The Lie I Tell My Students

There is a story I tell to at least half of all the classes I teach. I just wish it were as true as I make it sound. I’ll start here by telling the truth, and then I’ll explain how I change the story for my students. I arrived in Taiwan for the first time on a Thursday in the Summer of 2004. I was met at the airport by a representative of the company that hired me and taken to a hotel in Taichung to wait. There would be several interviews, four in Taipei and one in Miaoli, to determine which school I would teach at.

As I waited at the hotel though, I became bored rather quickly. I was in Taiwan for the first time and all I was doing was watching American movies on the television in a cheap hotel room. I decided that I needed to get out and see the city. I wanted to be able to attend church on Sunday, but I wasn’t sure how to get there. I hadn’t known exactly where I would be once I arrived in Taiwan and so I hadn’t been able to look beforehand. Somehow though, I was able to find out the address of the mission home. I don’t remember how I managed that feat now.

With the address in my pocket, I walked down to the hotel lobby. There were maps available and as I saw it was raining lightly outside, I also bought a cheap umbrella. I studied the map for a while, and was able to find the street. As I wasn’t familiar with Taiwan in the slightest, I had no idea how far away it actually was. The map may have shown distances, but I don’t think I cared too much. I like walking anyway.

As I started walking the rain was still fairly light, but the wind kept picking up suddenly and then dying down just as fast. I had a difficult time figuring out which direction to hold the umbrella in as rain would hit me from the side at times. The day was warm though and I had nothing that couldn’t get wet, so I walked on and didn’t worry about the strange weather. After some time had passed though, the rain really started to come down hard while the wind continued to blow strongly from this direction or that. It didn’t take long before I became completely drenched.

I don’t remember how far I had gotten when I discovered that what I was beginning to experience was actually a typhoon. Welcome to Taiwan! I didn’t feel that this storm was dangerous though, so I went ahead and walked the whole hour or so to the mission home. I was glad to discover that the door was open and I was welcomed inside. As I poured out the water from my shoes and wiped the water from my face, I chatted for a while with the missionaries that served there. I learned that the church building was right beside the mission home. I can’t remember much more of what we discussed while I was there, but I believe I spent at least 10 or more minutes recovering from an hour of walking through a typhoon. Eventually though, there was nothing more to do there and I felt like I was distracting people from their work, so I left, grateful that I had managed to find the building at all.

I vaguely remember my walk home that day. I remember that the rain would go from being very heavy to very light and the wind varied drastically as well from one moment to the next. My umbrella blew out a few times and I decided that it was easier to just close it and walk in the rain than to try and hold it open. It was a great adventure, but I was alone, and I didn’t speak any Chinese to anyone.

When Sunday came around, the typhoon had passed and the walk was much easier. I enjoyed church services and met many friendly people. I was invited by some of the young singles there to join in an activity that evening, but as my hotel was an hour away, I wasn’t sure what to do until then. Among the people I met was a young guy named Kevin. I remember him being about the same age as most of my students now, maybe 19 or 20. He invited me to come to his house until the activity would start several hours later.

I accepted his invitation and went with Kevin to his home. I remember that that was my first opportunity to ride on a scooter, and I was a bit scared, though I tried not to show it. Traffic in Taiwan can be pretty crazy, and riding on the back of a scooter behind someone I really didn’t know at all didn’t make me feel much better. Kevin assured me though that I would be safe, and so I was.

For at least several hours, I stayed with Kevin in his home. I think he probably lived there with his parents or others because I remember someone supplying snacks and drinks. I can’t remember those details though. What I do remember though is the joy of trying to communicate with my very limited Chinese. I don’t think Kevin’s English was even as good as my terrible Chinese, so we used Chinese for the most part, or at least that’s how I’ve chosen to remember it. We used a notebook and we both drew a lot of pictures as we struggled to communicate with one another. I think my Chinese made some improvement during that time, and my confidence in my ability to speak Chinese certainly went up. (For a similar experience, see The Most Effective Language Teacher)

That’s basically the end of the story that involves the part I tell students. Of course, life went on and I had my several interviews and ended up being able to choose Miaoli where my boyfriend lived. It seemed like a miracle, but I don’t tell that part to my students. In fact, the version I tell my students is much simpler, leaving out all sorts of details.

In the story I tell my students, I’m not trying to walk to the mission home, I’m just bored and felt like going for a walk, which is at least part of the truth actually. I definitely mention the typhoon though. They always find that entertaining. The reason I share the story at all though is to talk about my experience with Kevin, so I usually skip to that part as quickly as I can. I’m walking in the typhoon and Kevin sees me and invites me in out of the rain. That is certainly not true, but it allows me to go from walking in a typhoon to having a great language learning experience in the shortest possible time.

From there, I tell the truth about how Kevin and I communicated using Chinese with English words mixed in. I mention drawing pictures and using gestures. I talk about how we talked together for several hours despite my very low level of spoken Chinese. This is the point of the story. I want my students to make the same effort to practice their English. I want them to stop using their low English proficiency as an excuse to keep their mouths closed and to instead realize that they already have a high enough level to communicate if they are only willing to try hard enough. All of my students, because of the way the students are sorted into my classes, already have a higher level than I did when I had my experience with Kevin, and I had a very enjoyable time despite my low level.

