Kylie [not her real name] was a Political Science major and a low “B” student in her fourth semester Arabic course. She was not an experienced language learner, but she had vision, discipline and a high degree of self-awareness. She was a master of positive self-talk. When doubts about her ability to persevere and succeed troubled her, she reminded herself of her ability to take on significant challenges and succeed. She was patient with herself.
Kylie truly considered the time that she took each weekend during her study abroad experience to reflect and plan as sacred. She wrote a lot about her thoughts and feelings in her weekly journals and in her personal blog. She went from Intermediate Low to Advanced Low as measured by the OPI. Below are excerpts of her story in her own words.
Excerpts from Kylie’s Weekly Study Abroad Journal Entries
Week 4
So, last week’s speaking opportunities.
Overall, I feel like I’m making pretty good progress. I am generally pretty good at noun-adjective agreement, circumlocution, and conjugation of [regular] verbs.
I especially find myself getting into trouble conjugating hollow verbs–I really need to work on those!
I think it’ll be just a matter of look at the conjugation charts in our new verb book, and reviewing for maybe 10 or 15 minutes per day.
I’ve OFFICIALLY made a good friend named Maram (it’s officially because we do the cheek-kiss upon greeting). I’m a little uncomfortable with how “fast” the relationship is moving (I feel like she’s a boyfriend who’s getting too serious, too fast!), but there’s nothing I can really do about that.
I need to get over my need/desire for “space” and just be grateful that I have a good speaking partner who wants to be my friend!
I feel like I wasn’t as attune spiritually this week as I should’ve been, which I think made my language learning suffer.
I think I need to get better a[t] setting short-term, weekly goals. And I need to write them down!
In fact, I think that’s what I’m going to do right after I finish typing this.
I like the idea of weekly goals not only because they seem more feasible, but every week you get a fresh start….
Week 6
So I had a couple of “downer” days, but I feel better now. I had to re-calibrate my attitude.
I spent a couple days just wallowing, but I think that’s okay to do sometimes…. Ain’t nothing wrong with being discouraged, because heaven knows that’s just how language-learning goes sometimes! So I gave myself a couple days to be discouraged, but pulled myself out.
It helped me to remember that I am not learning Arabic because it’s a CAREER goal, I’m learning it because it’s a LIFE goal. That’s not to say that I’ve always had this burning desire to be fluent in Arabic, but becoming bilingual has always been a goal of mine. And not a lofty life goal–a “duh” life goal. For example, on my bucket list I want to spend a few weeks trekking in Nepal with my dad. That’s a lofty life goal–I don’t know that it will ever happen because there’s a billion factors influencing its plausibility. But learning a second language? That’s something that I am FULLY in control of, and it is not by any means the most far-reaching item on my bucket list….
That small adjustment in my attitude really helped me–the goal is not Arabic, per se, but second language acquisition. For whatever reason, this made things less daunting. In reality, I want to have FOUR languages under my belt by the time I die (Arabic, English, Spanish, French), so just focusing on learning one right now seems more “do-able” (even if it is the hardest one).
The fact of the matter is that there is PLENTY of room in my brain for Arabic, even if it doesn’t feel like it sometimes.
Hundreds of millions of people are bilingual, and THOUSANDS (perhaps millions?) have Arabic and English under their belt. I just need to keep perspective!
I can do hard things. It’s really helping me now to draw from past experiences I’ve had where I’ve thought “There’s no WAY I can do this….” and then done it. I qualified for the Boston Marathon with the first marathon I ran, even though it was in San Francisco and I thought those hills would be the death of me. Two yeas later I ran a 50-mile ultramarathon in the mountains of Colorado that had 9000ft of total elevation gain (and an average elevation of 10,000ft). Granted, those were both PHYSICAL goals and my endurance only had to last for a few hours, but they were still extreme MENTAL challenges. Knowing that I HAVE that mental strength is a huge comfort. Even though mastering Arabic takes a LOT longer than any physical test, I’m using the same brain to do it.
Where’s the “Rocky” soundtrack when you need it??
Week 8
I’m kind of in a slump, and really hoping to come out of it this week. I was starting to get really worried and discouraged about speaking. It’s this nasty self-perpetuating cycle, because once you lose confidence in yourself you are DONE for….
I’m really hoping for a breakthrough this week. There’s a few things I need to tweak and a few habits that I need to get back into–MAN being diligent is hard! Sometimes I wish I could be one of those people who just work themselves to death–but I’m too much a daydreamer! I don’t have ADD, but I am a very creative person and my mind is constantly running a mile a minute. This makes language-learning hard for me sometimes. I have SO many interests, and Arabic is only one of them. This is why I was never (and will never be) a standout student…. I just have a hard time devoting all my time and energy into one passion. But that’s yet another reason why I’m so grateful for this study abroad–it’s teaching me how to be patient, how to pace myself, how to focus, how to persevere. These are not things that I’m inherently good at, even though I do consider myself a hard worker. I’m coming to realize that hard work simply isn’t enough to learn a second language.
