Stream-of-Consciousness Foreign Language Dialoguing

While visiting Austin, Texas last month I had the opportunity to practice speaking some foreign languages with my nephew Gregory, who knows several and is in the process of learning some more.  Of the two of us, his path has been the more productive, having traveled and lived in several non-English speaking lands...giving him proficiency in French, Italy, Russian, Ukrainian, Spanish and Czech...to name just a few.  Right now he's learning Chinese...my presence gave him an opportunity to practice it.  Greg loves to practice speaking foreign languages with anyone who'll listen...and I was only too happy to play the role of receptive audience.  Our multitude of stream-of-consciousness dialogues over the four-day visit served to put me on alert: if I am to ever truly get to the level I want with my language study, then foreign travel...coupled with enthusiastic conversational engagement with speakers I encounter here at home...is something I need to pursue.  Melissa already has a step on me: she's visiting Ukraine next week!  I'd better finally get a passport...

When expressing myself in a new language, I naturally want my pronunciation, word choice, and grammar to be good, if not flawless.  But while being "correct" when speaking in a non-native language I'm learning is ultimately desirable, the learning process demands that "communication" should be the driving goal.  Let's take three scenarios where people learn language: early childhood, school, and travel/immigration...

When a baby begins to speak, no one scolds him or her for saying things incorrectly: the goal is to communicate and to positively reinforce effective communication.  In the same way, when someone is learning a new language by living and interacting among the people who speak it natively, it's still the same goal: first communicate...then fine-tune it all to be more accurate.  But when I went to school...whether with the Audio-Lingual Systems curriculum back in the 1960s and 70s in elementary and high school or the college classes I took, the instructor's mantra was consistently the same: if I want to say something in the language I'm studying, the overriding concern is that I say it correctly...even though this puts the cart before the horse and inhibits vocabulary development, confidence, and progress in the long run.  When I worked back in the early 1980s at a local Chinese restaurant, I often did the same kind of "stream-of-consciousness" chatter that Greg and I just did...but with Vietnamese and Chinese coworkers in their native tongues...and with several different people.  They were delighted that I wanted to learn their languages and only criticized me when my speech was incomprehensible to them.  Likewise, I took the same attitude toward them when they were practicing their English, emphasizing meaning over correctness...unless of course they themselves brought up a question about usage.  To this day, Vietnamese is my second most spoken language with others, although my pronunciation is awful, I haven't consistently studied it for years, and my vocabulary is limited...and Chinese is right behind Vietnamese as my third most spoken language.  In contrast, regarding Spanish, French, German, and Russian,the languages I formally studied in school...before Greg conversed with me in them last month...I've essentially spoken none of them with anyone since school...   

So in summing it all up, I have to thank my talented nephew for reminding me what works in language study.  I'd like to travel and live, if only very briefly, in a foreign language setting.  But there are actions I can take here and now in Gainesville...actions I've taken in the distant past and which...as Greg showed...can stimulate thinking in those languages I want to learn.  Unfortunately, this idea of having stream-of-consciousness dialogues with others runs counter to my tendency to seek solitude.  Sounds like a real growth opportunity!