Eye has not seen

An interesting news article recently documented a young woman, Dorothy Villareal, of Mexican descent currently living in Texas.  Her family had moved from Mexico to Texas when she was 6 years old.  Growing up, she and her family always spoke Spanish in the home. Yet in school, she was educated and excelled in English.  Hence, she thought she was fluent in both languages.  But when the time came to study abroad in Mexico during her junior year at Harvard University, she discovered that her vocabulary in Spanish didn’t extend far beyond everyday conversational lingo.  Further, she was limited reading and writing it as well.

Because more and more people in the U.S. grow up in a household where English is not the spoken language (or, at least, not the only spoken language) more schools are creating foreign language programs for these ‘heritage learners’.  A heritage learner is someone who speaks a language conversationally because they grew up with it in the home, but would drown in otherwise higher educational classes conducted in the language.  More than 37 million people speak Spanish in the U.S., and classes geared toward Spanish heritage learners have flourished in California, Florida and southwestern states, and continue to grow nationwide.  Wides-Muñoz, Laura.   [Schools are introducing foreign language classes for “heritage learners”—students who speak a language like Spanish at home but were educated in English] Retrieved from: http://news.msn.com/pop-culture/2nd-generation-immigrants-study-heritage-languages

After reading this piece, I got to thinking that I can’t help but be fascinated by the concept of being able to speak a language—and know it by heart—without being able to read or write it!  I was first introduced to this possibility through my husband.  He is first generation Croatian American –his parents emigrated to the US in the early 1970s.  Since he was 2 years of age, his parents took him practically every summer to see his extended family in Zadar, Croatia.  So, needless to say, he is fluent in Croatian. 

However, fast-forward 30 years to when we met, and I started to try to teach myself some basic Croatian to communicate with his family.  In an effort to cement the new phrases in my mind, I would send him short emails or text messages written in the language, and was surprised to discover that—he could barely read them and couldn’t write back very well.  This really intrigued me.  In other words, how could you know a language, and yet not know? How can you base all of your understanding only on sound?

There are various theories that were formulated in the 1970s-1980s as to how a person learns and acquires information.  The most popular of these theories is Neil Fleming’s VAK model, for : Visual, Auditory and Kinesthetic learning styles.  (Incidentally, the reason behind trying to figure out how people learn and acquire new information was to be able to apply it to the educational setting in the hopes that matching a person’s learning style to how they’re taught would increase knowledge learned. Unfortunately, this was never scientifically proven to be of benefit).

Cherry, Kendra.[VARK Learning Styles. Visual, Aural, Reading, and Kinesthetic Learning.]Retrieved from: http://psychology.about.com/od/educationalpsychology/a/vark-learning-styles.htm

Anyway, without taking any special ‘what’s your learning style?’ quizzes, I immediately knew how I acquire information the best: VISUALLY.  I have always been able to remember things by reading –I remember by seeing what I’ve read in my mind.  Even though we know our primary language only by sound initially—by hearing our parents and family members talk in the home—I can distinctly recall that my vocabulary in my native English didn’t increase exponentially until I went to school and learned to read.   I needed to assign a visual representation to the sound I was making in order to remember.  And this is the way I’ve always been.

So what does that leave us with? When we’re in Croatia, my husband can get anything done in the Croatian language (which is Hrvatski, by the way): bring a car into the shop for repair, buy a phone card, rent a kayak, find out the ferry schedule. Me? I don’t understand a peep of their jargon and can speak even less, but…. I CAN DIAGRAM A SENTENCE  AND DECLINE NOUNS AND ADJECTIVES PROPERLY, GOSH DARNIT!  But….What good, you might ask, is that??

This brings up some valid points for consideration:

                1-Which situation is more functional for everyday life?

                Yes, it’s important to know how to read and write the secondary (and tertiary, quaternary etc.) language,  but speaking and understanding the language seem to be what serve you the best as far as communication.

                2-What constitutes knowing, I mean, really knowing, a language? 

                This is a topic I’ll cover more in-depth in another blog entry, but there are people out there, polyglots, who claim to KNOW several languages. And they very well may! But what is the definition of “know”?   Is it conversational? Is it scientific? Do they know just enough to locate the nearest bathroom or are they able to counsel and comfort a friend who has just suffered a death in the family? Do they know the school-taught vernacular, or are they intimately acquainted with the tongue’s dialects? Can they just speak and listen, or can they read a newspaper and write a documentary?  

I remember numerous occasions when I first started using Spanish in the office. As I’ve mentioned several times before in this blog, my listening skills and conversational vocabulary were choppy at best. But I could always write out instructions on what drops to use and how frequently, and where to buy them, all in Spanish. Many times the patients couldn’t believe I could write all that, because my written skill and my spoken one just did not coincide at all.  It has taken years to reach a level where I can understand and answer a patient’s questions fluidly in the exam room.  So what is my advice in regards to use and/or mastery of a non-native language? To be honest, I’m not sure—I have trouble using the word ‘mastered’ to describe my Spanish, even though I have grown by leaps and bounds in it over the last two decades.  Simply, know how you learn best, and apply this to your every day. Eventually, the words do make more sense—and their corresponding sounds don’t sound so foreign anymore.

Courtesy: D.Hromin