A few reflections on being back in the language classroom again- as a student

This summer, I had the great privilege of spending 200 hours over the course of 10 weeks in an intensive Korean program in Seoul (thanks to Michigan State University Asian Studies Center's Foreign Language and Area Studies summer fellowship program!). Ever since I started learning Korean at the age of ~23, I have craved opportunities to devote (most of) my attention to learning Korean, rather than squeeze in bits of self-study and chats with my wife or friends here and there.

Aside from noticeably improving my knowledge of and ability in Korean, I also find that being a full-time(-ish, more on this later) student is great for reflecting on language teaching and learning. Here are a few reflections that have stuck with me:

• Obligation is a Good Thing: Maybe one of the biggest things I get out of language classes is the obligation to show up, participate, do homework, etc. Outside of language classes, it is incredibly easy to just not use the language, and this can be true whether you are in an immersion setting or in foreign language setting. Hell, I'm married to a speaker of my target language, but because she speaks English incredibly well, it affords me the opportunity to be lazy. And I take that opportunity much more than I should. This summer I had to schlep 1.5 hours each way across Seoul for my 5-days-a-week classes, during morning rush hour. It was not always a fun commute, but I would do it again in a heartbeat. Having an obligation to learn and use the language is key. In my research on online language learning platforms, this is often the biggest missing element.
• I am 99.99999% in favor of Target Language Only classrooms: With all due respect to translanguaging/plurilingualism/plurilingual repertoires/etc., in a language-focused classroom there's nothing quite like near-exclusive use of the target language. Having to struggle through your misunderstandings and botched expression pushes you to recall words and structures as you re-work things. Asking for help or clarification in the TL in the classroom prepares you to do the same outside of the classroom. I relished being the only L1 English speaker in my class this summer. There were multiple Vietnamese and Chinese speakers, who all made great efforts to stick to Korean during class, which I really appreciated. Occasionally, though, there would be a side-huddle among some shared L1 speakers... which was a little jarring, honestly. Everyone else just had to sit and wait! Luckily my classmates were very kind about reporting back to the group in Korean. 
• Bilingual Dictionaries: Oh, right, that .00001%? I fully support individual use of bilingual (electronic/web) dictionaries. Especially as vocabulary gets more advanced and abstract. It's just such a huge time saver and I found my understanding of Korean words was better after a few seconds looking at definitions and examples in the KOR-ENG Naver dictionary. In some cases, teacher explanations led to confusions for me, likely due to my own deficiencies in lexical knowledge. 
• Meaningful Communication - 말처럼 쉽지 않다 ("Not as easy as saying it"): The program I attended prides itself on it's communicative focus, and in many ways, they get it right. For example, we had an assignment where were gave a little presentation on a news article and then presented three topically related questions for whole-class discussion. This was probably my favorite week in class- we spent so much time talking about current events in Korea and elsewhere that we were genuinely interested in, and using grammar and vocabulary we had learned came naturally when we needed it. On the other hand, I think it is still common pedagogical practice to also spend a fair amount of time doing the whole "go around the room and have everyone make a sentence using the target grammar structure." This does involve speaking, but it's not really meaningful or contextualized communication. It also means no one else is talking!
• Language students can have a lot on their plates: I hinted at this previously, but even though you might be enrolled full-time in an intensive language program, you might end up having a lot of other responsibilities to deal with. In my case, I had some work scoring essays and teaching an online class. I also became a father! Some of my classmates were putting in lots of hours at part-time jobs to support themselves. This kind of stuff makes it hard to do homework/projects as well as you'd like, and can negatively impact your sleep schedule, too. Some students do kind of get to "live the dream" where they have lots of time to study class material and really take advantage of immersion/social opportunities, but not everyone gets to do that. This really made me think about the expectations we have for international students in intensive English programs back home. Many are young and on generous scholarships, but not all of them. On the teaching side of things, I think that means we should really do our best to take advantage of class time, such as creating opportunities to write or work on presentations in class (with teacher and peer support!), and perhaps not assign too much weight to "busywork" like workbook pages that are so easy to just assign as homework.

Well, I could probably go on and on, but I'll stop here. These were some of the bigger thoughts floating around in my head since finishing the class last week. Even though a little negativity slipped in to those reflections, it was overall a really positive experience and I'm already looking forward to my next chance to be a language student.

"Arrival" is a really positive representation of linguistics and language learning

Arrival is a fantastic piece of science fiction. 12 (peaceful) alien spaceships arrive on earth, and a linguist is recruited to establish communication while the world at large slips into fear and panic. I will try to avoid spoilers here- go see it for yourself. But consider this a review of how the film portrays linguistics, linguists, and foreign language learning. I'll cover pros and cons:

PROS:

• The complexity of language is presented with major importance to the plot. For example, Amy Adams' character has to explain how linguistically complicated the interrogative "What is your purpose on Earth?" to an Air Force general who sees it as one simple question composed of 6 words.
• Linguistics is presented as science, and fights for equal standing along hard sciences. Jeremy Renner's character is a NSF scientist (chemist? physicist?) who is initially a bit dismissive of linguistics, making a distinction between language and science. But he is won over, and ends up being Adams' supporter. 
• Interaction. Adams needs to interact directly with the aliens in order for there to be any way for her to learn their language/teach them ours. Interaction is key in language learning! 
• Language teaching and learning is presented pretty positively. We get to see Adams' character providing comprehensible input to the aliens, using gestures and actions to illustrate concepts. She has to start with extremely simple messages, and gradually works up from there. Communication is important to the whole process.
• Written language. The alien writing system is key for humans learning the language, and I think this is a nice parallel to the real world, where written language can provide a huge boon to foreign language learning, especially for adults. Some would argue that for adults in non-immersion contexts, it's really the ease of accessing a particular writing system that determines the difficulty of learning another language. The classic example is Mandarin being especially difficult for Anglophones, even though Mandarin is really no more or less complex than French (of course, cognate vocabulary also plays a role).

CONS:

• Louise Banks (the linguist played by Amy Adams) speaks a lot of languages, and can interpret to English in real-time. While it's not a bad thing at all to have Anglophone movie characters demonstrate multilingual abilities, it nonetheless reinforces the popular conception of a linguist as someone who knows many languages.
• Just about the only linguistic theory mentioned by name is Sapir-Whorf. This is actually somewhat of a key plot point, so I can forgive it on that account, but in the real world the idea that the language you speak shapes how you think and experience the world has been largely debunked. There are only very slight differences in processing information across languages, and these amount to arguably negligible differences when it comes to forming a worldview.

All in all, this is the movie you tell friends to watch if you want them to get a basic sense of what linguistics is- it's not perfect, but I think it's better than linguists-as-accent-coaches in My Fair Lady. It's also a well-crafted, entertaining movie otherwise. I think I'm going to have to check out director Denis Villeneuve's other work!