The Second Language

A baby comes into this world and the communication begins with his first crying. Without any words, the mother attends to his needs instinctively. She struggles with a few lapses here and there, but generally is able to meet all his demands. The baby learns his first few words quite early and mostly they consist of frequently used vocabulary such as ‘mama’ or ‘baba’. The language spoken at home is the language that he adopts as his first language. It comes to him naturally and without much effort. That is the joy of having a First Language.

However, that joy is short-lived as the moment he enters school, he is required to learn a ‘second language’. Urdu, Hindi, French, Arabic, Tagalog, Persian and so many more to choose from. Mostly English is the primary language to begin with.

In my initial years of teaching, I often taught language with a lot of dedicated formality and set methods. The results were brilliant with the comfortable learners but mostly the methods failed with the absolute beginners. Unfortunately, I had only little experience of knowing what would work and so it got me to think how I had managed to learn the English Language myself.

Although, I was educated in well reputed schools, the methodologies that were incorporated at that time were quite similar to what I was practicing as a teacher myself. Those were the methods that I was familiar with. It is also a fact that I was not introduced to the British Curriculum till I began to teach. My entire education has been with the Pakistani Curriculum. The failure to achieve a 100% result, got me thinking.

I believe there were invisible factors that lead to my love of learning the language and striving to accomplish this difficult task.

Every year, my aunt and uncle along with my cousins used to visit us in Pakistan all the way from Canada. And while they understood the Urdu language well, they mostly made conversation in English. I fell in love with the accent and the fluency and like a parrot began to imitate their manner of speaking. I was never shy about making errors and my parents celebrated my desire to learn the language at all costs. I would spend lots of time playing with them and though they were much older than me, they taught me lots of short fun expressions and adored me for my keen interest to use them all day long.

They would stay with us for about a month and before they left, I took their address to ensure that the learning would continue through letter writing. I remember the thrill of receiving mail and read the letters so many times that introduced me to not just another part of the world but also the many ways of expressing oneself. I would often seep this knowledge in my Literacy class at school and the teachers would be amazed by my ability to think out of the box and appreciated my creativity in writing. I had won their admiration and the encouragement proved vital in climbing the ladder further.

It was a blessing to have been born in a house that had deep rooted love and inclinations to all forms of art. Music, drama, theatre and poetry, all had their special contributions in inducing this love of learning a language in me. Whether the songs, drama, poetry or theatre was in Urdu or English, the effects were similar. They produced a sense of inquiry and need to understand the meanings. The love of singing, further provided a platform to exercise my application skills. The day I found out an old college magazine that belonged to my mother, I was introduced to the world of Poetry. I had always read poetry written by famous poets but reading a poem in the magazine, that had been framed by my mum, opened my eyes to the possibility of writing on my own. That very day, I wrote my first two poems. Again I was applauded by my parents for the simple yet touching verses. I was only 10.

I remember, as a teenager, I would make huge collections of music albums and in doing so, went a step ahead to create a book of lyrics for all these cassettes. I would write whatever I would understand and a few years down the line, I used to laugh at the bizarre language that I had interpreted at that time. But the book itself reflected the deep love that I had for this language.

My elder sister was an ardent reader. She had a handsome collection of Enid Blyton books and the Famous Five series. I liked reading books but serious reading began after she got married and the book shelf became mine. She left many books that would interest me and I read them all one by one.

Each time my younger brother and myself would get our pocket money, we would consume it in buying short Urdu story books, and the purpose beyond reading them was to create a library of our own in the extra room on the first floor of our house. We would proudly make a list of all the literature that we possessed and this activity was another form of strengthening our ties with the language.

My elder brother was a smooth organ player. We teamed up for many years creating our own music and here again, he encouraged me to write the lyrics to all our songs. It was pure fun but the growth that happened as a result of this collaboration was phenomenal. Being able to write and create something of our own gave me the confidence and faith in my abilities and immense optimism to carry forward this confidence to communicate my thoughts with the rest of the world. 

Another factor that I hold dear in language learning was my hobby to write my ‘personal diary’ every night before I slept. This habit stayed with me for about three years and when I read my diary today, it clearly indicates that I was a confident writer by the age of seventeen.

All these factors indicate that learning a language requires some form of motivation, an open channel of conversation, indulgence in literary activities and most importantly an environment of encouragement.

Therefore, I decided to completely revamp my methodology to teach a language. Whether it is English or any other optional language that our children opt for, we need to provide them the motivation to learn it, the platform to apply this learning, to keep the conversation flowing and encourage activities in school and at home that would greatly contribute to their love of learning a language.