Second language

It was like me and one of my best friends, Alex, who I do a podcast with, it was me and him and then everybody else was white.

And I went to ESL, which was English Second Language.

So even though I came at three years old, because my parents only spoke to me in Arabic, still do, I'm very grateful because I'm fluent in Arabic.

I love it.

I've been working with Tilted Axis on Strange Beasts of China and you know, had been talking to Deborah Smith for a while, because obviously they're a press that do exactly the sort of literature that I'm interested in.

From the start, they've prioritized L2 translators and focused on Asia.

So Deborah, at a certain point, approached me with the idea of a collection of essays that would collate a lot of the conversations that we and other people have been having about taking a decolonial approach to translation.

And around that time, I was mentoring through the National Center for Writing, Kavita Banot, who was already an established academic and writer, and she'd worked in publishing, but she was doing the mentorship because she was new to translation.

Each essay is like, It's worth reading one and then waiting, letting that percolate and then reading the next one.

This isn't a book that you necessarily want to plow through because there's a lot of good ideas.

But one of the threads that shows up in here a lot is the L2 situation.

Do you want you referenced it, Jeremy? Do you want to expand on that a little bit? And Bruno, you also comment since it directly impacts you and is referenced in your foreword.

I actually recommended this to one of my neighbors because she is involved with the Afghan refugee community in Helena.

I think she's helping with English as a Second Language.

And I recommended this to her.

And then when I started talking about it, she was like, oh my gosh, this sounds like a really good book to read with this class.

And my mother, she's always worked at an elementary school.

So she works at Fairgrounds Elementary School as a paraeducator for the English as a Second Language class.

Nice.

Thank you

That's 800 hours in which I've had fun, learned, and discovered so many things, but above all, significantly improved my English.

And you know what? Now I'm a solid B2, but more importantly, I passed the exam and I'm officially a tour guide.

So I have to thank you for a big part of that.

Wishing you all the best, and here's to the next 1,000 episodes.

Great.

That's good to know.

To go from like a borderline A2, B1 to a solid B2 is actually a significant amount of progress.

We mustn't underestimate how much time it takes to genuinely go from like one level across and all the way through to another level.

The latest research highlights the importance of metacognition in listening.

Some studies have found that metacognitive awareness is positively correlated with young L2 learners' listening abilities.

When children are aware of their own listening processes, I mean, when they know they are lost or when they need to focus or when they need to ask for help, what happens to them is to become much more effective listeners because they are aware of what is going on with them in terms of that language skills.

Number five, something that we have discussed largely in these episodes, I mean, in every episode of the seasons, the affective filter and listening anxiety.

No, you can't.

And the research on teaching L2 and L2, meaning language two taught in language two, is stunning.

Yeah.

In just two minutes of spoken interaction in a communicative classroom, students hear over 150 words.

And I might turn to the class and be like, hmm, we learned some stuff about Claudia today.

What are some things that we learned? And the students are going to tell me in a mix of L1 and L2.

Oh, Claudia has two sons.

Like, no, no, no. I'm like, oh, okay.

If you want to start extending that knowledge, you can start asking questions like, why is it like this instead of this? Why does this form appear like this instead of this? And go back and forth as long as there's interest there.

And then you move on.

You want to go back to communicating in the L2.

You want to get this is again, it's very metalinguistic.