Welcome, folks, to yet another interview with an IMB worker; yes, those five-question time wasters are back despite popular demand. Lapses between interviews grow exponentially, mainly because nobody is answering my emails anymore. However, I crossed paths, virtually or literally, with someone too nice to turn me down.
Fyve Legumbre works primarily as in the language learning department of the IMB. She’s been on the field, in one fashion or another, for more than 10 years and less than 25, and is a proven commodity in helping others learn and master new languages for the purpose of spreading the Gospel. She’s well-qualified: her American parents raised her in far-off places due to their own international working experience, so she’s been multi-lingual all her life.
As usual, the intro is frivolous, identities are hidden, but the facts and the Q&A are completely true.
You’re the language person for one of the IMB’s affinity groups. What is that called – ENOC?
Not anymore. In years past, we had ENOC coordinators in each country, more or less. “ENOC” stood for Entry Orientation Coordinator. We had plans and programs for language learning and cultural immersion. In our relatively new system, language and culture are separated somewhat. The language folks work really as language coaches, focusing on helping missionaries acquire their new languages. I oversee language learning for our affinity, but a lot of the cultural adaptation and orientation falls under the mentorship program. I think!
I play a part in supervising the language team. That includes the language coordinators at our language centers and the programs we use there as well as those who serve as language coaches for our new missionaries.
Is there a type of person who is the best language learner? Men? Women? Married vs. single?
I haven’t really seen any sort of “best student” based on gender or marital status. More than anything, the biggest key is commitment. Personality also plays a role. Some of the people who learn the fastest are people who are more easily drawn into relationships. They are driven to find ways to communicate, and therefore practice their language skills. Missionaries who are also highly-motivated students often do quite well. Once people leave language school and arrive on the field, we continue working with them on a part time basis but it really is up to them to continue learning.
A recent missionary did quite well at her language learning task. When I asked how she did it, she said, “I view this entire experience as sort of a college thing. The IMB has given me a scholarship – free tuition – for about a year of full-time study. I’ve got to use that scholarship money wisely, and work hard at learning. I have specific language tasks that I do daily, without fail, because that’s the only way I’ll learn it.” And that’s the way to do it.
Do you find that some folks just never “get it”? That certain people just don’t have what it takes to learn a new language?
I guess we have stumbled across people in the last several years who did everything they could possibly do and still failed to master the language. However, I have to add a few caveats.
First, the total for the last several years is VERY small; perhaps as few as five units just couldn’t do it.
Second, I truly mean it when I say “everything they could possibly do…” Most of the time, people just need some help. They need someone to encourage them, or find the right learning tool, or need help managing their time.
More than running into people who cannot learn a language, I encounter people who could learn but just cannot seem to make the commitment to learn. They just need some help in focusing. We do all we can, and 99% of the time it all works out. Very rarely –even more rarely than the few who just can’t learn – we have to have some kind of official meeting regarding someone’s disinclination to study their language lessons.
Having said all of that, I need to emphasize that everyone arrives determined and motivated. It just happens that sometimes people are surprised at the difficulty of the learning process and as they struggle, they lose heart.
Your part of the world boasts some language institutes or schools where many IMB workers do the bulk of their language learning. Isn’t it supposed to be better to learn in the same community where you work and live?
We have used language schools for quite some time in our part of the world. We’ve found that formal learning works well for many people. Language institutes allow us to train the most students in the least amount of time. As well, language schools allow everyone to focus a bit more, to be more driven by a structured classroom situation. That cuts learning time.
We’ve seen a general pattern over the last several years. At language schools, the men and the women perform equally or the women learn faster than the men. Once everyone scatters to their place of service, the women often plateau or fall back while the men usually continue to advance. The usual reason for the disparity is that women usually experience the most distractions (children, management of the home, children’s education), things that keep them homebound and not immersed in the new language, thus ensuring that they will not continue learning without some sort of extraordinary effort. The men continue learning because they are the ones most often out of the house and into the community.
