Marina: 0:04

Hi there! Welcome to How to Language, a podcast about language learning for learners inside and outside the classroom. I'm your host, Marina, and with me is my co host, Jeremiah.

Jeremiah: 0:16

Howdy.

Marina: 0:17

Last time, we explored the question, can you learn a language by yourself? As we learned, the answer is pretty complicated, but by and large, most learning happens when you're with other people. Today, we want to acknowledge a setting where a lot of that kind of language learning takes place. And that's in a language class. These often get the brunt of learner frustration and complaints, but hopefully after today's episode, you'll see that you can still take control of your learning, even when class is in session. So, Jeremiah, you've taken quite a few traditional language classes in your time.

Jeremiah: 1:03

Mm hmm.

Marina: 1:04

Uh, do you want to tell us a little bit about what that experience was like?

Jeremiah: 1:08

Yeah, for sure. So I guess I can start with Spanish, because that was the first second language class that I ever took. Um, before that I, you know, in high school I had used Duolingo to learn a little German, but it was literally just a couple of words. So, Spanish was my first experience with, um, taking a class in another language, or about another language. Taking a traditional language class on purpose. Because, weirdly, we had a Spanish class in my elementary school, but I got nothing from that. So, this Spanish class that I took at community college was my first, my first experience like that. And, it was good. I mean, it was, you know. It was about, I guess, what you would expect, and probably what people who have taken a language class would find relatable, uh, the standard experience. Because it was a beginner class, I didn't really have any background in Spanish, and so it was very much Spanish 101 or whatever convention that your college uses.

Marina: 2:16

How long did you take Spanish classes?

Jeremiah: 2:18

Yeah, so at community college, I think I only took a year of Spanish, which was two actual classes because we were on the semester system, and then so so it was a year there, and then, when I went, when I transferred to UC Davis, I basically, without even really trying, without, without intending to, I just ended up taking Spanish, like, every single quarter for two years. And so, in the first year, I finished, like, you know, the boilerplate basic Spanish that you do. I, I finished the, I finished...

Marina: 3:01

Like the series that you, that you take up to your, like, third year.

Jeremiah: 3:06

Yeah, exactly. So, it's not beginner Spanish, but it's like

Marina: 3:11

It's just straight language.

Jeremiah: 3:13

Yeah, just straight language. Like you read through the book, and then you read through the second book and the classes follow that. But eventually you run out of books. You run out of textbooks and you run out of new grammatical forms and you run out of units, I guess. And then if you want to continue learning Spanish after that in a formal class setting, then you start taking classes. That are in Spanish about other things and that's what I ended up doing. So, Spanish is the only language that I like finished the circuit and in my last year at UC Davis, I, I actually did take classes that were in Spanish about other things like, uh, my favorite one was in Spanish about the history of the Spanish language, which was super cool. Um, I wish that I could retake that class because this kind of gets into the next thing that we'll talk about, but at the time I was like really engrossed in Latin self study, and so I remember before going in for that class, I'd be sitting in the hall like reading my, my Latin book, and so I probably didn't get as much out of it as I wish that I as I could have if I had been more present for it which I think is is relevant for what we're talking about. And then the other classes that I took at that level were, like, Spanish linguistics classes.

Marina: 4:33

Are you glad that you took so much Spanish in such a formal university setting?

Jeremiah: 4:39

Yeah, and I guess it's kind of a funny story because, like I said, I didn't really set out to do all that Spanish. Uh, I had to do, I had to do one semester of Spanish for my associate's degree, and I think I had to do something like that for my bachelor's degree. But it always just made sense to put Spanish on my schedule for the next quarter and so I always did and then I just found myself sort of just learning Spanish based purely on inertia, which I think is why I have some pretty big gaps, pretty big holes in my Spanish because it wasn't something that I was super committed to at all times a lot of it was just doing the class work because I had to. And so ultimately for reasons that we'll get into I did learn Spanish and I got pretty proficient at it for certain purposes and certain uses but there were a lot of things that I just didn't learn and it was a combination of Things that the, things that classes just don't teach, and also things that I would have learned if I had been more invested. So not really for contrast, but another language experience that I had at UC Davis was I also took French at, at, at that level. And when I say that level, I mean like beginner French, like I took two quarters of, of introductory French. And so there was the difference between like And I was taking that at the same time as I was taking advanced Spanish, so I kind of got a taste of like Well, okay, so when I was, when I was taking advanced Spanish, it had been long enough that I kind of had sort of forgotten what a beginner language course is like, and so it was weird to be taking beginner French at the same time as I was taking advanced Spanish, and I guess the other big difference between those two is that Spanish was kind of my L2, my second language at that point. Whereas French, it was very much like French as a foreign language because even when I started with Spanish at the beginner level, it was kind of with the understanding that Spanish is a useful language to know, living in California. Whereas French, uh, say what say what you want about French, but it's not super useful for where I was at the time, and not super useful for where I am now, no offense to, uh, to francophones the world over.

Marina: 7:09

Yeah.

