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| On my honeymoon, sipping on Cuatro Sombras, the best coffee in Puerto Rico, in June of 2015. First time I used Spanish in a long time! |
It’s been kind of an
intense week! I just had my last full-time Friday at work, and now I’m
unwinding at my grandfather’s house by the beach, visiting family that I
haven’t seen for a long time, including my sis and mummy. When big change
happens in life, it’s nice to relax with family and process it with them.
While I play a really
competitive round of golf (the card game!) with my sis, I figured I would chat
a bit about a question that I get asked quite a bit: How do I keep up fluency
in my second and third languages?
I’ve spent an
incredible seven years learning and becoming comfortably fluent in Arabic. I
also studied Spanish for seven whopping years in primary school, so I naturally
forgot most of it. Now that I’ll be studying groundwater in Chile, I’m trying
to ramp up my proficiency in Spanish, all while trying to stay as fluent as
possible in Arabic.
To be honest, it’s really
difficult to keep up fluency when you’re outside of comfortably speaking the
language every day. Leaving a place and the language that comes with it, words
in that come more slowly all too quickly, and each interaction with a person in
that language soon feels awkward. But I’m really happy to say that I’ve found a
few simple, routine things that help with keeping up that multi-lingual fluency:
11.) Read an article in the language every day. With my busy schedule, I am not a super
consistent follower of this rule, but I do try to read at least an article in
Spanish and another in Arabic every day if I have time, and it definitely does
help with keeping common words fresh in my mind. If there are any words I don’t
know, I just look them up in Google Translate. I don’t even make a note of the
new words because I like to keep this daily routine easy simple, though if I
did I’m sure I’d retain much more new vocabulary. I can do this with Spanish,
so I’d recommend even beginner speakers in a language to try this out with very
small articles. I usually prefer Al-Quds for Arabic, and El Mundo for Spanish. Reuters also provides translations to a lot of languages!
22.)
Find a language partner. I can’t stress how important it is to speak!
And language partners are, in my opinion, the best way to practice speaking
when you can’t get that constant exposure to the language. I usually set up a
time once a week or every other week to meet with my language partner who wants
to learn more English and whose native language I’m learning. We take an hour
speaking in English about any topic we can carry a conversation in (I like to
keep it interesting, so I suggest controversial subjects like abortion and the
Palestinian-Israeli conflict!), and then we switch to the other language for an
hour. There are a lot of online threads and interest groups online where you
can find a language partner, so definitely do it!
33.)
Don’t depend on convenient native speakers. By that, I mean, if there’s someone I know who
speaks Arabic but I usually speak to them in English, I don’t try to speak them
in Arabic just because I feel like I haven’t spoken Arabic enough lately. This
is especially true with S. We’re so used to speaking English to each other that
it’s uncomfortable to make the switch to Arabic and it ends up not being very
productive anyway. So, as a general rule of thumb, if you can switch to that
language comfortably, then by all means do it, but don’t get frustrated with
yourself or the other person if it doesn’t work out. Make language maintenance
easy on yourself! J
These are the three big
things that keep me fresh with my languages. I hope this helps! And remember,
above all things, be patient and kind to yourself. Learning a language feels like
such an achievement that it can feel so disheartening when a bit of that
fluency starts fading, but that only means that your mind has been busy with
other things. Plus you can easily get it back with a little bit of practice!
Good luck!
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