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Buondì.
Last week my son asked me to look at his CV (‘resume’ for U.S. readers), the first one he’d ever written. He’s in his second year at university (‘college’) and will soon have to do work experience (‘an internship’), hence the curriculum vitae.
I saw thousands of these in my career as an English teacher, when students were forever asking me to help them, and later as an employer of teachers and ancillary staff. Tom’s was good to the point I had nothing much to feedback to him, except one thing.
The ‘resume’ was in English, which was him showing off, I expect. Though he’s studying ‘informatica’ (‘computer science’), a field in which English is the ‘lingua franca’, so that could have been why.
Anyway, down towards the end, in the ‘Foreign Languages’ section, which is ‘de rigueur’ in Europe if not in Britain or the U.S.A., I found something I could mention to him.
My wife, Stefi, (who manages our Italian school in Bologna), is the linguist of the family, really.
She’s bilingual Italian/Swedish, is a qualified English teacher – so certainly a C2 in the CEFR framework – and many years ago graduated in Japanese Language and Culture. Plus she has the usual European smatterings of Spanish, French, German and so on, though she denies it when called upon to speak.
My kids, also bilingual, though this time Italian/English, are half-hearted linguists by comparison. Mostly they did English as their foreign language at school, though it wouldn’t have been at all ‘foreign’ to them, as they spoke it at home throughout their childhoods.
My eldest daughter can get by in French, I believe, and once did a Swedish course in Stockholm. Her younger sister did Chinese at high school, reached CEFR level A2, and even spent a few weeks in China as a teenager.
Baby Tom (now voice of EasyItalianNews.com) has been a disappointment by comparison, having been much more interested in video-gaming as a teenager. But still, being an English native speaker will doubtless stand him in good stead, career-wise.
On his curriculum/resume, in the Foreign Languages section, obviously Tom had specified English (there was nothing else), along with the CEFR grade, which is what everyone does.
I don’t recall if he put C2 like his mum (‘mom’) or perhaps he was being modest and went for a level lower, which would still be more than enough to impress an employer, even compared to his fellow computer science undergraduate nerds.
Tom, I told him, the CEFR framework is for ‘foreign’ languages, right?
But English for you isn’t a ‘foreign’ language. It’s your mother tongue, or father tongue in this case. So the framework ‘levels’ (A1, A2, B1, B2, C1, C2) describing what students can do in their acquired foreign language aren’t really relevant to you.
It was a picky point, I admit. He might as well just write C1 or C2, for the purposes of this resume.
However, at some point that could trip him up – a lot of Italian employers, and non-Italian universities, if he decides to go abroad for postgrad studies, will expect students to certify their foreign language skills. And yet, for him, English is NOT a foreign language.
But who cares? Well, reasonably, some organisations organising exams/certificates in foreign languages specifically EXCLUDE native speakers/bilingual kids from taking them. Even a sprinkling of native speaker candidates could distort the results, but in any case, the exams are not designed for them.
If an employer or non-Italian educational institution insists he prove his English level, that could therefore be an obstacle. How do you prove you’re a native speaker, after all? His/my ‘foreign’ surname should surely help, but bureaucracies being bureaucracies…
I’ve known quite a number of bilingual people, besides my kids and my wife, and one thing that seems true for many of them is that they are NOT EQUALLY ABLE IN BOTH LANGUAGES.
Though they’re often won’t admit so, as it would feel like disloyalty to one parent or the other.
I’d bet, for instance, that my wife’s English (she’s a qualified English teacher, has been with me for more than a quarter of a century, and brought her kids up to speak English) is actually way better than her Swedish, which is her mother’s language, so her second native tongue, after or as well as Italian.
You can’t be in two places at once, right? So whichever linguistic experiences shaped you, growing up, would always have been in one language OR the other.
You went to school in Italy or in Sweden, not both. Or if it actually was both, it would have been a few years here and a few there, not identical experiences at the same time. Elementary school and high school are different life experiences, and require different linguistic assets.
