How to Keep your Language Skills Sharp as a World Language Teacher
How to Maintain your Language Fluency
Language skills, just like any other skill, are subject to degradation and atrophy over time, especially if the language user is not intentional about using advanced language structures and engaging in meaningful exchanges in the target language on a regular basis. Whether you learned the language you teach in high school and college or are a native speaker who grew up speaking the language, you have most certainly experienced a degradation in your language skills over the years, as you have taught the language in an English-speaking country, to novice language learners for whom the primary language of communication is English.
This language atrophy can be minute: maybe you sometimes forget a word here or there and are forced to circumlocute, or perhaps English interferes from time to time and you slip in English words where a target language equivalent could very well have been used. It can also be quite severe: maybe you struggle to form sentences as agilely as you did during your Master’s program or study abroad experience… or maybe your accent and pronunciation have gotten rusty… or maybe not much has changed for you linguistically, but your self-confidence as a language user has dipped after years of teaching students the basics of the language.
Wherever you fall on the spectrum, I think we can all agree that language atrophy is a real concern. And given that we are World Language educators and are expected to be fluent experts in the language(s) we teach, there’s a certain level of unspoken pressure placed upon us to maintain (and even advance) our current language capacities. In this blog post, I’m going to share some ways you can keep your French, Spanish, Italian, or German skills sharp to stave off language atrophy and maintain fluency.
Read, read, and read some more!
If we intuitively know that reading is an effective way for students to acquire massive amounts of vocabulary and internalize high-frequency grammar structures, then it must also be true that reading target language texts can be a great way to maintain and advance our current proficiency levels, even for those of us who may already have a superior level of language mastery.
Build a daily target language reading habit, so that you are consistently providing your brain with advanced target language input. Be consistent about this reading habit: try to fit in time each day to be present with your chosen text. You can start off small with 5 minutes and slowly increase the amount of time you devote to your daily reading practice. In terms of what you should read, here are a few suggestions:
Find an online newspaper for natives. Bookmark the website on your Bookmark Bar so that it is obvious and easy for you to access.
Subscribe to a daily or weekly language newsletter on a topic that interests you. For example, I am subscribed to News in French, which is a daily newsletter that contains short and interesting articles that get sent to my inbox daily. I read the newsletter every morning before students arrive to my class. Starting my day in French helps me feel so much more connected to the language I’m teaching.
Browse books on Amazon and choose one that interests you. You can easily filter the language parameters so that only target language books populate your search results. If you are like me and have a Kindle, download a few free books until you find a paid book that interests you.
Listen to target language podcasts
Many language gurus talk about the fundamental importance of maximizing your “dead time.” This could be time when you are cooking, cleaning, or commuting to school - it is essentially time where you are not engaged in deep, productive work. Rather than completing these tasks in silence or while listening to music in English, find a target language podcast centered around a theme or subject area that interests you.
I try to find podcasts for advanced language learners or for native speakers. A quick search on Google or language-learning subreddits on Reddit will provide you with comprehensive lists of target language podcasts that are great to fill up those spaces of dead time in your day.
Language learning compounds significantly over time. If my commute to and from work is 30 minutes—which it is, roughly—then that means that I have an opportunity to absorb language (and be entertained!) for an hour a day. That’s five hours a week, which compounds to over 20 hours a month.
You can also supplement podcasts with audiobooks from Audible, Youtube videos that you pull up on your phone, and target language music from your favorite artists on Spotify or Apple Music. I’ve listened to Harry Potter in French and Italian on my way to work, as well as Youtube videos of conversations or interviews that perhaps were not converted into podcasts.
Keep a journal in the target language
I am a strong proponent of journaling. I’ve kept a journal since I was 13 years old, and it’s one of my most treasured and precious gifts that I’ve been able to give to myself. I love reading entries from the different epochs of my life—I strongly believe that we gain clarity and focus about our present and future by retrospectively looking back and taking stock of where we’ve been, what we’ve done, and who we were in the past. I especially love my journal entries from my time spent abroad, from my college days, from the two years when I did my Master’s in Teaching and student teaching internship, and of course… my first few years as a World Language classroom teacher!
Why not keep a journal in the target language? It’s a great way for you to keep your writing skills sharp. Writing is the communication skill that I believe atrophies the most over time, as it’s a muscle that we are required to flex pretty infrequently. As a World Language teacher, we are constantly reading, speaking, and listening to the target language, but how often do we have to meaningfully write in that language? I don’t often have to send emails, write essays, send out letters or cards in another language, so I find that my writing skills tend to weaken quite easily.
