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Becoming Fluent Fast? Via Peace Corps? | ||
Tags: Immersion | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Immersion, Schools & Certificates |  | |
| TiberiusTyrone Pentaglot Newbie United States Joined 5054 days ago 2 posts - 2 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, Greek, Latin, French | Message 1 of 14 22 June 2010 at 5:48pm | IP Logged | ||
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Well, I was looking around the web and I found this forum and I became excited as perhaps someone here may have the answer to some questions that has been dogging me for quite some time.
I have learned languages in rather sterile environments: language schools and classrooms. While I would call myself proficient, I would not say I am truly fluent. My current goal has been so far to achieve fluency in French. I went to Paris last year for 12 weeks and it went super well and I left the school and successfully tested at B2. Yet, I am not satisfied with that. I want C1 and even if it were possible, C2. I'll be returning again this summer to Paris for another 5 weeks, but I am doubtful that I can still achieve my fluency goal. During the interim, I've been keeping my French up by going to Alliance Francaise weekly and listing to TV5. When I listen to the news, I can understand the general message, but more precise details are lacking. I understand about 75% of the words spoken, but I want to be able to understand almost anything. Movies are really horrific for me and South Park in French is impossible unless I put subtitles on. My hope really is that someday I will be able to read, write, speak, and listen in French without having to do any thinking or any translations into English. So far...I've kind of come to the conclusion that even language schools won't bring me to my goal. ***That is why I have come here to see if anyone knows something about super intensive language immersion programs and if anyone has had their only personal experiences with them and if so, how they have worked for you.*** 1) I have talked to people in the Peace Corps and they have told me how they have learned languages fluently in just a few months. I talked with a person who was a complete beginner in French and had only been in the Peace Corps for 3 months and she could speak it better (she sounded as if she were C1!) than I could (I had taken French on and off in high school and had done already my 3 months in a language school in Paris). Another person to whom I talked spoke Swahili and learned how to speak it via the Peace Corps! Is this the only way to learn a language fast? Join the Peace Corps and select a French speaking region? 2) I have read stories about during WWII, the US government used to isolate selected people into specially constructed villages where they became fluent in German in 6 months. Do such programs still exist today? Does the military or some non-military program (perhaps for diplomats) have some special program where people can learn French as fast as those people who learned German in a mere 6 months? I know the US has some strategic language programs (but supposedly they are mere child play compared to how the German immersion programs worked during WWII). However French is not considered a strategic language. 3) Besides the Peace Corps and perhaps immersion programs in governmental situations, do other such intensive programs exist to bring a person into fluency in several months? I have seen French immersion programs, but they only last for 2-3 weeks, cost an unbelievable amount of money, and seem more like gimmicks to me. I want something that is the real deal. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| SamD Triglot Senior Member United States Joined 6444 days ago 823 posts - 987 votes  Speaks: English*, Spanish, French Studies: Portuguese, Norwegian | Message 2 of 14 22 June 2010 at 8:15pm | IP Logged | ||
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If you join the Peace Corps, you are likely to end up in a place where few people, if any, speak English. As a result, you are forced to use a language constantly. This makes a big difference.