We’re aware of those issues, though, and we try work with families to make sure that expectations are reasonable.
What is the difference from the way you saw your parents learn language versus the way people approach language today? Lay out for us how the approach to learning has changed.
It is hard to recall, exactly, whether expats in years past were better at second languages than today’s IMB missionaries are. I believe they were better than today’s workers, despite being unable to prove it.
I remember that international workers (including missionaries) in the past moved out of the big cities and lived in towns all over the country. No one knew English. There was no English TV. The internet wasn’t around. Relationships, survival, and emotional health were dependent on your ability to learn the language well enough to fit in. Today? Not so much.
Today, technology makes language learning harder, not easier. People get all the spiritual feeding they need from iPods and podcasts, in English. They download iTunes music and streaming sermons from their home church. They are not driven to learn the language in order to worship with local believers.
They have Skype and international cell phone service and email, things that allow them to hold firmly to their old stateside relationships, making local relationships in local languages unnecessary.
They accidentally create an English-language bubble around themselves, in their homes, and it greatly complicates the language process. I don’t blame people for relying on those things, because I love staying in touch with family and friends back in the U.S., too, but a key part of learning a language comes from a certain drive to satisfy needs. Without those needs, the drive is lacking.
So technology has its impact. Are there other forces, things that make it harder for people today to learn languages?
I guess the generational gap makes an impact. There are two things that really spring to mind.
The current generation of young adults is very concerned about the impact that moving and working will have on their children. I know in years past, sometimes parents downplayed that impact, but it seems like the pendulum has swung too far the other way. It often makes missionaries unwilling to make the necessary sacrifices that language learning requires. Language learning does require time and work, and that can indeed take away some time from your kids, but you can change that and make learning a family activity.
The second generational issue is the approach to career. When my parents left the States, they were pursuing a career. Spending a year in full time language study (plus a second and third year at half-time study) wasn’t too much of a commitment. After all, in a 30-year career, what’s a year or two studying? Isn’t that a reasonable commitment to one’s career? My husband and I had the same mindset: this is our calling and our career. For us, spending a few years developing the right skills isn’t much of a sacrifice.
Today, though, most people do not take on jobs with the attitude of “This is who and what I will be for most of my working life.” They unconsciously assume that they’ll leave somewhere before retirement. And with the average career worker in the IMB staying at roughly 10 years right now, people are reluctant to spend 25% of their overall working time studying language.
Today’s new appointees are excited and enthusiastic, hoping to make an impact on the world. They want and need to be able to be able to minister effectively and quickly and sometimes the commitment and time needed for good language study seems almost too much.
Thanks for the insight.
Interesting stuff.
‘immerse’ students in a host-family for two months . . . this might work
it did for me, but I was a little child . . . my mom had a difficult pregnancy and my pop was in the Navy, so when mom hospitalized towards the end of the pregnancy, I stayed with my French-Canadian grans for two months.
When my folks came to get me, after my brother was safely born, I was speaking French rather fluently, prattling away with my grandparents like I had known the language since birth . . .
can’t account for the phenomenon, though,
other than ‘immersion’ into their world where French was THE language one proudly spoke in the home
Immersion is always the best policy, especially for us Baptists, but surely you must realize that what is a “cake walk” for children may be a bit more of a challenge for those of us whose brains are a little more calcified.
🙂 I think you’re right. I took German at university and the struggle was epic: eight o’clock classes three mornings a week, language lab, a fierce instructor who wouldn’t tolerate second-best, and would call us on it if we let HER down . . . but I learned enough to understand something many years later:
my daughter took French at prep school, and when she practiced at home, I said ‘oh my goodness! you are speaking French with a German accent!’ . . . turns out that her teacher, Maria Breitinger (Madame ‘B’) beloved French instructor at the school for many years, was from Germany . . . and spoke perfect French with a German accent and TAUGHT it that way too . . . 🙂
when my daughter was sixteen, she was with a group of students from the school who went to England and France under the supervision of Madame Breitinger.
we get a phone call from Paris . . . daughter in tears . . . ‘Mom, Madame B. is too strict, she won’t let us do anything fun ( parents loved Madame B)
. . . and ‘Mom, they don’t speak French in France’
oh well . . . we tried 🙂
Reminds me of a story my mother told. My dad got his undergraduate language requirement in German, and then when he was working on his PhD in Chemistry had to consult some papers written in French for his thesis, and so had to learn French. Mom (who had a Masters in Math) had taken French for he undergraduate language, and thus got to help him. Sure enough, he ended up speaking French with a German accent (something I have a hard time imagining without thinking that it had to sound horrible).
