If you’re scratching your head, wondering what on earth a language parent is, don’t worry. You’re not alone!
A language parent is someone, or a role that someone plays, that is ESSENTIAL to how you learn any language, especially if it is very different to the language that you already know like Mandarin Chinese, or Cantonese, or Japanese. A language parent is NOT a teacher. The role of a language parent is to interact with you in a normal relationship rather than to be your teacher. What does this mean?
A language parent talks with you about the normal things that he or she is interested in, and the things that you are interested in. The language parent spends time with you because he or she likes you and enjoys spending that time with you. It’s a real relationship.
It could be a retired person who lives near you who wants to pass the time, or someone who wants to connect because they are interested in people and places away from home. It could be someone who enjoys a common interest with you, who is excited to talk with someone from another place.
It could, of course, be someone who wants to be paid to talk to you in the language you are learning. In that case, you need to personally to understand the role of the language parent and insist that the “tutor” plays the language parent role, not a teacher or mentor role. Otherwise they’ll start teaching you and correcting you! This you do not want!
I’ll write another article soon as to why correcting “kills” the learning.
Key Tasks of the Language Parent Role
There are THREE things that the language parent must do to play their role well.
1. Understand What You Are Saying
The primary task is to understand what you mean, even if your pronunciation is bad, or your grammar is wrong, or you are only using simple words. This is very much like a parent with a child. The child might say: “my won sah-mie” and the parent perhaps responds by making a sandwich for the child. Or, the parent may respond verbally.
The key is that the parent is understanding the child even when the language being spoken is far from perfect. Psychologically this is extremely important. If a parent criticized a child every time she opened her mouth, before long the child would be terrified to speak.
This is true also of adults. If you’re trying to speak a new language, and it’s very early on your journey, and someone criticises you every time you open your mouth the results are devasting. No matter how strong your personality is, it’s very common to start believing that you don’t have the talent and just give up!
This dynamic is why spouses generally do not make good language parents! A spouse tends to have a vested interest in their partner being skillful and adult-level. Of course, if you’re a beginner, this is impossible. A spouse often finds this extremely uncomfortable and will either continue speaking with you in the language that you already share, or be extremely critical, or both.
And, yes, of course there will be exceptions! As you well know, there is always an exception to every rule.
2. Model accurate language naturally as part of the conversation
The second thing that a language parent does is to provide a model of the correct language immediately after understanding an incorrect utterance from the child. This is never done as a correction, but as a clarification of the message.
An example will make this clear.
When a parent responds verbally to incorrect language from the child it could be as follows.
The child says: “my won sah-mie”
and the parent immediately responds with:
“oh, you want a sandwich? Are you hungry?”
And the child says, “yah, yah, my hun-jee”.
And the parent says, “I’m hungry too! Let’s both have a sandwich!”
Through this way of interacting the child knows that he is understood (and of course he gets the sandwich he wants!). But not only that, he gets to hear how to say “hungry” and “sandwich”. He also gets to hear some correct grammar i.e. “I’m” vs “my”.
It’s important to understand that the child will not immediately correct himself with these words, but the brain has heard the pattern and will notice it over and over until at some point the child naturally starts speaking the correct way for those phrases that have been modelled by the parent.
When you are learning Mandarin Chinese, or French, or Japanese or any language, a language parent will use the exact same approach to interact with you as a parent does with a child. When you say something that they understand, but which is incorrect, they’ll simply clarify their understand with you, using the words they think you meant.
You will mostly understand what your language parent says to you (because understanding preceeds speaking by quite a lot – see “The Silent Period”).
Sometimes, if he or she really doesn’t understand, he or she will work patiently with you to draw out the meaning of what you wanted to communicate. This might even involve using objects, or drawing things, or miming to communicate while speaking at the same time. What’s important is that every minute of interactions like this is filled with comprehensible input.
Almost every interaction with a great language parent is the comprehensible input which ensures you that you are absorbing the language even if you may not be consciously aware of that fact. You WILL become aware when you discover that you are using words and phrases that you had no memory of learning! At least, not consciously.
3. Attends to your non-verbal feedback
The third aspect is about non-verbal communication. The language parent pays quite a lot of attention to your non-verbal reactions, because that way he or she can decide whether or not to use different words so you better understand.
Situations will arise where the language parent is excited about the points he is making, and will be running away with the story he is telling. Then all-of-a-sudden he’s stop, and use a different word for something, exchanging a less common word for easier words that you are likely to be familiar with.
Why does this happen? Simple, really. He has been paying attention to your expressions and other non-verbal signals. If, for instance, you start frowning he’ll realise that you probably don’t know the words he’s using. So he’ll slow down and try a different way. When you start nodding your head again he knows that you now understand what he’s saying.
And in this way, with a good language parent, you are always using language in the range which you can handle, and experiencing high levels of comprehensible input which leads to a language acquisition speed that can’t be matched in left-brain classroom type language learning. Not by a country mile.
It should seem obvious by now that a great language parent is someone who likes communicating and who likes talking. Not just that, a good language parent is extremely patient. This is important the closer you are to just beginning, because even signs of impatience from the person you are talking to can cause you to shut down with embarrassment.
The Perfect Chance to do BrainSoaking™
The final point about a good language parent is that she gives you tons of opportunity to do BrainSoaking™ . Simply, BrainSoaking is where you listen without a real need to understand everything, and just give your brain a chance to recognise the patterns that it is perceiving, as well as open the auditory filters to actually hear the language.
Who can be a good language parent?
One thing I have discovered over the years is that Great language parents just LOVE to talk! They’ll go on and on and on with things that they are passionate about. All you have to do is sit there and listen politely with a big smile on your face. Nod occasionally and they’ll keep going
Many of the great ones love to tell the same stories over and over again. So, you may hear story on a Tuesday. Three days later, he tells you the same story! Then, a week later he tells it again. Each time you become more and more familiar with the story and focus in on different aspects of that story as well as the words being used. It’s great review, and you’re having fun with the relationship at the same time!
Retired people with colourful histories, as you may imagine, can make great language parents.
I had quite a few great language parents when I was learning Mandarin in Beijing in 1981. Two stand out. One was a young guy who had an admin role at the Beijing Language Institute where I was officially studying. That’s not where I learned my Mandarin though. That’s a different story. Mr. Xiao (or Xiao Xiao as he was known) had a small classroom space in the admin building where he slept. We would meet there and have long discussions that went for hours, punctuated by lots of drawing on the blackboard to illustrate words that were yet to be understood.
In just weeks I was understanding most of the Chinese that he spoke to me, and speaking enough to get around.
The other was an accomplished traditional Chinese painter. I would visit him at home, or we’d go for a beer, and just talk. And he loved to talk. For hours. I got the benefit of hours of BrainSoaking as well as, little by little, and understanding of his world. A wonderful experience. The results of having a great language parent
If you are lucky enough to find a great language parent you will be surprised – amazed even – how much you understand and how quickly. And you’ll have an incredible amount of fun along the way.
By Chris Lonsdale