I try to write one journal entry per week in the languages I know so that I force myself to flex the writing muscle in those languages. You could make this an academic exercise: perhaps you find writing prompts in the language you are hoping to maintain. Or maybe you could write a bit about the books you’ve read recently or the podcasts you’ve listened to. For me, I find journaling about my life in the target language helps me add meaning to the output I am producing. It helps me research unknown vocabulary and incorporate it in a meaningful, relevant way. (I find that this helps with retention of new vocabulary, too.)
Speak in the target language with your team
It’s odd to me when I hear my Spanish teacher colleagues speaking to each other exclusively in English. I find it to be unfortunate, actually, because they are missing out on critical opportunities to share experiences, refine communication, and practice language skills in Spanish.
My colleague and I speak to each other primarily in French. We both teach introductory French courses, and so the language we are required to produce in the classroom must be basic in nature so that our learners can understand us. Unfortunately, this means that we do not have the opportunity to practice more advanced language structures and utilize specialized or technical vocabulary. To combat this, we make it a priority to speak to each other and conduct our meetings almost exclusively in French.
This requires a great deal of consistency, motivation, commitment, and vulnerability.
Consistency. If we only spoke to each other in French once in a while, it would be easy for us to get caught up in the daily business of our classes, department, and school…and we’d be much less likely to initiate conversations in French.
Motivation. It’s easier for us to speak in English, of course, so we both need to be motivated and disciplined about our daily French conversations.
Commitment. After a few long blocks of teaching, we can show up to our meetings mentally or physically drained, so remaining committed to our shared goal of communicating in French is critical.
Vulnerability. And finally, we both need to be vulnerable with each other and feel free to take risks with our language, admit when we’ve made a mistake in our language choice, ask each other for help with a translation or proper turn of phrase, and acknowledge when we simply don’t know how to express a word, thought, or idea. It might be difficult to do this sort of exercise with a team teacher that you don’t quite see eye to eye with, for example.
If you and your team teachers are used to communicating in English, and you’d like to infuse more target language into your discussions (both formal and informal conversations!), I’d recommend the following tips:
Ask your team partners if they would be willing to speak with you in the target language more frequently. Be honest and state your reasons for wanting this shift in communication. Explain what you think the benefits would be by implementing the switch.
Start off with a reasonable goal in mind. Maybe you share about your weekends on Monday morning while speaking exclusively in Italian. Maybe you conduct the first five minutes of your PLC meeting entirely in Spanish. Maybe you only speak French when you are on your shared duty with your French colleague.
Be consistent. You can take advantage of interlanguage: if your partner code switches to English, you have the right to code switch back to the shared language. Your conversations can be a veritable mélange of multiple languages! Don’t let perfect be the enemy of good: any speaking and listening practice you get in is better than none!
Find a language exchange partner or teacher
There are many ways for you to practice your conversation skills during your own time. You can find a language exchange forum, subreddit, or Discord server and request a native speaker in your target language who is looking to also converse in English. I speak with an Italian conversation partner once a week via Skype. We speak for a half hour in Italian, and then switch to English for a half hour. I find our weekly conversations to be extremely rewarding: I practice my Italian skills and then get to help my partner improve his English! Considering I don’t actively teach English, it’s really cool to be able to take what I know about World Language pedagogy and apply it to English language teaching!
You can also hire a certified language teacher or community tutor on websites like iTalki. You can take formal lessons with your teacher/tutor, or you can hire a teacher/tutor to facilitate conversation practice. An hour or two a week can really work wonders for your language level and, most importantly, your confidence.
One of my favorite activities to work on with a language tutor is article discussion. I find an interesting article in the target language, share it with my tutor, read it on my own time, and then show up to my lesson and spend the time discussing the article. I find that this is a great way to use a text as a “jumping off point” for interesting and engaging conversations. It’s an opportunity to learn and share language, culture, and general knowledge! I always leave these types of exchanges feeling refreshed, energized, and intellectually and linguistically stimulated.
Have you struggled with maintaining your language skills as a World Language teacher, especially if you teach beginner courses? If so, what have you done to help sharpen your skills? Have any of the strategies I’ve shared worked for you personally, or do you have others? For example, do you take a trip to a Spanish-speaking country every couple of years to maintain your language skills? I’d be so curious to know - feel free to leave a comment below!
Happy teaching, and happy language learning!
~ Michael
