That line was delivered on our first day of language training and has stuck with me. The point was, be willing to make a fool of yourself. Give permission for others to laugh at your feaux pas and you might just make a friend. Because if you can't laugh at yourself, they will laugh at you anyway, but behind your back next time.
The front end of our training has been weighted towards practical language learning tools, sharpening our ears to hear more than the 44 sounds we have in our English language, and exercising our vocal apparatus to produce some of those new-to-us sounds. I was literally aching after language drills this afternoon.
To show the effectiveness of one particular method, this afternoon we learned several phrases and vocabulary in a tribal dialect from Southeast Asia in a brief demonstration that we can easily replicate in our fields of service. It's all about filling our toolbox with practical methods for language acquisition. We aren't too old, and how we fared in high school German won't doom us to failure before we begin.
There are 39 adults and 30 children (under age 11) headed to countries in Europe, Asia, Africa, and South America. The fellowship is sweet and we are only a few days in!
Gotta go do my homework!
No comments:
Post a Comment