Jeremiah: 7:10

So that was my experience, and we knew each other at the time, because we were both going to Davis together. And I remember that you were taking Japanese at the same time as I was taking these Spanish classes. So, was your experience similar to mine? Was your experience different? How did that go? Or what was your trajectory with Japanese, I should say?

Marina: 7:29

Yeah, so I started taking Japanese in community college as well. I took it there for two years, I think? Yeah, two years. I got my first two years of Japanese out of the way there. Before I took Japanese, it actually wasn't the first language class that I had ever taken. The first language class that I ever took was in middle school, where we had to take Latin.

Jeremiah: 7:55

Oh yeah.

Marina: 7:57

Um, we were required to take it for two years, I did it for three. Kind of similar to you, where it was kind of just inertia. It kind of made sense. At the time I didn't have a lot of interest in learning anything else. Like, they also offered, you know, Spanish and French and Russian, but none of those appealed to me as much as Latin. Not the case anymore, sorry Mr. Morris, but I really did enjoy the classes while I was taking them. Extremely difficult, of course, but those classes were the thing that got me interested in language and linguistics and was also the thing that made me want to be a language teacher. And so I think that that experience was very formative. On the other side, on the flip side of that though, um, it was also the thing that made me run away from romance languages. Um, and that's what initially drew me to Japanese because it was very different. Right? It was nothing like Latin and it was both a challenge and a little bit of a relief at the same time, and so, um, I decided to start taking Japanese. So yeah, like I said, I took it for two years in community college. I took it for another year at UC Davis in undergrad. And then I studied abroad in Japan for a summer. And that kind of marked the end of my formal Japanese study because after that I was focusing on my senior year and You know, COVID started happening, and, um, I just stopped taking classes. I would say, though, that my experience taking Japanese was overall very positive. I had amazing teachers all the way through, but I think the thing that characterized my experience taking language classes was Anxiety. I am a very anxious person and language classes are, or they can be, anxiety inducing.

Jeremiah: 10:05

Yeah.

Marina: 10:06

And that was something that I always struggled with. I always struggled with speaking in class, not wanting to mess up, feeling embarrassed. it was, it was a huge struggle for me. Especially anytime we had, like, oral exams and stuff. I did great on, like, the writing and the reading and things like that. I excelled, but the speaking and listening were always the hardest part for me. And I knew that about myself. I knew I was an anxious person and I knew that that was hindering my learning. It wasn't until later that I had the vocabulary and the theoretical background to explain out, to explain all of that, but looking back, that's definitely what it was. And so when I entered grad school, I knew that I wanted to have a different experience when I took Spanish classes. And so I started Spanish 1, you know, um, I had done some self study before that class, so I had some foundation, which made it definitely a lot easier, and we'll get to that a little later, but going in to my Spanish class, having taken linguistics, having understood, you know, the basics of language acquisition, and what I, not did wrong, but that I could have done better with when taking Japanese. Knowing all of that made my Spanish class experience ten times better. I stopped caring what other people thought, what my teacher thought, because I was there to learn, right? Just, it was a total mindset shift that made everything so much easier. And I'm so glad that I did that, because it gave me so much more confidence when learning languages, and it lowered my anxiety, and it has allowed me to improve my Spanish at a much faster rate than the rate that I was going with Japanese. So, it's not like all language classes are doomed to be difficult and anxiety inducing. with the right mindset, and that sounds really cringy, I know, but it's true. Like, with the right mindset and the right knowledge, it can be a really fulfilling experience.

Jeremiah: 12:17

Yeah. One thing I noticed in that whole narrative that you just spun there is that it kind of aligns really well with this thing that people tend to report. Um, for example, if you ever tell somebody like, oh, I speak Spanish. Nine out of ten times they're going to say the same thing, which is, Oh, I took four years of Spanish in high school and I don't remember any of it. And that's such a universal experience. It seems like so many people took a language, usually Spanish or French, in high school, and they usually took a lot of it for some reason. I don't really remember the high school requirements for that kind of thing, but I think a foreign language is required in most places. Everybody had that experience of taking it, and everybody had that experience of getting nothing out of it, which, knowing what you know now about Latin. I think that holds true for you because I don't think you remember that much about Latin.

Marina: 13:11

Nope, I do not. I remember a couple words.

Jeremiah: 13:15

Whereas Japanese was like less of that and you definitely, excelled more at Japanese even though there were still these roadblocks. But then by the time you hit grad school and you were doing Spanish, first of all 100 percent by choice but also with all this background and understanding. You didn't fall into whatever that trap is that people who took whatever language in high school seem to fall into. So that's interesting. I think Spanish, even though I took it in community college, it was like at the same time as I was finishing high school. So that was my required thing. And so I think I kind of sidestepped that a little bit because I was already out of the high school mindset, partially. And then for French, like, I remember some stuff from French, but it's whatever. The I've also, I have two other experiences to share for learning a language in a class, in a language class. And those two languages are Korean and Old Norse. And those, I, I took both of those in grad school, and as a matter of fact, I took both of those pretty recently. Old Norse was the last language that I took in my last quarter of grad school before I graduated, and Korean I think I took in the quarter before that, maybe? Or maybe the quarter before that, so fall quarter. And those were interesting. Because... Taking Korean kind of fulfilled a, not a promise that I made to myself, but, you know, I was always very aware that like, oh, Spanish, French, uh, oh, Norwegian,

Marina: 14:49

Latin.

