Do you ever wonder why you can’t remember that language you studied in high school???
In our training, we have been learning New Tribes’ method for acquiring a language, and it is way better than memorizing and using flash cards! Yuck! In our Language and Culture class we basically were immersed in Portuguese from the beginning, and we even got to have a Brazilian barbeque with our language helpers, Claudio and Edna. Everyday when we came to class, we were engaged with the language through “total physical response,” which means that the more you can physically be involved, the more you will learn! Check out this video from class to see what I mean:
http://youtu.be/8xRqMp7Ag20
I had previously learned the people and objects in each of these photos, so in the video Edna was telling me the actions and I was able to point to them. After only a few hours of classes, we were able to understand over 50 complete sentences in Portuguese! We were only focusing on comprehension in the beginning, and speaking would come later–like our little Olivia, she has heard English for two years now and she went from saying words to phrases and now full sentences! But in the beginning, she was only hearing.
We are so excited to continue our training so we will be equipped to learn language and culture overseas! Thanks for following our journey!
Fun! We studied Portuguese at MTC too…except with the DaSilvas!
Aww! We love them! They are our neighbors!!