The truth is still an interesting story, but it just takes too long to tell. If I cut directly to my experience with Kevin, it lacks the power to grab students’ attention. The typhoon makes such a great opening that I can’t see leaving that out, but then I want to get to my conversation with Kevin as soon as possible .. and so I lie. Although I am generally for telling the truth, I have never really felt guilty about this particular lie. What do you think? Is this kind of lie wrong? Maybe I should make a disclaimer at the start of each telling that some details may be manipulated for a better experience. Oh well. I’ve told the modified version so many times that I have started to see that version in my memories. I wanted to write the truth here before it is completely taken over by the story. I guess I could direct my students here to read the true story, at least as far as I’ve remembered it correctly. But then, what if I’ve remembered it wrong in the first place? Could this all be wrong altogether? Or maybe the short version is the true version, and I’ve only imagined the longer version? Telling the truth can sure be complicated sometimes.

The Most Effective Language Teacher

Many years ago, I had the amazing opportunity to go to China for a year as an exchange student, sponsored by the Polynesian Cultural Center in Hawaii. I was enrolled in several Chinese language classes, but I was not a good student. I rarely did any homework, and I often missed classes – more and more as time went on. Instead, I spent much of my time outside experiencing the local culture and making friends with students from various parts of China. I pretty much avoided my own classmates, who were either native English speakers or speakers of other languages besides English or Chinese.

The majority of the local student population were there to study English, and so I became quite the popular character on campus. It was a great opportunity for me to really come to know the culture, but it was not the best situation for learning Chinese as most everyone spoke to me in English. If I weren’t so introverted in terms of speaking, I probably could have developed my fluency quite a bit, but I took the easy way out and communicated only in English. My listening skills however, did improve. When my Chinese friends spoke with me, they used English, but whenever they talked with someone else, they spoke only Chinese. I am an avid listener. If someone in the vicinity is speaking Chinese, you can be sure I am listening intently. I was not aware at the time of any improvement with regard to my speaking ability, but my listening ability increased at a rapid rate – much faster than what I would have experienced in the class.

After I had been in China for over six months, a friend invited me to come with him to spend Chinese New Year with his family in another part of China. The school holiday lasted for four weeks, so this was no simple visit. I accepted the invitation and traveled with my friend by train, half way across the country. Like most of the youth in China, my friend had no siblings. He lived alone with his parents, though he had one cousin who he called his brother that came to visit on an almost daily basis. Most of the time, I stayed with my friend and went wherever he went. He showed me all around his city, and I met all of his friends.

From time to time, my friend went off by himself to smoke or to spend time with his friends that liked to smoke with him. He knew I wasn’t too fond of cigarette smoke, so I am sure he enjoyed the experience of smoking more by himself or with others who shared his habit. During these times, I was left alone with my friend’s parents, especially with his mother as his father worked during the day. She was a gracious host. She regularly prepared delicious meals and was always solicitous of my needs.

My friend’s mother is special to me though for a few other very important reasons. She did not display fear of the “foreigner”. She wasn’t shy to try and talk to me, and when she talked and I didn’t understand, she didn’t give up. She intuitively knew how to simplify her language in such a way as to allow me to understand. She treated me with respect, not looking down on me for my low level of Chinese. I don’t know if she knew any English at all because she never once said a word that wasn’t standard Mandarin. She asked me simple questions with simple answers, and when I still couldn’t understand certain things, she talked to me calmly. There was no feeling of failure.

The first time she opened her mouth to speak to me without my friend present, I remember feeling my blood pressure rise, but as she was calm and always spoke kindly, I was able to relax in her presence. It was okay to not understand. It was okay to speak or not to speak. If I didn’t speak, she would speak, and not with criticism. If I did speak, she would listen and do her utmost to understand. I remember resorting to drawing pictures a time or two. She created an ideal environment for real learning, and my language development thrived under her teaching, even though she was not a teacher by profession. Our unstated goal was communication and not teaching or learning a language.

Though I studied formally in school for several semesters, nothing was ever as effective as this humble woman at teaching me. I learned new vocabulary and grammar structures without even realizing it. Her teaching style allowed me to absorb the language in much the same way as a young child learns their first language. There is a lot of research in linguistics that focuses on how adults learn differently from children, how adults are somehow less capable of absorbing language than children, but how many adults have had the privilege of having my friend’s mother, or someone just like her, be their teacher? I know that in my years of studying linguistics as a graduate student, I have never encountered any research that has included the testing of such methods in adult language teaching. It simply isn’t done as far as I know. Real teachers in the field don’t teach this way in my experience, and I have studied many languages from many teachers.

There is a professor, Stephen Krashen, that is quite famous in linguistic circles that is credited with developing this language acquisition theory. His theories have quite a bit of support among linguists, and even education specialists, but surprisingly, governments, school policy makers, and school administrators have chosen to ignore them. I will share some of the reasons why in a future post. Instead, schools spend a lot of money on methods that clearly do not work. How many of you studied a language in high school and felt by the end that you still hadn’t learned anything? Even with exceptional motivation, language acquisition is much more difficult than it needs to be. In future posts, I will try and share more detailed information about what methods work better and can be applied to classroom use – though the classroom is one of the least ideal places for language learning (just about anywhere else would be better!).