“Ciao ciao papà!”

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Buondì.

Our rescue animal, Bug, woke up in bad mood this morning, which isn’t uncommon.

He insisted on a banana instead of the usual toast, then only ate half of it.

Then he refused his medicine, pointedly anchoring his pacifier (‘dummy’ in British English) between gritted teeth and looking ready for a fight if Stefi insisted with her spoon.

I had to sneak up behind him and grab his head.

While he and I were waiting for my wife to pack her bag for the office, I dumped him in the stroller and we went outside to ‘look for cats’.

We didn’t see any, but we did find a plum that had fallen from a tree, so occupied ourselves for a few minutes playing ‘who can throw the sticky fruit through the slots of the storm drain?’

Which cheered us both up. I forgave him for ruining my breakfast, and he presumably forgave me for whatever it was I’d done to put him in a foul mood.

Stefi appeared – attractive, fragrant, and shouldering a large bag containing computer, lunch and multiple kilos of accumlated female bits and pieces.

And off they went. Finally.

“Ciao ciao Bug” I waved.

He turned his head: “Ciao ciao papà!”

Which rather blew me away!

Papà (stress on the second syllable) is hard to say, but wow – four whole syllables, and a proper speech act at that!

Bug’s not yet two and while he’s precocious in many ways (though I would say that, being one of his carers) hitherto he hasn’t been a great talker. Unlike his little friend Venus, who’s about half Bug’s size and weight but never shuts up.

Where’s the relevance?

Bug understands a lot more than he says with words: ask him if he wants a banana and he’ll be clear – assuming he can be bothered to reply – in nodding, shaking his head, reaching out to grab it, or just turning on his heels in search of a better offer.

Language exists in context, and if we’re talking about spoken language, that context is normally HEARD.

You hear, you listen (= multiple active processes going on in your head), you understand or you don’t.

Later – perhaps several years later – you might open your mouth, expel air past your vocal cords (vowels), modify the vowels by moving your tongue and lips to produce consonants (a ‘ch’ or a ‘p’ for instance), and there you have it:

chauu – chAUU – pah – pAH

Stressing the second and fouth vowels. Said with a smile and a wave.

Adult foreign language learners, of course, already have an extensive ability to speak, which can mostly be transferred from their mother tongue, assuming the language being learnt isn’t wildly dissimilar.

In classroom settings, for instance at our Italian school in Bologna, we’d hope that students would feel able to chat, and have plenty of opportunity to do so. From Day 1 of their courses.

But in the real world, speaking more than you can hear, listen to and understand just creates problems.

The classic example is the student who learns how to ask for directions in Italian (“Excuse me madam, but would you kindly direct me to the nearest cab rank?”) but has zero ability to understand the reply.

Happens all the time.

Much, much better to focus on listening practice, not necessarily only that, but at least also that, and in quantity.

“Bug, do you want a banana?”; “Bug, climb into your stroller and we’ll go outside and hassle cats!”; “Hey, bet you can’t throw this plum down that hole!”; “No babe, you have to throw it. Move your arm. Yeah, way to go! But it didn’t go in. Here, try again!”

Context first. Or context as well.

Studying something out of context is likely to be less efficient than learning to listen to / read the context and respond, if necessary, appropriately.

Want to learn lots of new words?

There are hundreds of thousands of them in an Italian dictionary. Start at page one and study like crazy. Work on developing your memory and one day, besides knowing all the words in the dictionary, you might win a quiz on TV!

That’s nonsense.

Most words you’ll ever encounter are of limited value or are entirely irrelevant to your communicative needs. And anyway, if you don’t spend loads of time practising listening, you won’t be able to pick them out from natural speech even if you do know them.

FREQUENCY is the key. If you know a proportion of the most FREQUENT words, you’ll get by.

But how to know which ones are frequent, so important, perhaps critcal?

That’s where listening and reading come in. Listening and reading texts provide concentrated ‘context’, perfect for an educated adult learner in a hurry.

The words you see again and again, your brain will notice. And probably figure out. Eventually.

The rest, so the words that aren’t frequent at all, will be forgotten. Which is fine.

Keep listening/reading and glimpses of meanings will become more frequent, until they are like a skeleton, on which – to a greater or lesser degree – understanding of the whole text can grow.

Rule of thumb: aim to be reading/listening to the language you’re learning for at least 50% of the time you have available.

If you’re doing 50% grammar, 40% vocabulary, 5% listening, and 5% reading, try rebalancing that.

Better still, take a break from ‘study’ and try doing ONLY reading and listening.

Just for a bit, just to see what happens, just to see how great your brain really is at learning from context.

“Want a banana?”

Alla prossima settimana!

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