Today was orientation today. They put me in a huge room with hundreds of other people today. For many of them, this will be the second, third, or even the fourth language they are going to learn at the Foreign Service Institute. One of the speakers today said that they are presently teaching over 70 world languages and have people working their from over 90 different countries. Those figures were astounding to me. Not only do they have teachers for all of these languages; but they have a process that they liken to "Marine Bootcamp" for teaching and learning languages.
You have to forget all of the languages you know (including English) and start out like a toddler, learning his/her first word...words...sentences...conversations. To become truly fluent, they make us read, write, speak, repeat. We're (and I am paraphrasing from the info they gave us today but have also been through this once before when learning Spanish) supposed to welcome mistakes and corrections and learn from them. It's mind-numbing, headache inducing, and overwhelming; but it is one of the most effective language learning processes in the world.
But what REALLY wowed and impressed me today was when we had to introduce ourselves. My class and another language class were in the second (yes, you read that right) orientation of the day, and the department head asked us to introduce ourselves and list previous language learning experiences at FSI and all languages spoken by each person. There were eight of us in there, and I heard: Spanish, French, Chinese, Russian, Ukrainian, Arabic, Korean; and we were all in there to learn either Albanian or Hungarian. Most of the people knew at least two languages, with a lot of them repeated of course. I mean, am I the only person impressed by the sheer amount of knowledge in that one little room? Because with each language learned comes classes on the country or area of the world, politics, economics, culture, customs, etc. They don't just teach us what the word is, they teach us why THAT particular word is used. I don't know, it just impressed me. It made me proud to be part of this. It made me proud of my country and the people who serve it.
Tomorrow, I actually start learning the language. I know it's going to be excruciating, because I've seem my husband come home exhausted and almost broken for five months now. But I believe that the independence knowing a bit of the language will give me is going to be well worth it. I love people, and I love to learn; so I'm just glad I get the opportunity. And I will be so thankful that I actually get to speak with people on their own terms once I get there...fingers crossed.
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