About ‘speaking’ better in Italian (or any language)

Buondì.

An email came in from Shelley, who, when I suggested her issues would be of general interest, agreed that I could use her name and quote her:

I was wondering if you have any [ways of measuring progress] for the spoken word instead of the written one?

I came to Italy with my better half in February to visit his family and our flight back got cancelled, so we’ve been here for about 3 months.

I’m almost fluent in Spanish so I can understand Italian fairly well—I can at least get the gist of what people are saying—but when I start to speak it it’s really frustrating because I get mixed up on which language is which, and I have to think too long about vocabulary and grammar rules.

I was feeling like I am making no progress but your email inspired me to think that I am making progress, I just can’t measure it.

After reading your email, I thought that maybe one way to measure would be that I could measure my frustration level/ (it’s probably down to a 3, from what used to be a 5, on a scale of 1-5), and maybe on a scale of 1-5 a percentage of how many words I understand when people are speaking (but that is hard to keep track of when I am listening to what they say, and also trying to think of what to say back, all at the same time).

Any other ideas?

I was also wondering if you have any advice on how to retain one foreign language, while learning another. I studied French in high school and forgot all of it when I learned Spanish, and now I am forgetting Spanish as I’m learning Italian. I’ve been trying to not think about Spanish so that I can just immerse in Italian—I think that is the best way to get it “flowing” as a language, so to speak—but once it is comfortable, or maybe even before that point, how do I go back and keep Spanish (and maybe resurrect French too) without getting entirely mixed up?

Lastly just an interesting thing about language learning process: I thought I had forgotten French completely, but when I am searching for Italian words, French ones keep creeping back in. For example the other day I said “vous” instead of “voi.” I just find that interesting.

Yes, well OF COURSE, I have ideas, Shelley. Anyone who knows me would assure you that I have something to say on every topic under the sun.

But also, I have been, and am often, in similar situations myself. This morning (right before writing this) I did a one hour conversation lesson online in Turkish. Now that was a language I knew fairly well thirty years ago, because I taught in Turkey’s capital, Ankara, for the first three years of my career. But once that job finished, I didn’t speak the language at all for a quarter of a century, never went back to visit, even.

Also, as long-time club members will know, over the last few years I’ve been learning Swedish (my mother-in-law’s language) – though living in Italy – mostly through online conversation practice (and plenty of reading and listening!!)

And more recently, said mother-in-law gifted my wife two tickets to Barcelona for her birthday, so we were planning a trip to Spain (now sadly cancelled). So I thought I’d at least try to convert my Italian to Spanish.

This afternoon, then, I have a thirty-minute Skype call with one of the Club’s Spanish teachers, a friendly, professional Mexican lady, who was forewarned that I was a terrible student, wouldn’t be doing any studying, and mostly just liked to chat.

So I guess we’re on the same page, or at least in the same book.

If I’ve understood correctly, there are three things you’d like me to address:

1.) How to ‘measure’ progress with speaking (further to Wednesday’s article, which suggested ways to do this with reading)

2.) The feeling of frustration that comes when you can’t speak as easily as you’d like to, especially when you feel that you have to be thinking consciously of grammar rules and vocabulary in order to be able to say what’s on your mind

3.) That phenomenon of Spanish or French coming out when you need to speak Italian, or vice versa in my case (a problem you should regard yourself as being LUCKY to have, as it means you already have at least one foreign language in your head!)

I could write an essay about any of these things (naturally), but I won’t – in part because they’re basically all the same issue, and in part because I can totally reassure you that, with time and practice, the feelings of uncertainty will lessen, if not actually go away entirely.

Imagine, for example, that your lockdown is now over. A future you is at home in (you don’t say where you’re from, but let’s say the USA) and you haven’t spoken Italian, or Spanish, for a few months.

And then someone you know suggests, hey – you were in Italy for all those months, why don’t you come join our Italian class? So you go along and, wow, you cope just fine!

Insomma, the progress you are making now may not be evident immediately, especially if you are comparing your abilities to the Italian native speakers around you, but at a future moment, and/or in a different context, you will better know how much (a lot) you are capable of, and will, if you’ve any sense, feel better.

So anyway, let’s take those three points one by one:

Point 3.) relates to what I call ‘cueing’, which isn’t, as far as I am aware, a technical term – I’m not a trained psychologist or linguist. But the idea is, I should think, common sense. If people around you are speaking Italian, then that is your ‘cue’ to do the same. The ‘cue’ ‘primes’ you to speak Italian, too.

