Wednesday, October 1, 2008

The seeds of a new study abroad idea

I’m currently reading a book called Bastard Tongues: A Trailblazing Linguist Finds Clues to Our Common Humanity in the World’s Lowliest Languages. The author, Derek Bickerton, studies creole languages. In defending his bar-hopping field research technique, he describes how he learned Spanish:

“Most of the Spanish I speak was learned from drunks in bars. In fact, drunks are the world’s most underrated language teaching resource. The stereotypic drunk speaker slurs his speech to the point of unintelligibility, but in real life this happens only in the final, immediate-pre-collapse phase of drunkenness. Prior to that, drunks speak slowly and with exaggerated care, because they know they are drunk but don’t want other people to know. Moreover, since they’re already too drunk to remember what they just said, they repeat themselves over and over, and don’t mind if you do the same. If you’re gregarious and a drinker, it’s by far the easiest way to learn a new language” (p. 29).

Not that I approve, or anything, but I think I smell the kernel of a new study abroad program.

2 comments:

Dave said...

I do approve! Alcohol would lower the affective filter, an important move as language pedagogues would tell us. I often tell my language classes that they should imagine themselves speaking Spanish after a vino tinto or whiskey. The trick would be getting students to speak with other native speakers and not to other English speaking students also studying abroad. This looks like a great book.

Kent said...

In light of the number of solicitations from prostitutes I received in Lima, and of a run-in with a certain African whore I seem to recall Mike having in the Retiro in Madrid, perhaps the next logical step would be sex-workers as language tutors.