One of my French teachers in college speaks French in such a way that he sounds Belgian to native French-speakers, something that was put to good use in WWII for some intelligence work.
I learnt French from my French-Canadian grans . . . so my own ‘accent’ is Canadian for sure
my father’s family came over from France in the 1600’s and so in four hundred years, the accent ‘mellowed’ a bit into something not recognizable in Paris OR in the ports where US Navy ships docked at times:
my father remembers hollering out in French (Canadian) to some of the French sailors on the pier,
and they didn’t understand the accent!
BTW,
‘Madame’ Maria Breitinger was a survivor of the Holocaust.
She has sadly passed away recently,
but thanks to her, my daughter and her schoolmates were also taught first-hand about what it was like to live through that time as Madame shared her story with them
. . . all in all, Madame B. was a blessing to my child and I am grateful she was at the school when my daughter attended.
Average IMB career = one decade? I’ll have to delve into that.
Currently, that is indeed the standard. The average length of service at this time for long-term folks is 10 years. Short-term workers (ISC, Jmen, Masters) do not count in the average. While it might be a leap to say that the average career lasts just 10 years, one can analyze data and show that career lengths are trending downward, clearly.
I knew that longevity was declining. I did not know that it was down to 2.5 terms.
William,
It’s worth noting that between 1997-2007, the prevailing philosophy concerning appointments was to get as many people to the field as possible. Prior to and since, the philosophy has been to identify and send the most qualified candidates. I’d be very curious to know what percentage of people appointed before 1997 are still on the field vs. those who were appointed during those 10 years. Not sure what it would prove, but it would be interesting information nonetheless. The prevailing mantra right now is that this generation doesn’t have the same commitment as some previous generations. That may be true to a point, but if the 10-year tenure figure is accurate, it’s a lot more complex than was presented in the interview.
[edited by request]
Thanks. I would like to know more.
Ann, as one who is not an IMB employee, your comment was very helpful and informative for me, until you said:
“…sacrificed more to get to the field than many previous generations had to imagine or consider…”
I’ve studied a bit of history, and I know intimately the stories of William Carey and Adoniram Judson and Lottie Moon and David Fite and Eric Liddell…and so, I thought your otherwise helpful comment jumped the shark at that point.
You’re right, Bart. Thank you for pointing that out. I was, of course, thinking about the IMB when I wrote that, but obviously wasn’t clear. Even then it wouldn’t have been right. It was an unfair and unfounded comment. In that sense it’s not very different than some of the things Ms. Legumbre asserted about my (usually, nut not always) younger colleagues. I’d retract it if it could. Thank you for pointing out my error and for holding me accountable.
Thanks, Ann. Now, in my opinion, what you have there is an exemplary comment. Kudos!
Absent from your list, Bart, is Bill Wallace. SURELY you’ve studied him, too?
When my wife and I first went to Spain as career m’s, we went with another organization. Their requirement was that new career m’s, both husband and wife, pass the Level-3 (out of 5) test at the Official Language School before being released to begin their long-term ministry assignment. With a few possible exceptions in some places, I still think that is a good policy. Language learning is crucial for cross-cultural effectiveness, and whenever we cut corners in the short run I believe we lose effectiveness and good stewardship of resources in the long run.
Though I am not completely up on current policies at the IMB, my impression is that several years ago some positive changes were implemented that recognized the problems with tendencies of a few years before that to cut corners with regard to language learning.