Obviously, that’s clearly less true if you’ve mostly been speaking Spanish and the Italian is a new thing for you. But after a few months, your brain should have enough experience to be receptive to being ‘cued up’ or ‘primed’ when necessary – French people speaking French? Speak French. Italians speaking Italian? Speak Italian.

Bilingual kids (there are three, and a bilingual wife, in my family) do this automatically with no effort at all. In fact, they have the opposite problem, in that they CAN’T ‘uncue’ (that’s daddy, speak English, daddy says “tell me that in Italian, will you?”, sorry daddy – doesn’t compute, no can do!), which is interesting but not today’s topic.

Anyway, if Italian doesn’t come when you need it to, there are simple tricks to try, which always work for me. When, for example, I need to speak Turkish (1 hour a week, Fridays, nine a.m.), I may not feel ready at all, but starting off with one or the other of the familar ways of greeting (Hello, How are you? What’s new? All OK?), which aren’t hard to remember and, bingo! my brain is ‘cued’ – it’s Turkish today, lads, wheel out the ‘back to front grammar’ and dust off the vocabulary from thirty years back!

This happens sub-consciously in normal life – when you, for instance, speak to your boss or to a client, you will likely speak differently to how you speak to family and friends. But you can do ‘cueing’ consciously too, in situations when you recognise that if you don’t prepare you’re likely to be tongue-tied. Like a piano player warming up with scales, basically, getting those finger tendons stretched and ready for action!

Think of a typical conversation when two people who know each other meet: all that ‘How are you? How’s your mum? How’s your dog? How’s your garden?’ stuff has precisely that effect – to ‘cue’ your brain, allow it time to muster the necessary linguistic and other resources – the appropriate style, memories of the last time you spoke, and what about, ideas about what you will say this time.

When you’re speaking in a foreign language, or about to, then selecting the right ‘program’ and loading the grammar and lexical components into your RAM memory, is part of that process.

So the first tip is to recognise the value of ‘cueing’ and to do it deliberately, like playing scales on a piano before starting the concerto.

This helps in another VERY IMPORTANT way – while your brain is getting its ‘speak a foreign language’ gear on, in preparation for the fun to come, you’re LETTING THE OTHER PERSON TAKE THE STRAIN.

I can’t stress this enough, so if you only think about one thing today, think about this.

– How are you?
– Fine.
– Only ‘fine’?
– Not TOO bad.
– Why? What’s the matter?
– Well…

There follows a long explanation. Feel free to pick your nose and look out of the window, but look sympathetic at least.

And if the flow subsides, ask an ‘open’ question (Why did they do that? What do you think will happen next?) so as to encourage the other person to continue.

Use short, simple questions to MANAGE THE CONVERSATION so that it flows, and to ensure that the other participants carry their share of the load.

While your conversation partner (teacher?) is sharing their problems, which incidentally will make them much keener to interact naturally with you in the future, which will benefit your learning, you get to LISTEN – natural, live, native-speaker speech is really great experience for you, plus you don’t have all the bother and stress of actually speaking.

Which brings me on to 1.) measuring success/progress when speaking.

So no, I probably wouldn’t use the same subjective or objective measurements that I suggested experimenting with in order to evaluate your progress with reading.

In fact, I would point out that, unless you are a politician or a voiceover actor, then measuring success at ‘speaking’ is a pointless exercise. What you should, in fact, be evaluating is your progress at CONVERSATION.

And (this is the ‘takeaway’ for this section), CONVERSATION is a ‘collaborative’ exercise, which involves plenty of things which are much, much, much, much, much, much more important that correct grammar or proununciation.

But before I list them, I’d point out that YOU ALREADY KNOW HOW TO EVALUATE WHETHER A CONVERSATION WAS SUCCESSFUL OR NOT.

Was it fun? Did everyone involved think so to? Would you, and they, be happy to speak again in future? Did anyone look bored? Or did they look and sound animated and interested?

That’s the key to how to evaluate success in ‘speaking’: to think of it, not as being like a speech – were you an Obama today, or a Trump? – but as an experience that you and the other participants enjoyed and/or valued (if not, why not?)

So what are the things that are more important that that your Italian is ‘correct’ and ‘fluent’?

Another aside, sorry, but I can’t resist it. You must have had totally boring or stilted conversations with native-speakers of your own language that were, yes, gramatically-perfect but that you would not be anxious to repeat, right?

Then I rest my case.

