”
As if the majority of the world can fit into one category
The class was all American with privilege built into our blood
One teacher American like us, and the second a Spaniard
Yet the third and final professor Mexican
She stepped out of line to question her heritage with a security worker
He looked perplexed
As if the validity of her identity was a puzzle
He finally determined that she was not allowed in our line
In fact, as a result of being associated with her,
We weren’t allowed there either
We walked over, heads down, to the line of “ALL OTHERS”
Ashamed because they told us we should be
“Mi pais se llama chinga tu madre”
“My country is called ‘fuck you”
My teacher said to me at the gate
Tears streaming down her face
It wasn’t the first time
And I knew it wouldn’t be the last
That she would be treated
Dirty
Otherly
Less than
Nothing can explain
The pain
The humiliation
The dehumanization
That I saw that day
When identity became a tangible power in front of my eyes
I have learned to love sounding like the minority
I have learned that learning the language of the oppressed holds more power in my heart
Not just because I was welcomed by it
But because of the truth it uncovers
I have learned many lessons in my studies
And my favorite is, and always will be,
Those who chose to learn the language of the majority are language learners
But those who chose to learn the language of the minority are history learners
Daisy’s Drawing
Bird Fight Drawing Explanation
For this drawing, I had a lot of ideas surrounding language and the application languages have in my life. I decided to focus on the difficulties of maintaining multiple languages, especially the struggle I have with maintaining multiple Romance Languages as an individual with ADHD and my desire to acquire my heritage language, Armenian. The similarities between French and Spanish contribute a lot to the mental confusion I find myself in at times. Even when I am following a train of thought in English, sometimes Spanish or French thoughts will muddle my focus, or when I try to use one of said languages, similarities in the language makeups will lead me to include words, phrases, or tenses belonging to the other. I think this concept relates well to class concepts, like multiple-language-retention, but also reflects how unique individual paths towards language learning, or learning in general, can be. For this piece, I illustrated two golden eagles and a gallic rooster struggling amongst themselves just within my reach. The golden eagles represent Armenian and Spanish, as they are respectively the national symbols of both Armenia and Mexico. The gallic rooster is the national symbol of France. The gems pasted around the birds portray a tussle happening with them to reflect the conflicts between the languages. I used a Micron pen, graphite, a red gel pen, and gem stickers.
Someone who speaks two or more languages. Speaking more than two languages is also referred to as multilingualism or being multilingual
The practices of people who represent and identify with two or more different cultures