I would like to think that I am capable of not only learning any language, but also capable of becoming fluent in that language in the same amount of time that it takes me to learn sufficient vocabulary and sentence structure to have a normal conversation. Unfortunately I have never actually tested this idea since I became fluent in spanish, but I have a feeling that belief in oneself and one's ability to achieve a goal is more crucial to its fulfillment than ability itself. My motivation as a language learner is unparalleled by any desire I have had to accomplish anything in any classes I have previously taken in my life, which were a matter of checking boxes for graduation and medical school rather than embracing a desire to learn. I began to understand this difference in my study of the spanish language.
Growing up in Texas, the study of spanish was forced upon me in the first grade. Hamburgesas and papas fritas became another mundane distraction from the outside world and recess just like math, reading, and writing. I continued to sit through completely boring classes with teachers whose accents were barely understandable for 12 years straight, enough time that the language should have become second nature to me. But I had no desire whatsoever to become any more than the least common denominator that could still get an A. Sure in the end I could read and write spanish and I could make the right accents and pronounce words properly, but it wasn't a language, it was just another checked box just like calculus had become the final checked box for math and creative writing the final checked box for language arts.
The summer after my graduation from highschool I discovered what it was to be fluent in another language. I went down to Peru to do missions work with my best friend and his family and found myself cornered into the role of translator. This was an easy job to say the least, but as I spent more time helping the unfortunate in the most poverty striken area that I had ever laid eyes on, I found a desire to truly communicate with the indigenous people on a deeper level than serving as a middle man and I managed to begin living my life in spanish rather than english. It was no longer a matter of swapping stories and making friends with the native people in spanish but thinking in spanish as well. When I would return to the compound we were staying in after a day of missions work i would have to translate what I was trying to say to my best friend into english which was a strange phenomenon.
In my later studies of spanish, I began to realize that fluency in a language is born of a desire for fluency in a language and isn't something that comes from sitting in a classroom and having a teacher beat you over the head with a textbook until you can speak the language the way you are supposed to. It is a matter of will power and determination that comes from some ultimately internal motivation to become inextricably linked to another culture and to be able to understand and relate to people rather than just be able to speak to them. Since coming to this understanding I have been able to remain fluent in spanish for 3 years without having studied it in a classroom, but rather from serving on various missions trips and visiting foreign countries but I have yet to test my aptitudes for becoming fluent in new languages, but I have finally found one that I have a deep desire and motivation to learn and I am looking forward to seeing if I can become fluent in it after just one semester.
Comments