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Benvenuti, Bienvenue, Croeso and Welcome.
Hi, I’m Juliet. Join me on my language learning journey and discover my thoughts on different aspects of language learning with the A Language Learning Tale Podcast. Today, the subject is …
Is Meaningful Interaction Just Speaking?
In order to become proficient in a foreign language, it is said that you need to have meaningful interaction with it. But what is meaningful interaction?
I think we can all understand meaningful easily enough, but what does interaction actually mean in this circumstance? The Google definition of interaction is: communication or direct involvement with someone or something. So, in its basic form, which I believe was first put forward by Stephen Krashen, this is communicating back and forth with someone in the language - in other words speaking - in a way that means you can get some benefit from the conversation. In other words, it’s not too difficult. A bit like comprehensible input for speaking
However, I don’t think we should think of meaningful interaction as only speaking, because there are so many other ways we can interact with a language. But, let’s get rid of one thing before going any further. I would not consider studying grammar to be a meaningful interaction with a language, either by book, or app. The only way an app might get a look in, is if you have to speak the language, or respond in the language in some way, other than just translating and typing. An app might give you the meanings, but that doesn’t mean it’s meaningful.
The most obvious meaningful non-speaking conversational interactions would be, I guess, written conversations. So, that might be on social media, where you could potentially interact with native speakers. This, of course, would take a lot of courage, especially that first move, that first comment on a post. Maybe, you might think about doing this with other learners first, but I, personally, wouldn’t consider that meaningful, because if you’re all getting things wrong you might be reinforcing errors. I think the most meaningful interactions involve native speakers.
So, what about starting with something more passive, like watching content in the language? It’s not a back and forth interaction, but it is listening to the language how it’s really spoken. This will help you with comprehension because, let’s face it, if you can’t understand what’s being said in even the simplest of video content, you’re not going to have a lot of luck with a face-to-face conversation, which will likely be a lot faster. Watching content will get you used to the sounds of the language, with the added benefit of being able to see the people speaking. It’s always easier to understand content, and context, when you can see someone speaking, rather than just listening, because you can see facial expressions and attitudes, which give you more of a clue as to the meaning. YouTube type content is probably easier for this than drama, because drama can go very quickly, and you’re lost before you’ve even started. Whereas there are plenty of YouTube videos made as easy content for language learners. Drama can come later, when you’re more familiar with the language
I would say it’s better to do this way before doing that other type of convesational interaction, and that’s taking speaking lessons on an app with a tutor. You need it to be an actual conversation, though, rather than a grammar lesson, and that’s going to be difficult when you don’t know a lot of words. So, this will require some planning on your part and on the tutor’s part for this to work
Once you’re happy with visual interaction, you can go on to listening only, on radio, for example, or other audio only content - podcasts or audiobooks. This will be a lot more difficult to understand, but I can assure you that if you do it for long enough, you will get to a stage where you can understand the gist of what is being said and eventually, some of the detail. I started listening to Italian radio less than a month after starting to learn the language (I know, that was a little ambitious) and I have done it every day since. At the start, I could understand nothing. Now, in most instances, unless the speech is slurred or across a telephone connection, I can usually get most of what’s being said
So, the best kind of meaningful interaction is, obviously, conversation with a native speaker, but building up to that with other, less stressful things, is definitely not a bad thing.
That’s all for today. Don’t forget to join me again next time, for more tips, tricks and tales and in the meantime, check out the A Language Learning Tale YouTube channel for additional, non-podcast content
Ciao, salut, hwyl and bye for now.