Week 10
This week was obviously a little rough speaking-wise…since it was [holiday], but I still had some great experiences. Brock and I hung out a couple times with…Fareed. He speaks really good English and so we don’t get MUCH Arabic practice in with him, but I feel like when we DO it’s really effective.
Fareed keeps telling me that my Arabic is good, and I really think he means it. I’m slowly gaining the confidence back that I’d lost over the last few weeks, and it’s making all the difference! Even today in my speaking presentation and comments in class, I was surprised at how fluidly the words were coming out out my mouth. Not only that, but the quality of my sentences were better. I was able to string thoughts together and even wax a little poetic on some things. And while I don’t really know how to describe this, my sentences sounded “Arabicy.” This had nothing to do with the way I pronounced them, but with how I structured them. I realized that this was a result of my THINKING in Arabic. When I think in English and then translated to Arabic, the sentence structure comes out awkward and “Englishy.” But today as I was speaking, I realized that I was FINALLY breaking away from that. I hope today wasn’t just a fluke! Some days are just really good speaking days, and others are the seeds of a breakthrough. I hope I just experienced the latter.
Week 11
This was a good week for me. I had some great speaking opportunities with friends. I’ve been really good about writing down the little things that I hear native speakers do/say in conversations….I feel like this really enhances my speaking experiences, even if it is a little annoying sometimes to have to pull out my pen and paper and say “Wait…what was that again?” Luckily, I have really patient and helpful friends.
I remember how at the beginning of the semester [director2] said something about how brain synapses that fire together, wire together. I feel like mine are FINALLY starting to wire. All the hours and hours of practice and vocabulary review are slowly (and I mean SLOWLY) starting to come together. I’m using new words with more frequency, my conjugations are coming more fluidly, and in general I feel like I’m starting to THINK in Arabic during conversations. Thinking in English and then translating to Arabic really slows you down because it’s not just a matter of changing vocab, but changing the basic structure of your sentences. I feel like my sentences are coming out more “Arabicy” with less effort on my part, which is nice.
I’m gaining confidence from the little breakthroughs I have each day. Like yesterday, for example, where I had a conversation with a friend and noticed that I was the dominant speaker the entire time. For the better part of a half-hour, I was the one doing most of the talking, while my friend was listening and adding comments here and there. Such a role reversal for me! Not to mention that last week I had a conversation with her where I barely understood anything–it was a complete 180 this week. That just goes to show that you shouldn’t be discouraged by your occasional miserable conversation. It doesn’t mean you’re a bad speaker or listener, or that the other person was speaking weird, etc. ALL IT MEANS is that that conversation sucked. End of story. In retrospect, I shouldn’t have let myself get so discourages after that difficult conversation last week…if only I’d been able to see a week into the future! Not only did I dominate the conversation, I understood my speaking partner perfectly. We chatted as FRIENDS and I honestly enjoyed myself. In one week, it went from being torture to being fun. Crazy how that works! I don’t think it was necessarily a signal of any drastic change in my speaking ability, it was just a better day.
Week 12
Okay, I finally feel like my neurons are “wiring together”–after weeks and weeks of firing (and sometimes sputtering!). The most obvious manifestation of this is that I can remember words. That may sound dumb, but for whatever reason words are just locking into my heard with greater ease. And not just words that I’ve seen time and time again–the new words, too. Like, I hear a word, and I remember it. Simple as that.
So much of the “little stuff” is coming together for me, too. These past few days, I’ve had killer gender agreement without even trying. I just DO it without even thinking. Mistakes that I’ve been making over and over this semester seem to be melting away….
There really hasn’t been any verbal manifestation of this breakthrough–it’s not like I waxed eloquent on 9th century Bedouin poetry with my taxi driver or anything–it’s more of change in how I feel. I FEEL like an advanced speaker now, for whatever reason. And feeling this way gives me confidence to open my mouth and talk. Again, it’s hard to pinpoint how and why I feel this way because I don’t have an experience to point to. It’s just like I woke up one day and thought “Hmm. I’m an advanced speaker. Cool.”
I’m not stupid, though. I could never convince myself that I’m an advanced speaker unless I REALLY felt like one. Unless I’d put in consistent time and effort these past few months. Maybe, for me, the endgoal of all that effort wasn’t so much a breakthrough in speaking ability, but a breakthrough in MINDSET that will allow that speaking ability to flourish. [PP training included periodic discussion of Dweck’s concept of “growth mindset.”]
I really noticed this yesterday as I was speaking on the phone with my friend, Maram. I’ve been friends with her since the beginning of the semester, and I remember how hard those first phone conversations were…where I could barely understand ANYTHING she was saying. Granted, speaking on the phone with Arabs is much harder because you don’t have hand gestures/facial expressions to help you, but I remember just getting so bummed over how little I took away from it.
Contrast that with yesterday where I spoke to her on the phone for a solid 45 minutes and understood almost everything. Those first phone conversations were pain and torture, but yesterday I was just chatting away with a friend about boys, dating, and marriage (Maram’s favorite topics).
Anyway, I’m super bummed to be leaving right now because I feel like I just barely solidified my friendships here, and I just barely broke through a speaking threshold. I would love to have another four months here to see what could happen!