Having a Real Conversation - How Do You Get Started?

So I know what you really want to see: a conversation with natives. Don't worry, I have that for you this week! I'm actually away from home this week so I made my video earlier in the week so I could edit it for faster upload. This weeks video is in Chinese so I'll talk about that for a bit.

Finding somebody to talk with is always a difficult task for people especially if you don't live in that country. I have yet to go to any country that speaks Mandarin or Arabic as their native language but have multiple people who are willing to help me with my language learning. With the current technology we have you can really take advantage off any situation you are put in. I utilize different social media outlets to help myself find language partners (somebody who helps me with their language as I help them with theirs) very easily. Being as my native language is English I easily find people wanting to learn with me. I use HelloTalk and italki for finding language partners.  I got exceptionally lucky on italki by finding the first person I ever chatted with in Chinese who I still chat with every week. When I go to visit China, I will likely make sure to visit them. Another opportunity I had was when I took a class in the DC area. Afterwards I wanted to actually "use" my language so I contacted the teacher about any volunteer opportunities that he may know of. It turns out that his daughter works at the local university where they have a large population of foreign graduate students. I was able to get paired up with a few of them to help work with their English pronunciation and also help understand American culture while they helped me with Chinese. It has been an extremely satisfying experience for me.

Now to the speaking part. First off, a big fear is just how fast a native talks. You come in thinking that you can understand but really you've been preparing at a much slower speed so that first conversation can terrify you. I'll be honest, almost every conversation I've had I have had to ask the other person to repeat what they said, a little slower. Just like most things you start off with, it will take time to get up to speed. The first time you hop on a bike you aren't going to go on an all-out sprint but the more time you spend working on something, the better you will become at it. This is why listening to music, movies, podcasts, videos, etc. of natives speaking can really help you get comfortable with the speed of how a conversation will go. Another good way to help feel comfortable is to ask close-ended questions. Ask somebody if they have siblings; they'll likely say no or yes, followed by what type of siblings they may have. Sure, they will be speaking fast, but since you can anticipate the responses you will be ready for specific words when they are spoken.

Let's get right down to the video this week. So I was able to get some of the students I meet with, Vicky and Sue, to have a sporadic conversation with me. We didn't prep any conversation besides, "Lets talk about hobbies/travel/work/weather/etc." I learned about 30 seconds before this conversation how to say, "Ride horses," and we just went with it. You'll notice that I stumble a lot, get confused a lot, and actually faked my way through one portion without any idea what we were talking about. There's also a time I completely change topics. Obviously this conversation wasn't perfect and that was the point. I'm not fluent in this language, but I can get through a conversation. The only way you will learn is by making mistakes and struggling. Embrace the ugly and it will allow you to come out the other side feeling better.

Until next time!

Talking With Myself (Arabic Week 7)

Got a microphone which should help when recording live conversations with people!

This past week I had another person reach out to me asking about any tips I can offer for getting through a learning rut where progress doesn't seem to be coming. Everybody is pressed for time. It is all about being efficient with that time to make it beneficial. You have to ask yourself what you are trying to do with the language you are learning. For example, my goal is to be able to talk to people with the languages I learn. I'm not too concerned about being able to write Chinese so I've stopped dedicating time to writing characters. It also wasn't beneficial because there is not a lot of correlation between the characters and the phonetic pronunciation of the words. Now as I am learning Arabic, it is more phonetically related between the written and spoken word so I will try to learn more on how to write. So how do I approach this with my learning? I talk to myself in Chinese A LOT. I talk to myself driving home from work, while cooking food, while doing dishes, just today when I walked into the grocery store and saw bananas I instantly said "xiang jiao" to remind myself. Not only does this allow me to practice at times when I am not focused on studying but this really helps with becoming comfortable speaking. It also does help to make it less of an "I am studying" mindset and allowing it to become part of your everyday life. This comfort that I've obtained allowed me to have a conversation in Chinese while driving home one of the graduate students that I work with each week. We talked in Chinese about whether they want a car and how I got my car. The big thing about the conversation was that it was at night during a rainstorm and I was still able to listen and speak while trying to navigate using her GPS (which was also in Chinese). The more you break away from the idea of "studying" and form more into the mindset of allowing it to be part of your everyday life it will then become easier to work with.

New words in Arabic.

Going along with this idea, my video this week is.....me talking to myself! At first I was like, "You should talk to yourself in both Arabic and Chinese!" but I realized that the conversation would fall flat pretty quick due to my differing levels. Instead I pretending to be two different people who are just meeting and speaking Arabic. It's short and sweet but it allows me to prepare the phrases I will say and ask when I meet somebody. This is great because  you can see me completely forget a few words and have to remember them. During this I was staring off as I tried to remember each phrase.

