PILAT
Well, I ended up staying in Colorado for 3 more weeks than I had originally planned. I decided at the last minute to take another class called PILAT. (It stands for Programs In Language Acquisition Theories.) I am so glad I decided to stay! In PILAT I learned how to become an effective language learner.
We focused on two major areas: the first was on phonetics. In English we have 44 sounds that we use. However, there are thousands of sounds that people use throughout the world. So we practiced a number of those sounds - both how to hear them and how to make them. Imagine a group of adults sitting in a room practicing:
click here to see my group practicing voiceless fricative Ls: http://youtube.com/watch?v=Z4bhyDSiJSs
The video below is of our instructor, Dwight G, and another group of students. However, the exercises are the same as the ones we did.
The second area that we focused on was something called a LAP or Language Acquisition Project. We broke up into several smaller groups and worked with a lanuage helper. I happened to be in a group learning Mandarin Chinese. The purpose wasn't so much that we learned Chinese, but that we understood how the projects worked.
PILAT focused very heavily on comprehension before speaking. I was amazed at how much Mandarin I had absorbed in the three short sessions we'd had with our lanaguage helper. We started out by pointing to pictures and having her tell us the word for each of them, i.e. church, bank, home, market. Then we pointed to forms of transportation and then pronouns: bike, boat, car, and I, you, we, they. Finally we had her make sentences putting together all three of the elements. Initially, we pointed to the three elements and she told us the sentence. Then she said the sentence and we were able to point to the three elements. Eventually, we were able to begin mimicing without too much worry about correct pronounciation. It was amazing how well it came together.
Really, the whole program focuses on learning like a child only at a much accelerated speed and the learner is obviously more in control of what gets learned. It was quite exciting and I am looking forward to learining Nyanja.
Nyanja is the heart language of those who live near our air strip in Lusaka. I want to interact with my neighbors in a language that is most meaningful for them. Most people speak English, but it's really focused on doing business, whether they work in the government offices or sell tomatoes on the side of the road. English is the official business language, but like most of us, they learn as much as necessary and speak their native tongue freely. I think learning Nyanja will be challenging, but exciting. I've already downloaded a New Testament in Nyanja to my iPod so I can become familiar with the sounds and rhythm of the language.