Things that are more important that that your Italian is ‘correct’ and ‘fluent’ include:

– turn-taking (does everyone get a ‘go’ at speaking?): is it natural, effortless, reasonably fair?

– comprehension: did you really ‘hear’ what the other person was saying, but in a meaningful way, not just that they have a nice accent, or know the ‘congiuntivo’ well? Did you get enough to empathise, or to think that they were talking nonsense?

– duration and fluidity: you (collectively, not just you on your own) spoke for a whole thirty minutes! With no awkward pauses! Way to go!

– relevance: we’re having a chat about, say, the weather. But you, irritating student, keep interupting to ask questions about grammar or words you don’t know. That’s not a good look. But it also means you won’t be benefitting from the ‘interaction’, from the ‘listening’, which is a shame.

That last point really sort of sums it up, puts it in a nut shell.

Are you training yourself to ‘speak’, or are you training to participate in ‘conversation’? It is not, at all, the same thing.

Now personally, I believe that you can learn a language by speaking (in conversation), reading and listening, rather than first having to build a detailed theoretical knowledge of it by studying and then applying that abstract understanding to real life situations.

If nothing else, it’s a good excuse for not doing homework!

Now where were we?

2.) The feeling of frustration that comes when you can’t speak as easily as you’d like to, especially when you feel that you have to be thinking consciously of grammar rules and vocabulary in order to be able to say what’s on your mind

Ah yes, that old chestnut. “Teacher, I want to be able to express my every thought fluently and without effort, just as I do in my own language!”

Well yes. And how much are you prepared to pay for that? And how much time will you be prepared to devote to it?

Yup, thought so.

So, how about we start with the baby steps then work up to ‘perfect’ gradually??

Excuse the sarcasm, but it can be wearing trying to make a living out of language teaching and learning when people’s expectations are so wildly at variance with reality.

The bad news is that it takes a long, long, time to reach the level of competence in a foreign language that you have in your native language, if ever. I’ve been hearing English for more than half a century, and Spanish for maybe a dozen hours in total. Guess which I’m more comfortable with?

However, the good news is that, once you get started interacting (not studying, not Duolingoing) in your chosen foreign tongue, you’ll likely be so pleased with yourself that you’ll be happy anyway.

Life has shown, again and again, that it’s the lowest-level learners, the ones who can say and understand the very least of all the students we teach, who tend to be the happiest with the progress they’ve made. Two weeks ago, they couldn’t utter a word. Now they can chat in Italian in the bar! In a matter of 40 hours, they’ve become the star foreign language student of their entire school, workplace or coummunity!

Still can’t say exactly what you’d like to say in Italian?

Is conversation in Italian harder than in your native-tongue or in another language that you know better?

Well, duh! Of course!

But you’ll get used to it, I promise.

Here’s the same advice as always: don’t think about how far you still have to go – don’t compare what you can do and how easily with, for example, what your native-speaker teacher can manage.

That way lies demotivation, depression, and probably other ‘d’s.

Think instead about how far you’ve come.

I speak better Swedish than more or less everyone I know (except native-speakers), there being virtually no other people in Italy learning that language! So I feel damn good about it.

And funnily enough, when I do interact with native speakers, they’re pleased that someone has taken the trouble to learn their language, and can even understand what’s being said! I’m some kind of genius, it seems.

Actually not. It’s just a matter of patience, of time passing, and of understanding the importance of interacting positively, of listening practice, and of knowing the topics that are trending in the community of people who use the language you’re learning.

Also of not wasting time on memorising little-used grammar structures or looking up infrequent words. You have only a limited amount of time. Choose to spend it on activities that will pay back, big time!

So there you go, Shelley: measure your success in conversation using the expressions on the faces of the other participants, and based on their continued willingness to interact with you. If they look glum, and start to avoid you, you’re doing something wrong.

Go easy on yourself, too. It’s OK to listen more and say less, in fact, you may be more popular as a result.

In a new language, you can choose to be a different person. Most people don’t, but there’s no rule that says you have to replicate the old you. You’ll likely be speaking with different people, after all, so who would know?

Why not, in fact, choose to be a better listener, a more sympathetic conversation partner, someone who is less outgoing, but maybe wiser?

Hope that helps!

P.S.

Thursday’s EasyItalianNews.com bulletin is here.

If you have no one to practice speaking Italian with, we sell online lessons (but be sure to insist to your teacher that you’ll do lots of conversation! If left to their own devices, Italian teachers tend to be grammar obsessives…)

And there’s loads of free listening material on the club website, with more coming soon.

A lunedì, allora.