Day 1: The Start of the Journey
Hello, and welcome! This is a limited-series blog with a specific purpose, which is to document my journey through Morocco and attempts to practice my French there during the post-COVID summer of 2021.
When I am not gallivanting around the world, I am based in South Florida as a high school Mandarin Chinese teacher. This summer, I am traveling to Morocco through GEEO, a non-profit organization dedicated to helping teachers travel by planning affordable international tours. Morocco has intrigued me for several years now because of its location at the crossroads of three continents, and it was one of GEEO's cheapest programs, so the choice felt like a no-brainer to me. This is my first trip by organized tour, which will in itself be interesting. It also means that this blog in one sense serves as free advertising for GEEO's Morocco itinerary, which you can find here. This will also be my first trip to the Arab world and my first trip to Africa--so, lots of firsts.
Thinking about how to make this trip a little more meaningful, I decided I would use it to practice my French. From what I can tell, French is still widely spoken in Morocco's cities--it's one of the vestiges of the nation's days as a French colony. I'd be fibbing, however, if I didn't admit that the idea of speaking French to anybody strikes terror into my heart. It was at one time the only second language I knew, and I studied it extensively throughout high school and in college. However, it has been neglected over the years as I increasingly turned my attention to Mandarin Chinese, spending the majority of my twenties getting a Phd in Chinese literature. The prospect of speaking French in a real-life context again after many years away from it is that of me stumbling over words and having no solid foundation upon which to fall back for safety. It is the image of me making a fool of myself while the people with whom I am trying to communicate, if they are not kind, snicker and jeer, or otherwise frown in impatience. My memories of this phase of learning Chinese, before I eventually eased into the smooth interactions typical of the advanced-level non-native speaker, still make me shudder.
While I was having this initial trepidation about trying to speak French in Morocco, however, I thought of what I tell my students all the time in my classroom in Florida. "Hypocrite!" I shouted at myself. And then I vowed never to chicken out about using French in Morocco when the opportunity presents itself. What's more, I am going to document my interactions in French and how they went on this blog (along with tidbits about the trip itself!) to hold myself accountable to this goal.
You see, the biggest barrier for my students to speaking Chinese isn't the grammar, the characters, the pronunciation, or any other aspect of the language. It's fear. They are terrified of speaking to native Chinese speakers in Chinese. And this is understandable. It takes a certain humility, a willingness to make mistakes and to not be on equal or superior footing compared to one's interlocutor, to dare to speak a foreign language to a native speaker of that language. Most of us are prideful. Most of us don't like to put ourselves in a position of relative disadvantage. To speak a foreign language, we have to develop a mindset that allows us to be willing, again and again, to put ourselves in such a vulnerable position. I believe the way forward for language learners is the growth mindset, a concept first pioneered by psychologist Carol Dweck.
A growth mindset is one in which mistakes are viewed as learning opportunities and thus as chances for improvement in a given skill, rather than as shame-inducing signs of individual shortcoming. Once a person has internalized this mindset, they learn to actively embrace and look forward to mistakes, because they realize that in learning from the mistake, they will grow in a way they never would have if they had refused to go out on a limb and practice the skill out of fear of failing in the first place. I firmly believe that for adult language-learners, a growth mindset is a necessary prerequisite for having the gumption to step up to the boxing ring again and again, knowing each time that they will once more be battered by the unfamiliar sounds and grammar of their foreign language of choice. With a fully-developed growth mindset, language-learners will actually look forward to making mistakes, seeing them not as signs of weakness, but as the only way forward for growing in the language. It's also important as a way of motivating oneself internally to keep speaking, since as I already mentioned, unfortunately many times beginning and intermediate-level language speakers get nothing but negative feedback from the world around them.
I know learning languages with a growth mindset works--I've been through it once already with Chinese, which I have been rated as an advanced/superior speaker of and which I now teach. And this, from someone who was born into a monolingual English-speaking all-American family. Developing a growth mindset is easier said than done, though, and it takes a lot of mental self-talk and constant re-focusing away from the negative emotions that accompany using a foreign language toward the main goal--to learn the language better through making mistakes. My advice to adapt a growth mindset when speaking Chinese must sound pretty hollow to my students coming from me, standing at the other end at what has been a fifteen-year journey so far of learning and speaking Mandarin Chinese. On this journey I have struggled, toiled, cried, felt shame, and thought about giving up more than once, but my students see none of this. They see an adult woman to whom speaking Chinese comes relatively easily, and they don't think I can relate to them at their level.
And maybe I can't, anymore. It's been so long since I was anything other than an advanced-level Chinese speaker. That's where I saw the great potential of making speaking French a priority on this Morocco trip and documenting it on this blog. In putting myself back in the uncomfortable shoes of an intermediate-level language speaker, I will be reminded of the trials and tribulations of trying to use the language. I will document what mental, social, and emotional strategies I use to get myself back on my feet after someone makes me feel like I'm an idiot for even trying to speak French. When I get back to my classroom in August, I will review the experiences recorded on this blog with my students as a way of opening up a discussion about how to develop an effective growth mindset around the experience of learning foreign languages, the single most important skill I want them to pick up during their time in my class. After all, if they can draw on a growth mindset for learning a language, they can draw on it for any skill in life they should wish to acquire. I am very excited about this journey of language, learning, and growth. I am equally excited to share it with my students in August and spark further conversations. I welcome you to join me on my adventure as I document the highs and lows of languaging in Morocco.
Today is Day 1, a travel day. I am currently sitting at the gate in Boston's Logan Airport. I have just finished a lovely trip to visit my immediate family here, but now I am looking ahead to the exciting journey that lies before me. I am waiting for a short domestic flight to DC, one of the only cities in the country from which direct flights to Morocco depart. In DC, I will pick up my luggage and take the metro to Dulles International Airport, where I will sit around for hours before boarding my 10 pm flight to Morocco. I will land there in the late morning of Thursday, July 1st, Moroccan time. So since I'll be in the States all of today, no opportunities to speak French yet, but oodles of excitement nonetheless. Here is a photo of me in my ridiculously touristy getup, COVID-style:
Comments
Post a Comment