Jeremiah: 14:49

Latin. These are all Indo European languages, which maybe you know what that is. If you're listening, maybe you don't know what that is. But basically they all are part of the same big family, and so they all have a lot of things in common that, for example, Korean doesn't. One of them is a writing system. You know, Latin, Spanish, French, um, Norwegian. All of these languages are all, they all share the writing system, which is the Latin writing system. Whereas Korean has a totally different writing system. Korean uses Hangul, which is, not Latin. It has nothing to do with Latin. And So Korean is one of those languages, like... Japanese, like Chinese, like Russian, like, you know, most languages in the world, I think, that if you want to learn it, you also have to learn a different way of writing, and you have to learn a different way of reading. So there's an additional hurdle there. And that was always something I wanted to do. And I finally got around to it. And, you know, my experience in the Korean class was pretty much the same as my experience in Spanish and French at the beginner levels. It was a lot of fun because I took it with friends. That was a little... Uh, a little spin on the normal formula, which was interesting, and it had pros as well as cons, I will say. And also, because it was, because Korean is a non Indo European language, There was a lot of stuff that, there were a lot of assumptions that you can bring from one Indo European language to another. A lot of assumptions from Spanish that hold true in French and even Latin. Uh, not so much for Korean. Korean, there are a lot of new assumptions that you have to learn. A lot of new, like, DNA level things that are different that you have to get. That you have to understand. But I think for the same reason that you found learning Spanish so much easier in grad school, I think I also found learning Korean easier because I had a lot of those same, first of all, you and I have the same exact experiences of linguistics and having studied other languages in the past. And so I think I did kind of the same thing that you did with Spanish where I brought in knowledge of language acquisition. I brought in like, uh, knowledge of linguistics and I brought in like, uh, I brought in knowledge from our master's program about teaching other languages or teaching English to speakers of other languages, which helped a lot because I was. I had learned a lot of the tricks of the trade, and so the language class didn't just happen to me, but I knew why things were being done the way they were being done. And I think the same as you, I just found it easier to kind of go along with stuff that would normally make me anxious, like talking to strangers. And I just didn't care as much what other people thought. Yeah,

Marina: 17:39

Yeah, I think that comes with age and also knowing the background of like, or having the background and language teaching kind of ruins the illusion. It kind of lifts the fog and it's like, okay, I understand why my teacher is making us do this scary project where we have to speak to other people. Like, I get the theory behind it. I understand what I'm going to gain from it and it makes it a lot easier to, like you said, go along with it.

Jeremiah: 18:06

Mhmm. Yeah. And yeah, the last experience I'll share is my experience with Old Norse, and I'll just talk about it really briefly because... The reason that I took it was because I always kind of wanted to.

Marina: 18:20

Fair enough.

Jeremiah: 18:22

Yeah, I was, you know, I, um, I guess there's not much more to it than that, other than the fact that... Our honeymoon was coming up to Iceland and you might be thinking Icelandic and Old Norse are two different languages or you might be thinking Icelandic and Old Norse Aren't those basically the same language? Um, both of those are, the answer to both of those questions is yes, but also no. So

Marina: 18:43

That's for another episode.

Jeremiah: 18:45

That's for another episode. but the point is learning Old Norse was interesting because when you learn a quote unquote dead language, which For Old Norse, it's not so much quote unquote, it's pretty much a dead language. When you learn one of those in a class, it's a very different beast. It's a very different process than learning a living language. Because nobody who is teaching Old Norse, and almost nobody who is learning Old Norse, is expecting that it will be used to actually talk to people. And especially with Old Norse, usually what you're learning is how to translate. So you're learning tricks, tips and tricks, for translating from English to Old Norse. And, you're not even really learning vocab. Like, you don't have vocab lists, or at least I didn't in my Old Norse class. You might, if you study Old Norse for a long time. But, I don't know, I didn't. But the reason Old Norse is interesting is because... Now I have to go back in time a little bit, because around the time that I started learning Spanish, I also started learning Latin. But, the huge difference there is that, while I was taking a Spanish class, and while I took a lot of Spanish classes, I didn't take a single Latin class. I never have, and I probably never will. Because, to me, Latin is not a dead language. Or, at least I don't want it to be. I... I... I... There is enough going on with Latin in a variety of ways, in a variety of spheres, some of which overlap, that I don't think it's quite fair to call Latin a dead language, even though in a lot of ways it is. But, the thing is, I wanted to learn to speak Latin for various reasons. Some of them are cringey reasons, some of them are understandable reasons, I think. And I didn't want to take a class that would teach me to translate Latin, and I didn't want to take a class where they would say that pronunciation doesn't matter because I think pronunciation matters, that's just me. So I never took a Latin class. The closest I've ever come is that Old North class, which, maybe it is, maybe it isn't, but it's pretty much exactly what I imagine Latin classes are like. So, you know, I'm trying to think what the moral of that story is.

