The Adventure of Learning a New Language
Going into the classroom for an ESL lesson is very much like being in an airport. You’re sitting there, waiting to arrive at a new land, a place where you’ll face the adventure of being a stranger. Learning a new language is like being born again, re-inventing yourself.
What do I mean by this? When you speak a new language for the first time, you start building a new character. If you go back to your native language every time you speak English (that is, if you still think and feel in terms of your native language even when you speak English) you’re not actually speaking English. You’ll have to translate those feelings and thoughts all the time, which you’ll find hard, frustrating, and exhausting. Instead, let English run through you like water, like air, and like thunder, too. You did this once when you were a little child, but you don’t remember it. You discovered the power to invoke things by their names. A person, a dog: all you had to do was say their names, and they were there. For some other things, you had to wait: although you said morning in the middle of the night, the moon was still out and everybody kept sleeping. But at least you were able to remember the sun light and the taste of breakfast, and that’s because you knew the word morning in your native language. Those words will always have a unique place in your history, but that doesn’t mean you can’t know the world through another language. In fact, people who love learning new languages actually seek to rediscover the world constantly, to find its hidden magic.
So, as you step into the classroom, start building a new memory based on the unknown. Look at the immediate surroundings, suddenly strange and wonderful. Things you took for granted are about to show you a new side, a new way of being said. But in order to let this happen, you’ll have to learn how to listen in English first. This means that you have to stop translating. Translating is like being still, motionless: the opposite of arriving at new land. And, as we already know, in order to get to a new land, you have to be in an airport first: noise, confusion, bustle. If you patiently listen to that noise, you’ll distinguish voices. This takes not only patience, but also time. That’s why good teachers insist so much that you only speak English while in an ESL class. It’s hard, but you have to do it slowly, step by step. When you feel tired, instead of translating, go back to your native language and rest. One day, you’ll remember something in English, and you’ll realize that you registered that experience in this new language. Suddenly, you’ll need English to refer to something in the past (and you would have to translate it if you wanted to say it in your native language!). That will be your first new memory, the first memory of a new speaker (listener) which is still you but at the same time is a new person.
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