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| ManicGenius Senior Member United States Joined 5266 days ago 288 posts - 420 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Esperanto, French, Japanese | Message 3 of 14 22 June 2010 at 9:29pm | IP Logged | ||
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Dude. Peace Corps. has a 90% chance of one thing:
No toilet paper. Think about it. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| aokoye Diglot Senior Member United StatesRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5326 days ago 235 posts - 453 votes Speaks: English*, German Studies: Dutch, Norwegian, Japanese | Message 4 of 14 23 June 2010 at 3:10am | IP Logged | ||
Funny you bring this up because I've been thinking about the Peace Corps a lot as a friend of mine is currently in Ukraine with them and teaching English. I won't say much as I don't have much time right now but I think it's important to note that you can't pick a country to live in in the Peace Corps, the Peace Corps picks it for you and it's based on a number of factors. As far as fluency goes, I do think that being essentially forced to learn and speak a language can (assuming you actually want to be in that position) be a good thing, but I would stress that you actually have to put yourself out there. If you're teaching English (and from what I've heard, the majority of peace corps volunteers are teaching English) you are going to primarily be in an English environment as that is what you'll be hearing most of your work day. That said, if you're lucky and make friends (apparently a number of volunteers have problems making friends with non PC volunteers, or so my friend says) then you will definitely have a leg up. All and all I would recommend volunteering for the Peace Corps but I wouldn't go only because you want to learn a language. There are plenty of other things you are obligated to do (it's amazing how much grading homework eats up time) and you don't have the ultimate say in where you go. Oh and my friend who is in Ukraine speaks Ukrainian pretty well (she's been there since late August) but she also has a fair amount of friends there that she talks to on a regular basis and she studies her butt off when she has the time. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| clang Groupie United States Joined 5124 days ago 54 posts - 82 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Russian, Italian | Message 5 of 14 23 June 2010 at 8:49am | IP Logged | ||
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I have experience studying languages in high school, in college, and while living abroad and none of them
compare in the least to the process of learning a language in the Peace Corps. The language is my life. I studied it six-eight hours a day for 2 or 3 months before going into fulltime working and living immersion. My family speaks Russian, at work we work in Russian, everyone in town speaks Russian. I have no choice but to use it constantly and am motivated to study in my free time, even after I've been using it all day. I will say, however, that people in French speaking countries (and people who teach English in any country and therefore speak English all day) can sometimes have less fantastic results. For one thing, African francophone countries tend to be extremely multilingual and few people speak French to college educated standards because they spend half of their time speaking a local language. I know many volunteers who end up learning quite a bit of 1 or 2 other languages in addition to French, but not quite fluently. Other people, for example those placed in an ngo with employees from different parts of the country or whose jobs require talking with government officials or workers from international organizations, get excellent French practice. If you have any questions about it, let me know. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Journeyer Triglot Senior Member United States tristan85.blogspot.c Joined 6653 days ago 946 posts - 1110 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, German Studies: Sign Language | Message 6 of 14 23 June 2010 at 7:51pm | IP Logged | ||
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I'm currently serving in the Peace Corps in Peru I and thought I'd weigh in.
I came here already knowing Spanish and actually wanted to go to Latin America because I was hoping to learn an indigenous language (in Peru that would be Quechua or Aymara). Alas I am not in one of those places, and many of the volunteers who go to those places don't learn Quechua well, I imagine because they focus more on Spanish and/or aren't as interested in learning such an obscure language. Lack of resources also make it hard (some Quechua dialects don't have an established written language, let alone courses). That said, in my group I saw people who had very little Spanish skills and the ones that I've seen now do fine in the language. I only saw on person who was unable to learn the language, but that was mostly due to a very negative attitude, I believe. He ended up going home. You go through training which including language courses in smallish groups with an instructor after being divided into classes based on skill level. To be honest, I wasn't all that impressed with the courses, but that might have also been the instructor's fault. However, the real key to learning the language is the instruction mixed with the immersion. (For the record, that's why immersion is not a silver bullet...you need to still study, otherwise it's a bit like expecting a person to swim just by putting them in the water.) Anyways, courses go on weekly, for about 2.5 to 3 months. You had to be (in Peru anyways) at PC's intermediate mid level of Spanish skills to graduate training and be sworn in as a volunteer, and if you don't meet that level, you can still swear in but you can't go to your site yet: the instructors will work with you longer for another couple of weeks to help reach the requirements. It's been my impression that people tend to learn their languages of their PC country fairly well in general. I know three people who went to Africa and learned their languages