Daily Excerpt: Achieving Native-Like Second-Language Proficiency (Leaver) - Factors Related to Venue and Time (Factor 1: Childhood)
Factor 1: Childhood
Experiences
One somewhat
surprising statistic that emerged from the interviews was that all of those
learners who had reached level 4 had become acquainted with foreign languages
very early in their life. That does not necessarily mean that they began studying
those languages. In many cases, languages other than their first language were
used in the family or community, and while the language learners themselves may
not have picked up any of those languages well enough to speak them, they did
gain one very important understanding that stood them in good stead throughout
their days of subsequent language study: Languages are not exotica but rather
everyday tools for communication.
The venues in which multiculturalism was met by the
interviewees in this study included home, community, school, and work. Any one
of these venues seemed to be sufficient to trigger the concept of “language as
a tool” or “language as communication” that created the facility ultimately to
use multiple tongues for routine and other business.
Family Home
Since
heritage learners were not part of this study, the family background was as
often as not monolingual. In some cases (35 %), parents and/or grandparents
spoke the language at home that was later studied. In other cases, immigrant
grandparents spoke a language at home that was not later studied but the
influence of hearing a foreign language made it seem natural for their
grandchildren to study one or another language that they found interesting or
useful for a wide range of reasons.
The Community
Two-thirds of the interviewees were raised in
bilingual communities. Often, these communities produced polyglottic
individuals, in which the second language of the childhood community had been
acquired to a very high level at the same time that another language,
frequently for work needs, had also been acquired to a very high level.
Interviewees reported that this early multiculturalism prepared them well for
language study.
Being surrounded by a bicultural or multicultural
environment continued in adulthood for many of the interviewees, this time by
choice. Of those interviewed, 57% reported traveling abroad on a regular basis
(at least once a year), 62% were working or had worked abroad, and 48% had
married someone who spoke another language.
School
Some, but far from all, the interviewees had attended
school, where a language other than their L1 was spoken. In one case, the
individual was the son of a diplomat; in another case, the individual was an
orphan who was bounced from family member to family member in one country, then
another. Some had more commonplace experiences of attending schools in
bilingual communities where instruction was offered in both community languages.
As young adults, however, many of the Level 4 speakers
(77%) had enrolled in foreign schools—not as study abroad students (only two
speakers in the study had study-abroad experience) but as regular enrollees in
undergraduate and graduate programs. All of those individuals felt that the
foreign degree itself and the language improvement that was a byproduct of the
work that went into earning it (i.e. papers that were corrected by
subject-matter teachers not just for subject matter but for the foreign language
itself) contributed significantly to their L2A success. In fact, if any one
factor could be singled out from all others as highly critical to attaining
Level 4 proficiency, this one might be it. The interviewees suggested that
coping with the foreign classroom together with their foreign peers and without
a support system from their home country was a very important contribution to
their language proficiency and cultural understanding. In fact, being without a
support system from home had its moments that were both frustrating and
comedic, as in the case of one interviewee who had been treated so much like a
local that he was sent to speech therapy because of his accent. (That seemed to
work; today he has no foreign accent at all.)
Workplace
All of the interviewees, when we
interviewed them, were working at a job that required them to use one (or more)
of their foreign languages.
Read more posts about this book HERE.
Read more posts about Dr. Betty Lou Leaver HERE.
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