I thought I’d just let you know about an experience I had last week. …but first, a little background:
Approximately 1000 years ago, when I was studying to become a teacher, I learned about two concepts: Positive Transfer of Learning and Negative Transfer of Learning. Positive Transfer happens when learning one thing helps you to learn another (e.g. learning to play piano helps you learn to type, because you already know how to position your hands over a keyboard) and Negative Transfer happens when learning one thing interferes with your learning another (e.g. learning to drive on the left can interfere with learning to drive on the right, because you’re already “hard wired” to turn into a particular lane when you come to a corner - remind me to tell you about my husband’s adventures on a scooter in Turks and Caicos).
At the same time (when Moses was a lad), I majored in the French language; but have used it very little since. You know where this is going now, don’t you?
Well, I’m happy to say that SSiW has had a Positive Transfer of Learning on my French language skills. There I was last week in EPCOT in Disney World, and I wanted to buy a Croque Glacé at the France pavilion. This is the perfect opportunity to practice my French, because each EPCOT pavilion is staffed by young people from the country it represents. Yet, somehow over the 18 years I’ve been visiting, I’ve never had the courage to speak French to anyone there. This year, though (armed with the knowledge that my Welsh had improved so much so quickly from just forcing myself to speak it), I took the leap and ordered in French.
Well, I thought I’d just ask for what I wanted, the girl behind the counter would say, “D’accord” (i.e. OK), and that would be the end of that. NO! What kind of ice cream did I want? Cinnamon? Which of the two types of cinnamon? Did I want a topping on it? Yes? Which one? By the time we’d discussed all the options and payment, I’d actually had a short but empowering conversation. …and you know what? She never once laughed at me nor pointed me out to the world as a fraud!
Thank you Aran and all at SSiW! I could not have had that experience if you hadn’t pushed all of us learning here to open our mouths and speak.
Delighted to hear this, and thank you very much for sharing!
I had a similar experience with French - when Dave, my intercambio partner for Spanish, decided that it was time for us to add French to the mix. I pointed out that we had one slight problem, in that I didn’t speak French. Never had done. Sure, did it at school, got a B (or was it a C?) at O Level, never had a live conversation that went further than asking for a glass of wine.
Dave insisted, session one was 10 minutes of raw pain, session two (a week later) was an hour of raw pain, session three (a week later again) was, to my lasting surprise, a hour’s genuine conversation in French. A bit like finding a spare ruby in your backpack.
It left me fairly certain that there are some neurological structures that are shared between non-native languages (although I’m not aware of any research on this) and that increased levels of speech in one non-native language are at least partly transferable to others.
Maybe we’ll be able to fund a PhD study one of these days…
I got about 47% for O level French, it was just a pass, I know that, but it was in 1958 and I no longer remember the actual mark. (It was before Grades, which came in just in time for my Alevels!) Speak it? Only in the oral exam which was about 5 minutes of agony! I did not go to France until - 1971, France v Wales, Stade Colombe. The 1969 game, I tried to listen on the radio, it was so exciting…I wanted to see!! I went to Cardiff for Wales v England and sang and sang as we won and they collapsed exhausted before me! (Sorry, any English readers, don’t take that personally, most of you probably weren’t born!)
Anyway, I ended up on a South Wales transport trip to Paris in '71. Gang of girls got together, no French at all, except what I could dredge from my Olevel memory! That was the time when, knowing I must not use English (and not perfectly sober), I forgot the French for salt in mid sentence and ended up asking a bemused Frenchman, “Avez vous halen sur votre table?”
Aside from that, I found that, when forced by circumstances, it’s amazing how much one can manage! Just from Olevel, never mind a degree!!!
+ve transfer, yes, but extremis works pretty well too!
