A Multi-Lingual Family

Our homemade game board from today's language learning methods class

A Multi-lingual family... or at least we can pretend today. ;-)

The front end of our language training has been loaded with language acquisition tools.

• We've learned how our mouths, tongue, nose and throat can create a virtually infinite number of different sounds.  
• We've learned how comprehension is the locomotive that pulls the train of language learning (whose cars include vocabulary, grammar, pronunciation, etc.) and that encouragement comes from comprehension.
• We have learned how language learning is increased when the learner is engrossed through active learning (including as many of our senses as possible) and the learner is in charge of the process.

And that's just the beginning.  One of the particularly meaningful aspects of our training is that while we are learning all of these lessons, Ellie and Reni are learning them too!

Today we engaged in Learning Acquisition Projects.  Ellie did the same activity as us, but with her classmates in Spanish.  Nathan was paired with a native Vietnamese speaker, and I was paired with a native Mandarin speaker.  The point of today's exercise wasn't geared towards us actually 'learning' those new languages but the methodology for learning which we can recreate with the aid of a language helper in Albania.  It was so fun!  And the cool thing?  Between 9am and 11:30am, I could understand a variety of different commands, numbers, colors, and prepositional phrases in Mandarin!  If we could have controlled the pacing a bit more (which we couldn't because the point was to learn all the steps of the process in a limited amount of time), I'm sure my comprehension would have been even higher.

The point of sharing all of this is to say that we feel greatly encouraged in our optimism for learning Albanian.  I think I have admitted on this blog that I was beginning to feel some serious apprehension about our ability to get to a place of fluency any time soon. Now I think we are able to step into the process of language learning with a realistic optimism. When we arrive in Albania, we will have a better sense of how to prioritize and structure our days.  And the best part?  We can do this as a family!

We need to go off to a coaching session!  We are so grateful for this time of preparation and your prayers on our behalf!  We consider this a huge investment in our future in Albania, not just so we can speak Albanian, but for the Story we have to share!