October 18, 2023
Story 1:
My first-ever air travel was BIG. I flew thousands of miles from Beijing to Minneapolis, then Milwaukee. I landed at Mitchell International Airport on March 31, 2000. It was a bright sunny day. A friend told me that he asked his neighbor to pick me up since he did not have a car.
I was in my 20s. I had many years of schooling and had studied English since middle school. I had tons of vocabulary floating around in my head; I just did not have the ability to string them together and pour out cohesive sentences. Still, I wanted the neighbor to view me as “friendly.” Inside my head, I kept rehearsing two sentences that I felt confident to handle: “What’s your name? How are you?”
The neighbor arrived late. I claimed my luggage, found a bench outside, and waited for him. As I was busy searching deeply inside my memory for English, suddenly, the neighbor loomed over me and stretched out a big, long arm. Startled, I jumped to my feet. My eyes landed on a 6’7” tall bald guy with a kind smile. “Hi, my name is Andy. Nice to meet you!” he said, but I froze. First of all, he stole the line I was preparing to ask. Secondly, he said something new that I had never heard of, “Nice to meet you!”
By then, I had a minimum of 10 years of English study, but I was not able to handle a simple greeting. I had always been a diligent student, graduated with the highest GPA in class, and belonged to the Cum Laude society.
Why? Why did my studious English learning fail me?
Story 2:
Two weeks after I settled in Milwaukee, my eagerness to improve my speaking skills as quickly as possible nudged me in all directions to seek free ESL services. I found one offered through a church, only 3 blocks away from my apartment. The first time I went there, I had a great lesson. A volunteer talked to me slowly and patiently. She held me warmly with her kind gaze. She praised me for anything coming out of my mouth. In the end, she lent me a picture book to read at home.
I eagerly returned the next Sunday. This time, a different volunteer was there. She asked me whether I liked my homework. I thought she was asking me about “housework.” I told her in my slow and broken English, “No like housework, hate housework.” Immediately, she lost her patience in conversing with me. Instead, she took me to a table and asked me to sit down. Then, she handed me an alphabet book and asked me to trace the letters.
I felt so ashamed and humiliated. But I didn’t have the language to defend myself. Coming from a culture that values the avoidance of conflicts, I sat down and traced the letters for nearly an hour. I was a college graduate and held a degree in teaching. When the time was up, I fled the scene and never returned to that damn place again.
Why did people undermine my intelligence just because I didn’t speak English well?
Story 3:
My 15-year-old nephew failed his entrance exam for high school in China. My family decided to send him to the USA to have a fresh start. I enrolled him in an ESL program at a local college. He signed up for the lowest level of classes.
Being an expert in second language acquisition, I knew that only taking 3 ESL classes was not the most effective way to boost his proficiency. He had to read daily. I pointed at several boxes of books, told him to look through them and find the ones at his reading level. “Make sure you choose the ones that are interesting to you. Easy and fun to read, okay?” He nodded his head and agreed.
That evening at dinner, I asked him to show me the books he chose. He handed over a thin book. At first, I thought it was something easy. Then I saw the title; I stopped completely in my tracks: Immortal Sisters: Secrets of Taoist Women. It was a gift book I had received a few years ago, and it was so dry that before I made it through the first page, I lost interest.
“Is that the book you chose? How is it going for you?” I asked.
“Well. It’s really hard. I spent two hours today checking the dictionary for every word. I am still on the first paragraph.”
“I think it’s too hard for you. Didn’t you find anything else at your reading level?”
“Yes, I have.” Then he showed me a collection of Pete the Cat; a book for a 3-year-old reader.
That’s right, my 15-year-old nephew’s English is at an American 3-year-old’s level.
Why did he think choosing something so hard and incomprehensible was beneficial?
What do these three stories tell us?
Story #1 emphasizes the significance of how students acquire language. Conventional teaching approaches, which concentrate on rote vocabulary memorization, verb conjugation, grammar worksheets, and repetitive drills, often yield minimal to no tangible results despite years of dedicated effort. It is imperative that we shift our approach to language instruction and learning by adopting research-backed methodologies. Acquisition-Driven Instruction, founded on the extensive research of renowned linguist Dr. Stephen Krashen of Comprehensible Input, has consistently demonstrated statistically superior outcomes, generating a higher number of students achieving advanced proficiency levels.
Story #2 highlights the sad reality that our ability to speak a second language in a foreign country is sometimes wrongly used as a measure of our intelligence, especially by uninformed people who speak only one language. Their unfair treatment of us can lead to feelings of doubt, shame, anger, frustration, and pain. We deserve better! Our children deserve better! When we speak your language, it’s something to be celebrated, admired, and appreciated!
Story #3 demonstrates that the approach to teaching second languages has been flawed. Generation after generation, we’ve told our children that learning is a difficult and joyless endeavor. We’ve preached that one must exert massive effort and endure relentless suffering to achieve any meaningful progress. It’s time to change this perspective and make learning a completely enjoyable and rewarding experience for our children.
Our children deserve a learning opportunity that is challenging, not frightening; uplifting, not diminishing; celebratory, not ridiculed.
Our children deserve a joyful, fun, effortless, and compelling learning experience! They should all grow in size with confidence.
It’s time we take a look at what we do in world language classrooms.
You may also be interested in reading more articles written by Haiyun Lu for Intrepid Ed News.