Until next time.

Caught By Suprise, Speaking With Natives (Arabic Week 6)

Hello again! I'll start by giving a very brief update on what has been up the past few weeks. I volunteer with a non-profit youth leadership development program called Hugh O'Brian Youth Leadership (HOBY for those that have seen my Facebook plastered with it lately). At the end of July I had the opportunity to volunteer at the World Leadership Congress in Chicago, Illinois where we had ambassadors from 11 different countries. This was an amazing exposure to different cultures from around the world. This weekend I was in Alabama for HOBY Training Institute where volunteers from all over come to help strategize for creating better seminars and programsin the upcoming years. If you would like to hear more about this, please contact me and I would be able to tell you all about the organization that has truly changed my life and outlook on many things for the past 10 years. While at the Training Institute there were two volunteers from Iraq who I had the opportunity to meet. I decided this would be a good opportunity to potentially clear up some questions and talk to people from a country where I am learning the langauge.

The first time I tried to speak Chinese to somebody, I was terrifed that they would become offended of how poorly I spoke their langauge and yell at me or something. This is a common fear that many people have and I still struggle with a lot. I force myself to push past this fear a lot because I have learned something about this fear; this reaction has never happened. I'll repeat that: THIS DOESN'T HAPPEN. Every time I try to speak to somebody in their language it typically goes as follows:

Me: Hello (In their language)
Them: Hello (In their language, unimpressed)
Me: *say anything else in their langauge*
Them: *face lights up  and say some excitement in their language*

Lourd was so excited to see my Arabic writing and started showing me how to write all the letters and random words.

The idea of me being able to speak a foreign language 15 months ago was laughable. I didn't know where to start and this fear overhwelmed me. When I approached Dalia and Lourd and spoke to them in Arabic, they were overjoyed that I was trying. They instantly took to trying to teach me as many words and phrases as possible. I also learned one word in Kurdish as we waited for an hour in Best Buy (most of that time was spent differing between two letters that closely relate to the letter "h" in english). I got to learn that at Iraq's seminar, they speak English instead of Arabic or Kurdish. English is used as a language mediator which I thought was EXTREMELY cool and had never considered before. I offered to have them help me with my video this week and they were so excited to help! You can watch me struggle with the "h" sounds.

The big lesson I have learned is that people love sharing their language with you. Every person that I have tried to communicate with has tried to help me. Don't feel as though they will tell you to stop, it just doesn't happen. If your goal is to be able to talk to somebody in their native language then just do it. The only way you will get better is to practice.

Until next time,

Preparing Some Phrases (Arabic Week 4?)

So the past few weeks have slowed me up a little bit as I have been away. There has been some amazing experiences that I'd love to share but I just can't put everything into one post. For now it is about picking back up some momentum to prepare to speaking to a native for the first time (which hopefully I can tape for you!)

This past week I was able to get back to meeting with some graduate students who are wanting to improve their English. We have had a wonderful opportunity this year to learn about each others culture. It was great to see them again after a few months apart and we talked a lot about what they did for the summer. When it was time to speak in Chinese I wasn't sure if I was ready as I hadn't been speaking at their speed very much since we left. The conversations got intense! If I were to tell you a week ago that I was going to be discussing whether the U.S. was creating bullet trains and where I would have had been lying. Somehow, with no prior plan of it, we were able to have a conversation. Then we decided to focus on "weather" which really meant trying to explain how to keep your car from being too hot during the day in the summer. Both of these conversations were completely unplanned and I struggled through a lot of it, but I tried my best to keep my composure came out the other side quite please with what we said.

One thing that has come in handy for me when speaking Chinese is having some go to phrases that I use a lot. Typical things that you would expect to say a lot or will come in handy as you go.  Here are some phrases that I've learned in Chinese (technically the English translation) that has proven to help out a lot:

• Wait one second (a good staller as I try to figure out what to say) deng3 yi1 xia4
• Say that again, a little slower (almost every single conversation.....) zai4 shuo1 yi1 bian4, man4 dian3
• Anyways....... (when I've lost my thought path) bu4 guan3 zen3 yang4
• How do you say.......(pretty self-explanatory of how useful it is) ni3 zen3 me shuo1

Today, I'll keep it short. My video is me practicing some of the phrases. If you notice me looking afar, it is me looking at my attempt at trying to pronounce these phrases. Practice makes perfect so this conversation.......isn't a conversation.

Until next time!