A common example I use when pontificating on this topic is the experience of learning to drive.
Wherever you learnt to drive, even if you did it in your ‘foreign language’ (plenty of foreigners learn to drive only after arriving in the country where they settle), that’ll be the language you know for driving. Road signs, regulations, vehicle maintenance, and so on. All in one language you know (however badly), nothing or much less in the other.
THAT’s what it’s like to be bilingual, but also what it’s like to be a long-term resident in a country other than your own. Life goes on, you do stuff, and what you do shapes your language.
I employ Italians, so I have a good general idea of the legal landscape for employment contracts in Italy, and the words and structures used to describe it. Whereas, despite being a Brit, and a native English speaker, and having a business degree (and being a generally super-bravo person), I’d have only the vaguest idea how to go about employing someone in the UK.
You get the idea. People can be native speakers of a language, but limited in what they can actually do in/with it, while other people (or in Stefi’s case, the same people) can be exceedingly able in a foreign language, to the point where they appear to have no limits on what they could do, just like an educated native speaker.
There are, for instance, giants of English literature who were not English native-speakers, who had to learn from scratch the language of their trade. Didn’t stop them becoming giants.
So, some questions for you: how ‘foreign’ is your foreign language? Will it every be less ‘foreign’? What might result in that happening? And does a language feeling more or less ‘foreign’ even matter anyway?
More importantly, if you’re actively learning a ‘foreign’ language (‘learning’ doesn’t have to equal ‘studying’, which I never do), what are you doing that FOR?
If, for instance, your aim, or one of them, is to be able to chat to and undestand Italians when you spend time in Italy, then check Point 1.) You know what you’re learning ‘for’, which is a great start!
Point 2.) is, what do you need to ‘learn’ to do for point 1.)? If you have no idea, maybe begin with the CEFR checklist) to see what you can’t, yet, do.
There’s no point 3.), but if there were, it would be something like: ‘what would you need to do/how much time would need to pass until doing the thing you described in Point 1.) stops feeling ‘foreign’ to you?
Personally I’m inclined to stop using that adjective.
My Italian is ‘incomplete’, at best, even after more than twenty-five years living here, but it rarely feels ‘foreign’.
Swedish sounds ‘foreign’ when I listen to the radio news, especially when they interview an English speaker, who doesn’t.
But then, right after, there’ll be someone speaking Danish (which I can guess at), German (less so) or Arabic (no idea at all), and suddenly the Swedish translation of what the foreign language interviewee has said is less ‘foreign’ than, well… ‘familiar’.
I’m ‘at ease’ with British English, less so with American English, even less so with Italian, but functional in all three. I’m not a native speaker of Italian, but ‘at ease’, ‘to an extent’, sums up my abilities well enough.
I’ll describe Swedish, Turkish, French and Spanish as my ‘familiar’ languages. Sometimes, when I’m listening to them, they don’t sound ‘foreign’ at all (though that’s weird as, at other times, I can understand little or nothing of what’s going on…)
All the other languages in the world are ‘foreign’ to me, in more or less equal measure. ‘Foreign’ languages are the ones I don’t know anything of at all.
I hereby propose renaming the curriculum/resume section as ‘Familiar Languages’!
Besides being much more positive and encouraging, that way we’re describing what we can actually do with our ‘consciously-learnt’ language on the same spectrum/sliding scale we use to talk about the language or languages we were brought up with.
Quit ‘studying Italian’ and start, instead, ‘building familiarity’ with the language.
And when describing how ‘familiar’ you are with Italian, why not do that with reference to your goals (‘I can hold a basic conversation’), rather than by comparing your familiarity with Italian to your familiarity with your native tongue?
For most people (except my wife) comparing foreign language competencies with mother-tongue competencies is an unhelpful, pointless and depressing exercise.
So don’t do it. Instead, you could compare with a language you know nothing of at all!
I’m much more familiar with Italian than I am with Russian, Arabic or Chinese.
