TASK 3 - Paludi Annarita - LS II anno - a.a. 2008/2009

Encounter with the (East Coast) American students from Trinity College

2 April 2009 (8-10 pm)

Very good.

I really appreciated the sincerity of your report. Plus the integration of points taken from Accommodation Theory. But especially the fist quality: you seem to be willing to call into question your habit, acquired over years and years of traditional schooling, con considering LEARNING nad SPEAKING A FOREIGN LANGUE (OR EVEN ITALIAN) to be a question of “correctness”. Thus your shame if there are formal errors. Instead, from this report, I feel you are acquiring a wider view of what makes LEARNING genuine and what makes SPEAKING A FOREIGN LANGUAGE effective.

Continue in the direction you indicate here!

One of the most interesting activities proposed by the teacher, Patrick Boylan, was that encountering a group of American students at the Trinity College, their school in Rome where they study a lot of subjects and learn Italian language. I wasn’t alone but I lived this experience with my five classmates.

Before the Boylan’s course, I didn’t know the term “Accommodation”, or better still, I only knew it regards to “finding a comfortable place where living or inviting people to sit comfortably” when you go to friends’ house HOMES or new places. In this last English course I learnt that “Accommodation” hasn’t only the meaning written above.

According to Boylan the “Accommodation” means “adjusting one's expressive behaviour in order to facilitate communication with linguistically and culturally diverse interlocutors”¹.

In my opinion the two definitions are similar in some way because people must feel at one’s ease both when are speaking with other people and when are staying at other people’s house. [GOOD POINT]

Although the evening doesn’t DIDN'T have a clear division in two parts for me, however I‘ll describe it as if IT had gone in this way LIKE THAT.

For the first part of evening, that is to say from our arriving until after an hour, I immediately tried to accommodate to American students because for me it was more natural.

When we arrived they were happy to meet us, they prepared a lot of good food and drinkS for us, they were waiting for us impatiently (I think), so when we went inTO the room they came towards us and introduced themselves and I did the same. I thought that the first Jamaican approach was HAD failed because a Jamaican boy doesn’t immediately introduce himself, but he speaks and then says his name. Maybe with a different initial approach, like the lights off, my “double” would be gone out.??

In spite of this, the evening was very pleasant.

The first approach was with three students, now I don’t remember their nameS, they come from New York City. They were very kind and cheerful, me and Pamela AND I spoke with them in a spontaneous way, and I tried to not TO think ABOUT my bad English, with a lot of mistakes. How shameful after many years passed to studyING English! [WHOSE SHAME? CERTAINLY NOT YOURS!! YOU TRIED YOUR BEST USING THE METHODS YOUR TEACHERS IMPOSED.]

Although I thoughT in Jamaican and I tried to show my Jamaican mindset, I managed to do UTTER only some wordS like “hey man, ya”, but these words are the same in American. When they talked I watched them and tried to “imitate” their gestureS, their phrases, their intonation to speak, their exclamations, everything; for me it was an intense emotion being there, so I wanted that they understood THEM TO UNDERSTAND me, but I managed TO BE a student that tried to speak correctly without mistakes and to show to SHE knowS English grammar.

The second approach was with two American boys, one from Boston and the other from San Francisco. I was with Eugenia, they were very nice and talkative. We talked about a lot of things.

While I was talking with them I thought ABOUT the failed experiment, so we confessed what we had to do, and they said that our different way to speak wasn’t visible, in fact they didn’t like very much Jamaicans, so I didn’t talk about Jamaica and my favourite singer Bob Marley, I wanted to talk about different qualities of Jamaicans, but I interrupted my speech. [GOOD ACCOMMODATION! NOW YOU SEE WHAT UPPER CLASS “WASP” AMERICANS THINK OF MARLEY... THAT WAS A CULTURAL LESSON, WASN'T IT?]

The third approach was outside with a girl from Boston. We went out because Pamela had to smoke, so we talked with her. She was very nice, she talked about their journeys around North Italy and in Europe in the period that she stayed at Trinity College. She corrected me when I said “I never been” because they said “I never ben”. [GENERAL AMERICAN PRONUNCIATION]

In the second part of the evening, until the end, I felt very relaxed, because the embarrassment left the space GAVE WAY to the fun and to the “will to know”, I began to observe much more the American students in the way they behaved and spoke, trying to enter their mindset. Me and my colleagues AND I, together WITH some American students, did a sort of joke in which we wrote on the board some stereotypes about Americans and Italians. At the beginning some misunderstandings came out, but these features were useful to help us feel closer to the Americans people and understand them much more. It was so funny and useful that I was amused and them THEY WERE, too.

In all this THESE approaches I tried to create an entente², “it existS in a communicative act when the parties subjectively report reciprocal understanding (real or illusory) plus two discriminants: affinity and warmth”, but it was impossible because of the few SHORT time.

So I agree with Boylan when HE writes and tellS us that the language is only a convergence of expression, we can’t create an entente only with the language, that is to say it is a “formal accommodation” but we have to create with our interlocutor a convergence of intentionality, that is to say a “substantial accommodation”.

I have to say that they didn’t accommodate to us, they talked very fast, so I didn’t understand many words, they didn’t never speak Italian maybe because they studied it for a short time.

Given that, I also think that American and English people take for granted that everybody must know the English language, it’s also true that Italian is spoken only in Italy and as a foreign language in some other countryIES, so for this reason I think English is fundamental today, we need TO knowing this language for informatics and to create relationships outside Italy.

For all the WHOLE evening I spontaneously accommodated to them at the formal level and I tried to create an entente, a sort of affinity and warmth with them for not being excluded and feeling different although IN SPITE OF my very bad English, but I think to have I failed.

I think is important know the people’s language that you want to know for communicating with them when you go to a different country from yours, but you must know their culture, their mindset, their value system, so in this way I think you learn much better a language also with interest and fun.

I learnt an important thing from this experience, and I agree with Boylan,: the language is a volitional state, so in “Accommodation Theory Revisited” he writes that “this wider perspective derives in turn from a new view of natural human languages, seen primarily as “volitional matrices” and only secondarily as “semiotic systems.” It is because language is primarily a volitional state (a “will to mean”) that adopting an interlocutor's expressive traits in a way that produces entente requires, first of all, identifying with (introjecting) the existential values that inform their cultural meaning³ .

I will bear this THESE words in mind, we must think about this as a goal if we want to learn a language, we have to create an entente, and only the language isn’t enough, the grammatical system of a language isn’t enough. I think many encounters with foreignerS people help to understand a lot of things about people and their countryIES but it must be did DONE with a fluent knowledge of the language and a will to go out OF the system!

In this moment, in which I am writing these papers WORDS I am in London and AM livING with a very nice family and the place is pleasant. I am HAVE BEEN here for two days and I am going to stay a month. I hope my English will improve, but a thing is already improved, it is the way to live this experience, I haven’t only a “will to mean” but I have a “will to be”. [GREAT! THAT'S JUST WHAT I WANTED TO GIVE YOU WITH OUR COURSE. SO, WHEN YOU RETURN, TELL ME IF YOU WERE ABLE TO “BE”.]

Thank you teacher!

YOU'RE WELCOME!