How to Learn Any Language 33
Language Power to the People
The many who crave language knowledge in America have risen in rebellion against the many who have failed (we could even say refused) to give it.
Language teaching used to be in the control of “the faculty,” a Prussian guard of grammarians who taught that after all the conjugations, declensions, irregularities, and exceptions were mastered, surely fluency would follow. What followed instead was a parade of hapless Americans who, after eight years of good grades, could not go to the desk clerk at a hotel in a country whose language they’d studied and ask if they had any messages!
“The faculty” taught rigidly by the book, the grammar book, and all our desire to learn to say useful things and converse were dashed.
Today foreign languages are no longer “electives.” Those suddenly faced with their first need to command another language are besieging Berlitz and other commercial language schools and buying the Pimsleur cassettes and other self study courses. We, the laymen, are picking up our tools – language workbooks, cassette courses, phrase books, flash cards – to try to make up for our failure to learn, while all those incredible Europeans were learning English in their public schools!
Two, four, six, eight years of high school and college study in a foreign language, and still our American graduates can’t tell whether the man on the radio speaking the language they “learned” is declaring war or recommending a restaurant!
Has one single American graduate ever stepped into a job that called for a foreign language with nothing more than the language he learned in high school or college? It’s not a cruel question. Most Americans can get by on the reading they learned in school. And the math. And the history. Why is that when it come to foreign languages our graduates have to rush into expensive private instruction to start all over again?
One hero of language learning in the United States is Dr. Henry Urbanski, professor of Russian, former chairman of the department of Foreign Languages of the State University of New York at New Paltz, and now director of the Language Immersion Institute. Once upon a time Dr. Urbanski’s “immersion” heresy would probably have
resulted in his getting banned from university life. Today Urbanski is showered with praise and honour.
His immersion programme defies the language teaching tradition of rote regimentation and grammar worship. There are no charts to learn, no homework, no drudgery, and no tests. It’s all fun, it emphasises real conversation between teacher and students, and it all takes place over a weekend. If Henry Urbanski could have thought of any more rules to break, he would have.
Urbanski’s immersion programme is open to everybody. Those with no educational background in languages whatever join with people with graduate degrees in languages and men and women of all levels of qualification in between. The programme begins at seven P.M. on a Friday for an hour of introduction and orientation. The students then break up into small groups in separate rooms and jump into the foreign language under the command of dynamic, enthusiastic instructors who keep a high energy Ping-Pong of basic conversation going back and forth with all students participating. At ten P.M. Friday the classes break and the wise ones go straight to bed without food, wine, or small talk, knowing that the routine resumes early Saturday morning.
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