Marina: 20:56

I think it sort of speaks to the natural response that a lot of people have to taking a language class. Like, you don't want to take a Latin class because you're worried that it'll ruin Latin for you.

Jeremiah: 21:08

Yeah, yeah.

Marina: 21:09

You know? Or in the way that you want to use Latin. You know, because, yes. At least in my experience learning Latin, it was basically all translation based. I don't, we read, we read Latin out loud, but we never, quote unquote, like, spoke Latin. Right. And so, and that's not like how, that's not how you roll with Latin.

Jeremiah: 21:30

No, it's not how I roll. How I roll is, I, first of all, okay, you made a good point, which is that I was afraid that taking a Latin class would ruin Latin for me, and it's not just about the translation. It's also just about the fact that, at least when I first made that decision not to take a Latin class, I didn't want to be forced to do Latin, because I knew if I did, then I would lose interest in it, which I think is a paradox, or a contradiction, if you will, of language classes, which is that when you are now being forced to do something, some people, including me, find that that takes a lot of the fun out of it, and for me, Latin has always been something that is fun, and so part of it is about my own personal opinions and ideas about Latin that I don't expect other people to share. But another part of it is just that I wanted it to be fun. It's a fun thing that I like to do. Um, you might call it Latinism or being a Latinist, amateur Latinist. That's my jam. That's my vibe.

Marina: 22:27

For sure. For today, let's say that you are taking a language class, or you're thinking about taking a language class. And you're not sure whether or not you should do it. You're worried, sort of like Jeremiah, about it ruining the language for you or not getting anything out of it. We're going to talk about it today. We're going to look at some research. And we're going to try and answer the question, How can you make the most out of a language class?

Jeremiah: 22:56

Yeah. Because maybe you have a valid reason for not taking a language class and that's fine, but chances are you probably should take a language class, even if you're like me and you're, you're like, I don't want to ruin the language. With Latin, that's a luxury that you can afford because it's not like you're gonna need it. Uh, but with a language that you are likely to speak to other people, in general, in general, I think you're doing yourself a bit of a disservice if you opt not to take a language class or do something like a language class. So. We should let's, Okay, let's give some reasons to take a language class, like, why, why sh- Marina why should you take a language class?

Marina: 23:33

Well real quick, to put a little earlier, um, when we say"language class", we're not just talking about, like, university language classes or even high school language classes. These can be... Any kind of structured learning situation where you are the student and there is a teacher. So it can be a community, or like a, it can be a language class at your local community center. Or it can even be like a really informal, small group study, small study group thing. You know. Whatever situation applies to you, that's what we're talking about.

Jeremiah: 24:15

Yeah, we probably should have defined language class because that's exactly right. Like we're using a broad idea of what a language class can be. Because first of all, we're not elitist. And we don't think that the only way to learn things is by paying money to a college or a university, because

Marina: 24:31

Exactly.

Jeremiah: 24:32

what we are getting at, okay. What, what the. What the point of this is, and you made a really good point about it, which kind of goes back to our last episode, is that it's a language class if it's not just you by yourself and there is somebody else there who has expertise. And usually it's not just you and them. Usually it's more, it's several students and a teacher or several students who are also teachers, because maybe it's a group study or something.

Marina: 25:02

Exactly. It could be a private tutoring situation too on, say, Italki or Discord or something like that as well. Any situation where you are being guided by someone else who is more proficient than you are.

Jeremiah: 25:18

Yeah. So, uh, reasons to take a language class. Let's just get, get those out there. Uh, in case anyone is still on the fence of like, should I, or can I just stay home with my Duolingo in my books? Uh, should I touch grass basically? And the answer is yes, probably. And the reason, the reasons for that are for one, you get explicit instruction, which you kind of get from books and you kind of get from Duolingo, but not really because it's explicit instruction. That is tailored to you, and that is responsive to your needs as a student, and the needs of other students in the class, and That is super valuable for some people, for some learning styles. Um, some people benefit from having stuff explained to them.

Marina: 26:02

I'm one of those people. I need explicit grammar instruction. in order for things to make sense. Some people can... Absorb and kind of figure things out on their own and benefit from less structured instruction. It really just depends on you and knowing yourself. Like, would you thrive in an environment like that where it is more structured and you are getting that explicit feedback? Uh, or not, you know. Neither is better than the other. It's just a matter of you and your individual learning style.

Jeremiah: 26:38

Yeah, but even if that's not your learning style, even if you know that you're more of a, I just need to do it and get my hands on it and that's how I learn from practice, which I think to some extent we all kind of are, but that's neither here nor there. Even then, just having a group of people who are all doing the same thing, who you meet with regularly, or just one person who you meet with regularly about this, it, well, it helps to keep you accountable. And I think that this is true of language, it's also true of writing, it's true of a lot of things. That it is much easier, it tends to be much easier to stay on top of something like this and stick with it if you are accountable to someone.

