On learning English

I've been fascinated with language and learning it since my youth when I had to learn to survive in an environment which wasn't in my then "native" language. For a bit of background, my "mother" tongue is Mandarin Chinese, and I am most fluent (by far) in American English.

I am by no means a language expert, but I've always found that learning language is a really interesting process from an intellectual standpoint. There's something about acquiring a language and making progress through slow incremental steps, and then all of a sudden -- BAM! -- and things start making more sense.

Since I've been in China for about 1.5 years now, I have come across some observations regarding learning and using language in a foreign language environment. Let me try to go through a couple of them:

• When speaking to non-native speakers of a language, watch your use of vocabulary and speed of speech. When I first got to Beijing, I understood maybe 20-30% of what people said. It was kind of magical because I would never get distracted from studying the street scene, but it didn't work too well at work because ...well, because it was a lot harder to get things done. Today, my comprehension level has improved markedly, and I'm at about 70-80% of comprehension in Beijing when I'm concentrating. When I'm not concentrating (for example if I have my back to a colleague and she makes an out-of-context remark to me), that drops to 20-30%.
  
  I really want to emphasize this to people. In China, people will nod along to whatever English blather you have and pretend to understand everything indefinitely. If you have character and are using interesting idioms, figures of speech, or anything colorful in any sort of way -- expect that your Chinese audience will not understand it. I've dumbed down my vocabulary use in English, and additionally dialed back my speed, and I think people still have a hard time my use of language in English. I also intentionally write emails using simpler vocabulary and less idiomatically than before. Maybe you can see it in my blog. More on this later if I get around to it. 

• "How do you learn English?" For some reason, being a native English language speaker makes you some sort of expert on learning a language. The truth is that being a native language speaker means that you're probably the worst person for teaching someone else to learn your language, because you have no idea how that person should learn, since that learning process is completely different than the way that you (the native speaker) acquired the language.
  
  But! There are some interesting tidbits to take away. The reason I say this is because I am also learning a foreign/second language at the same time. You might have heard of it. It's called Chinese. But you might say, "how is it possible that you need to learn Chinese? Isn't that your mother tongue?" Why yes! It's the first language that I learned to speak and I'm sure I can communicate very well about what kind of toast and cereal I would like, but I sure as heck couldn't (before arriving in Beijing) talk about economics or advertising or technology.
  
  Let me tell you how NOT to learn English: by reading Chinese subtitles on your favorite American TV show / movie. I guarantee you will not learn language quickly like that. Why? Because subtitles (we're wired this way) are addictive. Your eyes will automatically gravitate to whatever familiar text there is on the screen. This is even true for a person whose Chinese reading ability isn't even that great. Having Chinese subtitles and trying to learn English through the spoken dialogue is a futile exercise.
  
  Let's take the opposite case -- for me trying to learn Chinese -- watching a Chinese TV show with Chinese subtitles? That actually might be kind of useful, because you're just getting a  visualization of the spoken language. Speaking of visualizing the spoken language, my Mandarin listening and comprehension has improved markedly in the past 18 months, but my speaking has been lagging pretty far behind. I attribute this to a lack of reading in Chinese. The big problem with learning Chinese is that even though I know what the sounds sound like, I can't visualize the characters, so it makes it much harder to retain a phrase or piece of new vocabulary.
  
  The micro-example of this is for learning people's names in Chinese. I can't retain any of them. Why? Because when someone says "ZhouNan" -- I can't visualize those Chinese characters, and if I can't visualize them, then I have a much harder time retaining them. Even to this day, when I think about my Chinese colleagues' Chinese names, I only know them by pinyin, and not their characters. Sad, I know, but it's the most efficient way for me so far. 

So what does Mr. English teacher Fred have in conclusion today?
1) Speak slower and simpler when speaking to non-native speakers to help them better understand you.
2) Don't use a language that you already know to learn a new second language.
3) Find ways to visualize the sounds: subtitles, books with context, etc.