English as a Foreign Language

Though I don't appreciate having English forced upon me by overly eager Parisian salespeople jumping at the chance to prove their language skills as soon as they hear my anglophone accent, I'm happy to share my (very handy) native language with foreigners who are genuinely interested in learning. I've really enjoyed leading my Saturday afternoon English conversation group since this past December. What's remarkable is just how much you can learn about your own language by teaching it to others.

Today I went out to see Alice in Wonderland, or Alice au Pays de Merveilles, in English with some students from my English-language conversation group and Valentin, my boyfriend. The fantastic scenery and animation, the outlandish wardrobes, and the acting were all impressive, especially in 3D. Tim Burton didn't disappoint, but perhaps even he was not conscious of how full appreciation of his work is dependent on mastery of the English language. No subtitles would help you appreciate the subtle play on words when two insect-sized, fantastic, winged creatures appearing like a miniature dragon and a rocking horse fighting each other just as Alice returns to Wonderland were a play off of the English terms for two common insects, a "dragon fly" and a "horse fly." Similarly, in 2005 Charlie and the Chocolate film, dubbing the film won't explain why some oompa loompas can be spotted whipping a cow if your language's word for whipped cream is not literally "whipped cream."

Teaching your native language can open your eyes to a certain beauty woven into the spoken word. English has some great analogies like "jumping through hoops," originating from the hoops animals have to jump through in the circus and comparing the ridiculousness of a task to that of those circus animals, and "go with the flow," "mainstream," and "undercurrent," water analogies of the public's trends or tendancies.

Teaching can also help you learn to spot or better guess linguistic origins of words. It was striking when, in one of my first classes, some hispanic students understood the word "arms" but then later in the same article we were reading did not understand the word "weapons," a far less romantic and artistic manner of saying the exact word. When people already speaking a language related to English begin studying, it's not simply a matter of uniformly lacking an advanced vocabulary but of trying to fill in the gaps in the vocabulary in areas where the word origins don't overlap with their native tongue. (In reverse, the same has become readily apparent in my conversations with Valentin. As long as he's speaking formal French, I'm all set. I've actually even taught him some words in French, including in just the past week the French equivalents of vernacular and petulant, vernaculaire/pétulant, but though I might know the French word for vernacular, French vernacular itself is another question.)

Teaching a language makes you more conscious of how integrally intertwined cultural beliefs, attitudes, and practices are with the vernacular (for instance, "wear your Sunday best"). I've learned that some expressions are quite clearly idiomatic, but that even less obvious sayings might not be as literal as you assume. Take the expression "with or without you": the implication of immediate exasperation overlaid on a deeper sentiment of love isn't always readily apparent to foreigners.

I realized while living in Italy that I was becoming perhaps even more conscious of what it meant to be an American than what it meant to be Italian. However, it has still come as an expected pleasure in leaving once more the English-speaking world that I might to get to know my own language even more intimately.