Marina: 27:16

Oh yeah. Definitely. And similarly to that, It's a scheduled block of time, on your calendar for you to learn and practice your target language that you wouldn't have had otherwise. Right? Unless you were taking that class, you probably wouldn't have that scheduled block of time where you're being exposed to your target language, usually nothing but your target language for an hour, an hour and thirty minutes, however long it is. And so, similar to accountability, it is like this dedicated time in your week. That you kind of have to go to, whether you're paying money for it, or because you feel obligated to, or just to keep yourself accountable. It's just good practice.

Jeremiah: 28:04

So After listening so far, you paused the episode and you were like, I got to sign up for a language class. I got to go to a group meetup or something. And now you're there and you are in the classroom or wherever. And you're like, okay, now what, what do I actually do to make the most of this language class? Marina, what are, what are the strategies that we recommend for making the most of a language class?

Marina: 28:30

Well, for one thing, speaking from experience, try your best to lower your anxiety as much as possible if you are an anxious person.

Jeremiah: 28:40

Oh, I never thought of that. Just be less anxious.

Marina: 28:42

I know! be anxious! I know, easier said than done. I know. But, the reason that we say this is because anxiety is one thing that can raise your affective filter. Now, your affective filter is it's a sciencey term for this metaphorical filter that goes up under certain conditions. Those conditions are things like anxiety, fear, embarrassment, sort of negative emotions that raise our affective filter and it stops most of what's happening around you in terms of language acquisition from getting through. So if you're too anxious, for example, it's going to be a lot harder to acquire the language than if you were less anxious.

Jeremiah: 29:34

It's going to be harder to learn things because stuff isn't making it through that filter. And so, the point that we're trying to get at is that anything you can do to lower your own affective filter, anything you can do to make yourself feel more safe and comfortable and at ease, it's going to make it a lot easier for stuff to get in. Because you're not going to have this psychic barrier up. Which is not your fault, and this is something that the teacher should be helping with, should be trying to do is make you feel more comfortable and make you feel more at ease because that's just part of what being a good teacher is, is it's making students feel comfortable and safe so that learning can happen. But that's an imperfect process and it can be hard to make people feel the way you want them to feel. That's like the whole thing, the whole problem with being a human being and interacting with others. And so anything that you can do on your own to make yourself feel more safe and comfortable is gonna make their job easier and it's gonna make your job of learning the language easier.

Marina: 30:27

Exactly. If your teacher is a good teacher, they will expect you to make mistakes, and they will like it that you make mistakes, in fact. No one cares. Everybody else is just as anxious, and the more you talk, the more you put yourself out there, the more you try in class, the less anxious you'll eventually become. Every time you do it, it'll get easier, and eventually, you'll do it without even thinking about it. I speak I I can say that from experience. As someone with anxiety, it is possible. Speaking of speaking, you should try and speak as much as possible. Like I said, this helps to lower your anxiety, but it also gives you a lot of benefits in terms of language acquisition. So, the, the idea is that the more output you produce, the faster you'll acquire the language. It's not so much a question of speed, it's more of just, you will acquire more of the language.

Jeremiah: 31:29

Yeah. So the thing with that, from my point of view is I, I subscribe to a certain theory of knowledge, which says that to learn things you have to. put them into practice. And that means making mistakes. Because as a human being, you can't learn without making mistakes. Because you experience reality, you make assumptions about how the world works, you act on those assumptions, and find out if they're true based on whether you get it right or not. So if you never get anything wrong, if you never make any mistakes, then that just means you're not making decisions, and it just means that you're not doing something because the only way to not make mistakes as a human is to not do something in the first place. You can't mess something up if you don't try. And if you don't mess up, then you're not learning because how that's how we learn by making mistakes through practice. So part of the reason that speaking is so important is because you can make mistakes when you're listening. You can make mistakes reading by misreading a word, or you can make mistakes listening to somebody else talk by mishearing them. But what is really the feedback that you're getting there? You're like, oh, I misheard them. Either you don't even realize you misheard them, or you do, and it's like, oh, they said this. Speaking, you're actually doing something. And that's not to say that listening isn't active, because you can listen actively. You know, the distinction between these skills isn't as cut and dry as saying speaking is this and listening is that. But when you're speaking, that is a very active thing to do. It's hard to speak passively. And so when you're doing it, You're just going to make a lot more mistakes speaking than you are listening or reading. Uh, same goes for writing. But speaking is, I think, where you make the most of those, and where you get the most immediate and meaningful feedback. Because if you're speaking and you mess something up, you'll know, because either the person will correct you, or, more likely, they just won't understand you. And you'll be able to tell because they'll look at you weird. And that doesn't feel great, but... that process of making mistakes and learning from them happens so much faster when you're speaking because you're making more mistakes and you're getting real time feedback.

Marina: 33:34

Well said.

Jeremiah: 33:36

Thank you.