Isn’t that great? Well done to me!!
Alla prossima settimana!
Film fan? 33% off our ‘easy reader’ Italian movie ebooks!
Last week EasyReaders.org promoted a 33% coupon for their ‘easy reader’ ebooks based on famous Italian operas.
That coupon has now expired, but this week they’re doing the same thing, but with their ‘easy reader’ eBook of the Classic Italian Movie series.
The idea was to create texts (plus exercises, online audio, etc.) that would function as Italian reading/listening practice, but also encourage learners to watch the movies, and in the original Italian!
The level of the ebooks is around intermediate. The ‘level’ of the actual movies, which you can often find online, is clearly a lot harder.
But then there are pictures (moving pictures!) to help you figure out what’s happening – and reading/listening to our ebooks beforehand make that easier!
Before we started publishing these, I’d watched very few classic Italian movies. But as part of the marketing process I sought each one out online and enjoyed them a lot!
Browse our selection of introductory eBooks to Classic Italian Movies here:
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and here:
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How to get your 33% discount??
You need to use this week’s coupon code, which is: MovieEasyReaders-33%
1.) Add your selection of ‘movie’ ebooks to your cart;
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3.) SCROLL DOWN TO CHECK THE CART TOTAL before proceeding with payment. The 33% discount is applied to the CART TOTAL, not to the individual ebooks;
4.) You can use coupon code MovieEasyReaders-33% as often as you wish until the offer ends (this time next week), so if you’re unsure, try buying just one title. That way you can see how the buying/downloading process works.
Not interested in movies?
Browse our catalog to see other categories, or find more ebooks, organised by level:
A1 | A1/A2 | A2 | A2/B1 | B1 | B1/B2 | B2 | B2/C1 | C1 | C1/C2 | C2
How do I access my ebook?
When your order is ‘completed’ (normally immediately after your payment), a download link will be automatically emailed to you. It’s valid for 7 days and 3 download attempts so please save a copy of the .pdf ebook in a safe place. Other versions of the ebook, where available, cannot be downloaded but will be emailed to people who request them. There’s a space to do that on the order form – where it says Additional information, Order notes (optional). If you forget, or if you have problems downloading the .pdf, don’t worry! Email us at the address on the website and we’ll help. Also, why not check out our FAQ?
P.S.
Here’s the usual reminder to read/listen to yestersday’s bulletin of ‘easy’ Italian news, a fantastic, FREE way to consolidate the grammar and vocabulary you’ve studied, as well as to improve your Italian reading and listening comprehension skills!
Visit their website to get started immediately!
Better still, subscribe (also FREE) and so get all three text + audio bulletins of ‘easy’ news emailed to you each week, on Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Saturdays. Just enter your email address on this page and click the confirmation link that will be emailed to you.
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Mayken says
Ciao Daniel!
I really enjoyed reading this week’s post. I’ve been in a similar situation recently – my daughter (bilingual French7German) needed to write a CV for her grade 9 work experience later this year,. Like Tom, she had listed German in the “languages” section, along with her school English. I told her to indicate her level in German simply with “mother tongue” as opposed to A2 for English. (That’s not me making an estimate but her English teacher saying at the end of the school year the class should be at B1 but most of them were already near it now.)
I’ve been using my languages a bit more in parallel, for instance during pregnancy and early days with the above-mentioned daughter, I acquired the relevant vocabulary not only in French (country of residence) but also in German (country of origin) to chat with my mum and other family members about it, but also in English, to communicate about it with my friends in other countries. But anything work-related that I’m totally fine with in French I wouldn’t have much of an idea about in German.
These days, as I’m gradually adding Italian to the mix, I’ve stocked up on swimming vocabulary in Italian so I can tell my lovely online teacher about the upcoming swim meet, or about the sights of southwestern France (grotte con pitture rupestre, for instance9, so I can tell her about my summer vacation.
All that to say that I agree with you on that “familiar” languages would be a much more fitting designation than “foreign” languages.
A la prossima!