The Power of Foreign Languages

My classes this year have all finished. In the southern hemisphere the seasons are the other way around, so the first semester in autumn begins in March. Consequently, the end of year exams are in November.

I'm always relieved at this time of year, having finished a year's worth of classes, but there's something special about this year and I'm filled with emotion. This is because it's the final day of a course that I have taught for over 15 years. The attendance rate of the course was higher than usual from the beginning, and even when the students were getting swamped with work for their other subjects towards the end, most of them still turned up. I've been very fortunate to be blessed in my final year with such motivated students.

At university, more than a few people are of the opinion  that “language learning is mechanical” and therefore “it's nothing more than acquiring a skill”, but foreign languages have a real power. People often mention the “cross-cultural understanding” effect. By coming into contact with a culture outside of your own, you broaden your outlook. Through learning a language, you learn the ways of thinking and values specific to that culture and break free from having a narrow worldview.

But more than that, language studies also become a chance to get to know ourselves.

By the time they reach university, a lot of students already have firmly set opinions and ways of thinking about things and struggle to deviate from them. Even though in reality they're still really young, they can still be like “I'm this kind of person”.

The same goes for their personal abilities – perhaps because of something someone might have said to them once, they become convinced that they can't draw, or that they're tone-deaf, or that they can't write well and resign themselves to not being able to do all sorts of things.

I want them to think more about questions like “who am I?”, but there really aren't those kinds of opportunities in a normal university class. But, in a foreign language class, there's mountains of material that allows you to do just that.

Good at, not good at, was good at, wasn't good at

Can, Can't, Could, Couldn't

In lessons on conjugating na adjectives and verbs, we use questions relating to people's abilities like “Are you good at singing?” or “Can you draw?”. So, even though I'm just checking if they can get the form right, if a student says “I'm bad at singing”, I ask them “Were you bad at it when you were a kid?” If they still answer “Yes, I was”, I throw in a “Did you like singing?”. No kid dislikes things like singing and drawing pictures, so they always say “Yes, I did”.

So, all that singing and drawing and dancing you loved so much, don't you do that anymore? Why? Don't you like it anymore? Or do you actually like it but you're bad at it so you stopped?

If they were getting hounded with questions like this in a conversation in their own language, what would end up happening is they would get annoyed and start deflecting - “I dunno... whatever...” But with a language they've only just started learning, they have to put everything they have into trying to answer even the simplest question. They can't just toss out “the answer they always give”, so they end up having to start afresh and take time putting together an answer to that question.

In a foreign language, you can't get away with the kind of answer that in your own language you'd automatically give without thinking. This kind of lesson, where they have to take their time and search for the right words and stitch the sentence together, presents them with an opportunity to re-examine their own answers and think “why am I so set in my thinking?”

In both my intermediate and advanced courses, I always include essay topics that allow for self-reflection and I give them tasks in which they can showcase their creativity. I design the courses in such a way that they might discover somewhere a “new” self, different from the self they thought they were up to now, or they might notice their own self-imposed restrictions and be set free from them.

The good old days of students being able to practise in a small class five times a week are over but I still hope I can give lessons where my students can discover new things and learn more about themselves. I'm teaching an elective course next year and I might even be able to go all out holistic with it–  I'm looking forward to that.

 [You can find the original article in Japanese 「外国語の威力」here. It was posted in October 2012.]