Marina: 33:37

So, some things that you can do in the classroom to work on this is to ask questions to the teacher in the target language. They might already have, like, a rule in place for this, but if they don't, still try and do it as much as you can. Uh, even if you're not sure exactly how to translate the sentence from your L1 into your target language, say it in, like, a simpler way. You know, it doesn't have to be... Um, exactly how you would say it in your L1, just do your best and see if you can get your meaning across. Also, if you are in a classroom with other students, try and be the first one to speak when you're doing a small group activity. Um, in my experience, usually when you get into a small group and you're given a task, No one talks. No one is the person to initiate, uh, the conversation. Try and be that person to initiate the conversation. And in fact, when you do that, the other people will start talking and then you don't have to talk as much. And then, lastly, try and go beyond the activity that your teacher has prescribed to get even more practice. And especially low stakes practice. So for example, if you're in your small group and you've, and you're done, you've done the activity, you've written your paragraph, you've completed the word search, whatever it is, don't be silent. Uh, talk to each other and don't use your L1, like try and make small talk in the target language. Because that's also not practice that you get very often. In a language class, usually you're working on a very specific task that requires very specific things. Try just making small talk. Try talking to your peers in the way that you would in your L1 or your common language, and try and use the target language instead. That's how I got a lot of extra speaking practice in my Spanish class, making my peers also speak Spanish, even if they try and speak in your L1. Keep speaking in the target language. Maybe they'll start doing it too.

Jeremiah: 35:46

Yeah. Oh, and there's one thing I wanna say about this point that I think listeners might be thinking. And so I want to put it out there, which is that,"Well wait, if my classmates are also learning this language and they're not, uh, experts at it, aren't they gonna make mistakes? Aren't we gonna make mistakes to each other? And if neither of us is an expert in this language, like the teacher is, then won't we just be learning each other's mistakes? Won't we be learning the wrong version of the language because we're just messing it up and not able to correct each other?" And the short answer is no.

Marina: 36:24

You're not gonna fossilize an ungrammatical construction in a two minute conversation.

Jeremiah: 36:32

Yeah, and, y'know, fossilization is a thing and we'll definitely talk about it another time. but you don't have to be afraid of just hearing mistakes or making, making mistakes that go uncorrected in the moment. Ideally, mistakes get corrected, or at least you become aware that they're mistakes so that you don't just fall into the habit of doing them. Um, again, that's kind of a complicated topic that we'll talk about later,

Marina: 37:01

But I think, you know, teachers... Um, don't, well, I won't say they don't universally, but they shouldn't correct every single mistake that you make when you talk. Because that is going to be counterproductive. And so if your teacher isn't doing that, you can't expect your peers to do the same thing.

Jeremiah: 37:19

So true. And yeah, we should have a whole episode about learner errors, because it's a really interesting area. But the last thing I'll say about it is that language is first and foremost, I think, a tool for doing things, just in the same way that a hammer is a tool for hammering in nails, language is a tool for accomplishing social action. It's a tool for making other people aware of things, it's a tool for getting other people to do things, it's a tool for building relationships. It's a very versatile tool, but the point is that language is something that you're trying to do stuff with. And... What that means is that the point of learning a language, the point of using language, isn't to like, avoid making any mistakes and get it perfect. The point is to accomplish your intended social action. And so in this case, if you're talking to a peer in your class and your intended social action is A, using the language, B, getting them to use the language, and C, you know, making small talk the way you normally would. As long as something is happening, as long as that action is being accomplished, then you're doing what you're supposed to be doing and you're getting what you're supposed to be getting out of that. Because especially in a language that isn't your first language, a lot of what accomplishing social action looks like is negotiation. It's negotiating with the person you're talking with to arrive at a meaning that both of you understand. Uh, and especially in a classroom, there's probably going to be a lot of that. Where they're like, looking at you weird, they're like, what are you trying to say? And then you look at them weird because you don't understand what they're trying to say. But eventually you get it. That is the skill that you're learning. It's not how to perfectly use everything in the language. The skill you're learning is how to use it as a tool. Exactly in a situation like that. So, you're not learning the wrong language. You're learning it exactly right. You're learning it for how it's supposed to be used.

Marina: 39:11

Great point. Yeah. Also, bonus tip: talking in the target language more in your language class will make your teacher like you. And I'm saying that as a teacher. Like, they love it when their students talk.

Jeremiah: 39:25

Yeah, because talking in the tips that we're giving you here are things that your teacher To the degree that they're able, is also trying to do, they're also trying to lower your effective filter. They're also trying to make you speak as much as possible. And so what we're really talking about here is being an active participant in the learning process in the classroom context. It is helping them do their job so that they can help you do yours.

Marina: 39:48

That's much more eloquent

Jeremiah: 39:50

No, no, no.

Marina: 39:51

productive than the way that I

Jeremiah: 39:52

No, you.

Marina: 39:52

"Your teacher will like you."

Jeremiah: 39:54

no, I mean, no, that's 100 percent true is that yes, your teacher, your teacher will like you because you are making their job easier, um, because like any public speaking situation, it's hard to get up there and it's hard to get up there and talk and do all this stuff. And so you're really making their life easier and making this whole experience of teaching in a classroom, uh, more fun for them as well. And so you're just, you're just being a good. Um, a good participant in that social interaction, in that exchange, so definitely, yeah, your teacher will like you.

Marina: 40:30

We need to pump the breaks, we are taking way too long.

Jeremiah: 40:34

That's the opposite of, if we needed, pumping the brakes would make us slow down. We need to step on the gas.

