My background is in both formal linguistics and in group facilitation, and I have been learning languages and working with groups for just over a decade. After countless hours struggling to express just the right kind of idea in my second or third language, and trying to help others do the same, I have come to believe a few key truths:
1. Students’ needs MUST be at the center of the learning process:
Despite what you might have learned in traditional classrooms, learning doesn’t happen best when teachers lecture on and on and students quietly listen. People come to a classroom because they have a problem that Duolingo couldn’t solve. My job as a teacher and facilitator is to listen to that problem and work together with my students to help them better understand what they need, and then see what we can do together to meet that need.
2. Every English problem is also a social problem:
The use of a language can’t be separated from the social context it’s being used in. We’re always using our English WITH other people, and those situations can change how well our English works.
Imagine you need to give a presentation in English in front of the new members of the team you don’t know so well. You don’t know what’s wrong, because when you watch your favorite show on Netflix, or talk to your neighbors, you have no issues in English.
Sometimes, it’s not your English, it’s the situation.
Often, I have students who have a large English vocabulary, who know the grammar perfectly well, but when they get to the office, they just can’t speak up. Before we bother with memorizing new words, we need to discover if the problem is really just English, or if the situation at work would make it hard to speak up in any language!
I find it helpful here to talk with my students about the social context they’re trying to speak English in:
- Do your coworkers feel comfortable speaking with each other?
- Is there a manager who nobody wants to talk to?
- Where do you feel most comfortable speaking?
As we make sense of the social environment, we can give ourselves more tools to help us use the English we have!
3. Understanding is a group activity:
Sometimes, especially when we’re feeling tense or in the middle of a conflict, we feel like there’s a barrier between ourselves and the people we’re trying to talk to. Maybe we’re ashamed of our attempts at English, maybe we think we’re the only ones who really care, and everyone else is just trying to cause problems. We often feel scared to have to solve our problem alone, and angry at ourselves for not knowing how to do that. All of that can be QUITE a lot to handle.
The good news is, none of it is true.
Research shows us again and again that human beings are biologically wired to reach out to others, to solve problems together, and to try to understand each other. The act of using language is an inherently social one: every sentence needs not just a talented speaker, but a cooperative listener in order to have any meaning at all. Once we realize that everyone in the room WANTS to understand, we realize that our so-called “bad English” is really a puzzle that we can solve with the other people in the room, in real time! Much of the work we do in my classroom is to help my students change how they look at communication: from competition to collaboration!
Everyone's Second Language 