personal learning
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Accepting the sweet song of a foreign language
This new Learner Tale begins with the imagined voice of a character in a photo by Robert Doisneau and wanders into the experience of a migrant learning a foreign language in the wild, far from a language classroom. How do we learn to accept the arrival of the foreign language without giving up the identity drawn from our mother tongue? A testimony based on true events from my own learning of French on moving to France.
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Going to Britain? Discover the new travel legislation
Fancy a trip to the UK? Be careful, the rules have changed. All foreign visitors are now required to register on line for an Electronic Travel Authorisation before travelling. In a world where freedom of movement is a constant source of tension, it is vital to understand the causes and consequences of this new legislation.
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English father tongue
So what sort of English did Ken, our dad, speak and where did it come from? There are things I can see now that were invisible when I was growing up. Particularly, that there were multiple Irish undertones to it all. He didn't speak foreign languages but he had a good ear and an ability to tune in to the language being spoken around him that was uncanny. A language chameleon.
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English mother tongue
I have been teaching my mother tongue as a foreign language most of my life. But what sort of English did my mother speak and what was the language-model she encountered at home and at school? How did she become a so accent aware? And where did she learn to be such a stickler for linguistic accuracy?
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English – familiar or foreign language ?
I have no memory of learning to speak English. It is my mother tongue and was there as a given in a family where it was the only language we all spoke. After all these years, it has become an object which I can now also contemplate as a foreign language, a medium which I can visit, explore, use, leave, then come back to as required. Unless - unknown to me - it was simply foreign right from the beginning? How can English change from being a familiar to a foreign language?
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On being an invisible foreigner
Migrant, immigrant, foreigner. I have been all of these things. I have also learnt that there is foreigner and foreigner. Many of us have stories to tell about how our nationality or appearance affected a passage going through a border control, travelling abroad or simply when interacting with locals as tourists when visiting another country.. However, in society as a whole, the frequency with which migrant and immigrant in particular have become increasingly associated with conflict, rejection and even death, incites me to reassess who I am and take a fresh look at my status as a foreigner in this chilling new world. A tale of experience.
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Foreign is such a strange word
I've lived as a foreigner and taught my mother tongue as a foreign language most of my life. In fact, foreign started early for me. I discovered the word foreign when I was 5 or 6 years old and immediately found it odd. I remember this encounter distinctly : the lead pencils we learnt to write with at primary school all had the word foreign written on their dark green barrels near the top in gold letters. Want to know more? Read this tale of innocence.
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The Room Next Door
Is there a door to death? Seeing the new Almodovar film about assisted dying sent me back to something I wrote down in answer to this question after seeing my mother for the last time. Quite a journey, but one which shows what happens when metaphors get real. Let me try and explain.
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Look and say
I learnt to read at school. At first, that meant reading out loud while somebody listened. It was a public experience. This oralizing from words on a page felt strange but exciting, as if something was passing through me from the page to the sounds I uttered. It was like being part of something new. Although the ultimate goal would be to read silently, Mr Harding, a primary school teacher, reminded us that we could still sometimes break that rule.
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Family secrets – learning to live with your own name
I was around the age I am in the photograph illustrating this piece when it slipped out casually in a family conversation that my father had had a elder brother called Gerald and I was named after him. That was just the beginning.