Marina: 40:39

We need to step on the gas. So this next strategy for optimizing your language learning inside the classroom. It's something that I did when I was learning Japanese and Spanish in a language class. And this is priming yourself before you go to class. So I guess this is like, kind of an outside of class strategy, but its implementation really happens inside the classroom. So this idea of priming, if you've ever taken Psychology 101, you've probably heard of this, but it's a concept in psychology. where you are exposed to a stimulus at some earlier point. When that happens, it will affect how you react to some other stimulus in the future. So, as an example, Jeremiah, if I were to show you a picture of a banana, and then 30 minutes later, I ask you to give me the name of a random fruit, you are more likely to say banana because you were primed. Right? I gave you the stimulus of a banana, and then the second stimulus was asking you for the name of a random fruit. You were primed, and so you said banana. You're more likely to say banana.

Jeremiah: 41:54

banana. Banana.

Marina: 41:55

Thank you. The neat thing about this is that it can be applied to language learning, or any kind of learning, really. But in the case of language learning... If you already know what topic the teacher is going to cover that day, you know, if luckily they give you the syllabus or they tell you the chapter that you're going to go over, you can prime yourself by reviewing that topic before you go to class. Okay? So, for example, let's say that your teacher is going to be teaching relative clauses in your ASL class, okay? Then it might be a good idea to do your own research about that topic. For example, reading the chapter if you have a textbook. Maybe watching a YouTube video about relative clauses in ASL. Maybe you want to read about it on Wikipedia, especially if you don't know what relative clauses are, right? You don't necessarily have to understand it to mastery, that's something that you can save for later. But, you should know enough about it so that when you're in class, it's not 100 percent new material. Does that make sense?

Jeremiah: 43:13

Yeah. That makes a lot of sense.

Marina: 43:15

This is especially helpful for challenging topics, maybe topics that you haven't encountered before.

Jeremiah: 43:21

Like the subjunctive.

Marina: 43:22

Like the subjunctive in a lot of romance languages. Or just kind of more complex topics, topics that are significantly different from your own, first language.

Analogue 1 + 2 (Focusrite USB Audio): 43:33

Having

Marina: 43:33

not be entirely new makes it a lot less scary, for one thing. And it almost makes going to class a little bit like review, which also makes it feel not as difficult. It's just easier, easier to pick up once you're in class. In general.

Jeremiah: 43:51

Yeah, totally. I don't have anything to add.

Marina: 43:54

This was my secret sauce when I was taking language classes in college.

Jeremiah: 43:58

Nice. That's a good secret sauce.

Marina: 44:02

It also allows you to actually practice the concept in class, rather than just focusing on like learning the mechanics of it. Now if you're like in a flipped classroom situation that's a little bit different. This is what you're doing anyway.. But if you're not, if you're in a more traditional classroom, then this is gonna allow you to jump in a little bit more quickly than you would normally, uh, which is another benefit.

Jeremiah: 44:30

So, these are all strategies that you can employ when you're in class. That last one is like a little bit of both. But, there are also a lot of strategies that you can use outside the classroom, exclusively or, primarily outside the classroom that will have kind of a knock on effect in class that will help you get more out of that class. Uh, I think priming kind of partly falls under this, but there are others.

Marina: 44:55

So, yeah, independent learning, as we talked about in the previous episode, is still very beneficial, even when you're taking a language class. It gives you more practice than you would have gotten just inside a class, because, you know, typically in school you're only taking it for like maybe an hour every day, not even every day, and this just gives you more exposure, more time with the language, and it also helps to solidify what you learned in class, so it doesn't just exit your brain the second you turn in your final exam, right? So out of class learning is what is often called in this, in this scholarship. it helps you balance the type of learning activities that you're doing, which is something that's been shown to improve learning outcomes. So one study that I found that kind of exemplifies this. is by Lai et al. And they looked at 82 middle school EFL students. EFL stands for English as a Foreign Language. so these students were learning English in China. They wanted to know what out of class activities the students were doing that seemed to result in good language learning outcomes. And the way that they measured good was through things like grades, were they getting better grades in their class, on their assignments, did their overall competency go up, were they enjoying the class more, those are how they measured the outcomes. And they found a few things, you know, related to Parent involvement in technology. It wasn't just about one thing, but their main finding was that creating a balanced learning ecosystem is the key, which is just an awesome way of saying that the learning activities that you do should be varied in focus. Do I have you so far?

Jeremiah: 46:56

Yes, uh, ecosystem.

