Inspired by Brad Patterson's How I learned Chinese (blog challenge part 2), I also decided to jump into his challenge. Thanks, Brad! You are a real mover and shaker!
This is my first blog - challenge #one. The first step is always hard! :)
I was in my late twenties when I came to work in Hungary. It was April. I left cold Moscow with its melting snow and dirty streets. The city looked grey and gloomy. People hurried somewhere, their faces were unsmiling, anxious and worried. And then I found myself in another world, full of sun, flowers, and ... singing Hungarians! It was amazing!
Though trained to be an English teacher, I did another job at that time dealing with publishing and advertising. I was sure my English would help me a lot as it was and still is a global language. How mistaken I was! Well, I also knew Spanish and Italian a bit (holiday level), but it did not help me even read the signs in the streets or in the shop windows! And what was worse, I found nobody who spoke English, because German was the main foreign language taught at schools. I bought an English-Hungarian phrasebook and started "talking" using my hands and mimic. I should have learned some Hungarian before my trip! So first thing I rushed to the courses.
It was rather amazing to watch how this difficult agglutinative language was sticking to me! I immersed myself in it listening to the radio, watching TV and films at the cinema. But at first, it was just a flow of unfamiliar sounds! But soon I felt myself like a clever dog: understanding everything but unable to speak! And I came persistently to my goal.
My first teacher was a native-speaker. She had quite a good command of Russian, but her explanations of grammar were not clear enough, so it was easier for me to read a coursebook by myself. She spoke only Russian at the lessons. What was worse, she made lots of mistakes in Russian, sometimes even created her own Russian words, which didn't really exist. Her lessons were boring. It was a grammar-lexical approach. We read texts, translated them, did lots of exercises, but we did not speak at all. I wonder what was more interesting to her: to teach us Hungarian or brush up her own knowledge of Russian. Another teacher was Russian, who graduated from Budapest University. She was also an English teacher like myself. Her lessons were great, motivating, inspiring and interesting. And she spoke only in Hungarian! So the question "Is it better to have a native-speaking or non-native speaking teacher?" is still under discussion.
After two years of living in the country I was rather solid in Hungarian. I loved their language, their culture, music and songs and noticed that Hungarians became much more friendly to me. I met a lot of Russians who came to work in Hungary for the second or even third time and knew just a couple of words or phrases in Hungarian like "this" pointing to some things in the shops or markets, "good" is they were going to buy it and "thanks". And they often used me or their own kids as interpreters. They had plenty of free time, but no desire to learn. Why? Lazy? Maybe so. When you come to work and live in a foreign country and don't speak their language, you cannot really experience the culture .
By the way, my Russian teacher of Hungarian once told me that though Hungarian was rather difficult, it could be much more easily and quickly restored than English. As my Hungarian has rusted a little(?) bit, I am going to check whether it's true or not.
This is my first blog - challenge #one. The first step is always hard! :)
I was in my late twenties when I came to work in Hungary. It was April. I left cold Moscow with its melting snow and dirty streets. The city looked grey and gloomy. People hurried somewhere, their faces were unsmiling, anxious and worried. And then I found myself in another world, full of sun, flowers, and ... singing Hungarians! It was amazing!
Though trained to be an English teacher, I did another job at that time dealing with publishing and advertising. I was sure my English would help me a lot as it was and still is a global language. How mistaken I was! Well, I also knew Spanish and Italian a bit (holiday level), but it did not help me even read the signs in the streets or in the shop windows! And what was worse, I found nobody who spoke English, because German was the main foreign language taught at schools. I bought an English-Hungarian phrasebook and started "talking" using my hands and mimic. I should have learned some Hungarian before my trip! So first thing I rushed to the courses.
It was rather amazing to watch how this difficult agglutinative language was sticking to me! I immersed myself in it listening to the radio, watching TV and films at the cinema. But at first, it was just a flow of unfamiliar sounds! But soon I felt myself like a clever dog: understanding everything but unable to speak! And I came persistently to my goal.
My first teacher was a native-speaker. She had quite a good command of Russian, but her explanations of grammar were not clear enough, so it was easier for me to read a coursebook by myself. She spoke only Russian at the lessons. What was worse, she made lots of mistakes in Russian, sometimes even created her own Russian words, which didn't really exist. Her lessons were boring. It was a grammar-lexical approach. We read texts, translated them, did lots of exercises, but we did not speak at all. I wonder what was more interesting to her: to teach us Hungarian or brush up her own knowledge of Russian. Another teacher was Russian, who graduated from Budapest University. She was also an English teacher like myself. Her lessons were great, motivating, inspiring and interesting. And she spoke only in Hungarian! So the question "Is it better to have a native-speaking or non-native speaking teacher?" is still under discussion.
After two years of living in the country I was rather solid in Hungarian. I loved their language, their culture, music and songs and noticed that Hungarians became much more friendly to me. I met a lot of Russians who came to work in Hungary for the second or even third time and knew just a couple of words or phrases in Hungarian like "this" pointing to some things in the shops or markets, "good" is they were going to buy it and "thanks". And they often used me or their own kids as interpreters. They had plenty of free time, but no desire to learn. Why? Lazy? Maybe so. When you come to work and live in a foreign country and don't speak their language, you cannot really experience the culture .
By the way, my Russian teacher of Hungarian once told me that though Hungarian was rather difficult, it could be much more easily and quickly restored than English. As my Hungarian has rusted a little(?) bit, I am going to check whether it's true or not.
Hi Larisa,
ReplyDeleteThanks for taking up the challenge! I've heard as well that Hungarian is one of the toughest European languages. Is it so? Maybe you don't think so if you were able to feel solid within two years.
Fun to hear another story of someone plopping down in a country and not knowing a word. I'm not surprised at all that the Russian Hungarian teacher's approach worked for you, and I would agree the native vs non-native teacher discussion is definitely still up for debate and we all know that it takes a lot more than simple language competence to be a good teacher!
Cheers, Brad
Hi Brad,
DeleteThanks for your nice comment! Hungarian is really one of the toughest world languages. Living in the country helped me a lot, because when I returned back to Moscow I continued my learning at the courses. I didn't mentioned those were 3-year business language courses. In my Moscow group I was the only one who understood Hungarian.
And I don't think Hungarian teacher would have been bad for us if she would have spoken only Hungarian! My neighbor in Budapest went to learn Hungarian at the courses at the University. There were people of five different nationalities, and Hungarian was the only common language for them. The teacher taught in Hungarian from the very first lesson. The result was excellent!