fluently. However, I also know one person who is in Niger and it sounds like she does well in both French and Hausa but isn't really advanced in either of them. I also have a friend in Bulgaria apparently is conversant in her language but not fluent. I really think it's up to the volunteer and the work they put into it plus their attitude. My Spanish is at an advanced level in my opinion because I can say anything I want in it, as well as understand almost everything, but my grammar is still rough because I've never formally given it a lot of time, and also because the Spanish language doesn't capture my interest the way some other languages do. A couple of things to consider: Some countries or regions require that you have a certain level of language skills before you go. Even if you aren't currently up on your language, you need to at least prove you have the class credits to show you've studied it for so long. Since I never studied Spanish in college and only two years in high school I had to take a proficiency test. The only regions I am area of for this are the Spanish-speaking ones and the French-speaking ones in Africa. It's true you cannot choose your country. You get to select three regions and you can specifically say some regions you don't want to go to for whatever reason. You cannot go to a country where you have family members who still live there as nationals (I don't know if this means only immediate family). I think you can decline nominations twice before PC starts to wonder if your heart's really in it. Even if you do get a country things can still go wrong: Sometimes volunteers get pulled out for political or safety reasons. If this happens, either you get shuffled to another country (or even a region...like someone going to the Pacific might end up getting a call saying basically, "You know, about that nice warm beach...Have you ever thought about visiting Eastern Europe?") For what it's worth, PC countries are full of oddities, so something like this might happen on a much smaller scale. The rule of thumb: be flexible! As other people pointed out, the official language of the country doesn't mean you'll be using this on a daily basis for your usual languages. This is true for some of Latin America as well as Africa. Even if you get to be an in area where your language of choice is spoken, consider the environment: You'll likely be in an area with people who have little or know education, and if it's a rural site, they speak a "backwoods" dialect, which can make the language challenging or even unpleasant to understand. A lot of volunteers end up speaking this colloquial but "incorrect" version. However, their fluency can still be very good. I personally don't see anything wrong with this, and if you really are interested in learning the language, your personal studies and reading will help you maintain the standard language, and perhaps you can walk away with diglossa, meaning you can understand the formal language as well as the variant spoken by the other folks. The PC life can be challenging though, and I wouldn't go into it for just wanting to learn the language. I won't say that shouldn't be a number one priority, because for me when I travel, including PC, it was a number one priority, but you need to understand that you are making a big sacrifice in terms of your comfort. Say goodbye to hot water and say hello to maybe eating the same thing everyday (in Peru a truckload of rice is served with every meal, and I hate rice). You might be only around nationals of the country, or you might be near other volunteers. You do need to put yourself out there, but most PCVs (volunteers) I meet do have some friends from the host country as well. It depends on what you want out of the friendship, but it's certainly possible. A lot of them even date people from the country. The point is, yes, you'll probably learn the language quickly and fluently, but unless you are willing to make these sacrifices, you might ask yourself a lot if it's worth it. If you have any questions, PM me. However, if I don't answer soon, it's because I'm in my site where there is no internet, or cell phone service, or sometimes running water or electricity, or for part of the year sunshine, or drivable roads... :-P Edited by Journeyer on 23 June 2010 at 7:52pm 7 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| TiberiusTyrone Pentaglot Newbie United States Joined 5054 days ago 2 posts - 2 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, Greek, Latin, French | Message 7 of 14 23 June 2010 at 8:55pm | IP Logged | ||
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Thanks everyone for the information posted so far. I think I will also read more into what the Peace Corps does and how life is like in it. If I could volunteer and learn a language at the same time, that's a positive double effect!
I would like to know if anyone knows anything outside the Peace Corps as well? Diplomats? Military personnel? Or do they already know the language fluently? I've heard of some program in Middlebury College where you are isolated away, but it's only for 9 weeks. I shall do some more research into this, but the information concerning the Peace Corps has been excellent. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Journeyer Triglot Senior Member United States tristan85.blogspot.c Joined 6653 days ago 946 posts - 1110 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, German Studies: Sign Language | Message 8 of 14 23 June 2010 at 9:00pm | IP Logged | ||
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You might also think about looking up the Defense Language Institute in Monterrey, California. It's reserved for military personnel as well as people in other gov jobs (I'm not sure which though). It's intense but very effective.
However if you do PC you might have a hard time going there and vice-verse. I've been meaning to look into this myself, but the PC wants to make it clear to other countries that it isn't a front for spies, so it tries to separate itself from Intelligence as much as possible. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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