Marina: 46:58

Yes. Um, I just think that's such a fun term. Balanced learning ecosystem. So, in China, a little bit of context, um, the authors say that language classes are very form focused. form focused means that... The focus is on sort of the nuts and bolts of the language, how it works, the linguistics, so things like conjugation, sentence structure, things like that. That's what we call form focused. However, they saw that the best outcomes from students came from those who engaged in more meaning focused activities. So this is a quote from the study:"Form focused activities placed more emphasis on the linguistic system and the formal elements of the language. Examples of form focused activities included doing grammar exercises, reviewing the textbooks, taking remedial tutorial classes, and so on. Meaning focused activities were more authentic activities, which gave the participants naturalistic language exposure with the overriding emphasis on meaning and communication. Examples of meaning focused activities included reading novels in English, watching English language movies, playing computer games in English, online chatting, and so on." Online chatting. so. To apply this a little bit more broadly, kind of what, what does all this mean? The things you do outside of the classroom should be somewhat different than what you do inside the classroom. So if your class is more form focused, where you focus on the grammar and the linguistics of things, try watching media in your target language, try joining a language exchange where you talk to people your own age, try. Reading a book, or reading a comic book, or something around your level. Um, try talking to other learners online. Things that you find fun and are more about using the language rather than learning about the language. then on the flip side of that, if your class is more meaning focused, if it's a little bit more loosey goosey, maybe it's a flipped classroom, something like that, try doing a little bit more form focused activities. Try making flashcards. Try making your own vocab list. Let's use apps like Duolingo, study conjugation tables, whatever you feel like you need to kind of solidify the form of the language. The point of all this is to try and balance, right, that balanced learning ecosystem. Form and meaning we'll probably do like a whole episode about form versus meaning versus use. Because that's a triangle of things that are very important in language acquisition. But, for now, these things work the best when they are in balance. Right? You can't use one without the other. One can't exist without the other.

Jeremiah: 50:03

Being in class and doing in class work and being out of class and doing out of class work, that kind of represents a contradiction almost in the learning process if you are learning in this way. So, that is to say that even if you are taking a class, there is an out of class. There's an out of class component. So that sort of duality, if you want to think of it like that, is It's like an opportunity or a structure that you can then map a duality in learning approaches onto, so if you have an in class and an out of class, then you should be doing one thing in class and one thing outta class.

Marina: 50:49

Yeah, it's kind of like two sides of the same coin, where everything that you do in class has some corresponding activity that you can do outside of class that complement each other. So, like I said, if your class is a lot of, like, drills and conjugation and, like, explicit grammar instruction, then the other side of that is to try and find opportunities that are a little bit more meaning focused outside of class, like watching movies, Reading materials in the target language, things like that, and vice versa. So I think the sort of big takeaway that I want to pass along from this episode is about taking back your learner autonomy. Even when you're taking a class which is a very structured environment to be learning a language in, just because it's being led by someone who isn't you, the path is sort of laid out before you already. You can still take control of your own learning in the ways that feel the best to you to make the most out of that experience, both inside and outside the classroom. And whatever approach you take to do that is going to be suited to you. And that is the most important thing, because that is going to optimize your time in class. You know, you can take these strategies that we talked about, and implement them, but ultimately, you know yourself, and you know what works for you.

Jeremiah: 52:17

I, I would even put it this way, which is that it's not even just that these are things that you can do to make the most of your language class. So in that sense, our title is a little clickbaity. It's actually that, that there is no passive learning. It seems like a passive process, but it's not. And if you want to actually learn something, and quote unquote get the most out of it, but actually just get... the right amount out of it, you have to be an active part of that process. You don't have to do exactly these things because, like you said, you as the learner know what works for you, or at least you're going to find out what works for you through the process of learning. but, all this is to say that it's not just that, oh, these are ways that you can, like, boost or supercharge the language class. It's like, this is stuff that everybody should be doing anyway. This is how classes should work, but they don't always, and you have a role in kind of completing the dialectic, one way to put that, by meeting your instructor or just meeting your class halfway and doing your share of the work outside of class as well as inside of class and being an active learner. That might be a little, a little harsh, but.

Marina: 53:25

Harsh truths are necessary. But, I don't think any of this should... Or, I hope that none of this, you know, scares anybody away from taking a language class because I think we've both had very good experiences taking language classes. And they are extremely valuable and they do have a place.

Jeremiah: 53:46

And the last thing I'll say about that, about like, oh, this is kind of scary, I actually have to talk, is that there are lots of ways to participate, and there are lots of ways to be an active learner that don't require you to become a social butterfly or whatever. Like, if you find that some of this stuff is difficult for you, then you should do what ends up working for you. And so, if you find that like, It's just too much to always be the one to talk first in group projects, like, that's fine. Like, not doing everything that we've listed isn't gonna break your language learning, and you might find that there are other ways to accomplish the same things that we're talking about that are just more comfortable. And this goes back to the affective filter is... Whatever you're doing, it should make you feel as safe and comfortable in that learning environment as possible, because that's one of the biggest things that's going to determine what you take out of it. So if you're putting yourself in positions and situations where you're just getting, like, really, overwhelmed, and it's giving you a lot of anxiety, then it's going to backfire. You should, whatever you do, you should be comfortable. So that comes down to knowing yourself.

Marina: 54:55

Yeah.

Jeremiah: 54:56

Do your homework!

Marina: 54:57

Do your homework. Show up to class. And maybe you'll actually learn something.

Jeremiah: 55:06

Thanks for listening to this episode of How to Language on how to make the most of a language class. If you like what we do, you can rate and review us on your favorite podcast platform, and maybe follow us on Instagram and X at HowToLang for more language learning content. See ya!