An end to whining
Well, in a bid to be more regular (if briefer), I am going to try posting more than once a week. I worry I'll have thoughts and insights slip away if I don't.
So, I think it's high time I finally got over myself. To put an end to my whining about what is an utterly self-imposed 'hardship.' I am here to learn, period, and I intend this blog to be a record of my learning process and progress, not some tear-stained pout-fest. That said, I admit I am a bit of an irrepressible drama queen, so asides regarding my emotional state won't go away entirely. Besides, we've been encouraged by the program to identify any and all barriers to our learning, and language seemingly brings out all sorts of semi-debilitating insecurities in me.
Where these insecurities and emotions are relevant as barriers has to do with my general motivation for being here — to do my bit to help restore what generations of institutionalized anti-Aboriginal practice have severed. Pretty profound stuff. But thanks to a mini-epiphany over the past week, I realized such thinking may be leading me astray.
You see, distilled to its every day essence, second language learning is, in fact, far from profound. Quite the opposite. What I mean is, I now see that learning a new language as an adult requires that you break it down to its smallest bits — one manageable phrase at a time. No one "built Rome in a day," and a language is a metropolis.
I find it helpful to think of it as a puzzle with 10,000 pieces (maybe even 100,000): as each small piece falls into place, you gradually assemble various parts of the picture as a whole. So what if most of it is unintelligible at the start. You just trust that, gradually, some of the pieces will start to agglomerate; pretty soon, bigger chunks form, chunks that connect to other chunks as you find out how they fit together.
But it all starts with those teeny-tiny bits. If you're paying attention, you'll eventually see how some bits follow the same pattern as others. And like the best puzzle people, you learn the virtues of patience.
I'm slowly becoming so virtuous. Some of the mud that's been slung at the wall called my brain these past 15 days has started to stick. The key is consistency, manageability and a tight focus. So, while it's truly awesome to contemplate that these words were, in many cases, the very same sounds uttered by my ancestors hundreds, if not thousands of years ago, I must tell myself none of that is at stake whenever I inevitably flub a language exercise. Talk about pressure! (One day I will be able to! yuk yuk)
So, as I "stumble towards fluency" (coined in a recent conversation with my close friend Robyn), I have to remember that language learning is work both glorious and grunt-like in nature. A task that ultimately lifts spirits only by getting downin the dirt, one 'puzzling' word at a time.
ekosi pitama,
Rick
So, I think it's high time I finally got over myself. To put an end to my whining about what is an utterly self-imposed 'hardship.' I am here to learn, period, and I intend this blog to be a record of my learning process and progress, not some tear-stained pout-fest. That said, I admit I am a bit of an irrepressible drama queen, so asides regarding my emotional state won't go away entirely. Besides, we've been encouraged by the program to identify any and all barriers to our learning, and language seemingly brings out all sorts of semi-debilitating insecurities in me.
Where these insecurities and emotions are relevant as barriers has to do with my general motivation for being here — to do my bit to help restore what generations of institutionalized anti-Aboriginal practice have severed. Pretty profound stuff. But thanks to a mini-epiphany over the past week, I realized such thinking may be leading me astray.
You see, distilled to its every day essence, second language learning is, in fact, far from profound. Quite the opposite. What I mean is, I now see that learning a new language as an adult requires that you break it down to its smallest bits — one manageable phrase at a time. No one "built Rome in a day," and a language is a metropolis.
I find it helpful to think of it as a puzzle with 10,000 pieces (maybe even 100,000): as each small piece falls into place, you gradually assemble various parts of the picture as a whole. So what if most of it is unintelligible at the start. You just trust that, gradually, some of the pieces will start to agglomerate; pretty soon, bigger chunks form, chunks that connect to other chunks as you find out how they fit together.
But it all starts with those teeny-tiny bits. If you're paying attention, you'll eventually see how some bits follow the same pattern as others. And like the best puzzle people, you learn the virtues of patience.
I'm slowly becoming so virtuous. Some of the mud that's been slung at the wall called my brain these past 15 days has started to stick. The key is consistency, manageability and a tight focus. So, while it's truly awesome to contemplate that these words were, in many cases, the very same sounds uttered by my ancestors hundreds, if not thousands of years ago, I must tell myself none of that is at stake whenever I inevitably flub a language exercise. Talk about pressure! (One day I will be able to! yuk yuk)
So, as I "stumble towards fluency" (coined in a recent conversation with my close friend Robyn), I have to remember that language learning is work both glorious and grunt-like in nature. A task that ultimately lifts spirits only by getting downin the dirt, one 'puzzling' word at a time.
Rick
posted by Rick Harp at 2:34 PM
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