Over the weekend, I had the misfortune of being kept up yet again by my persistent friend, insomnia. Generally, I wouldn’t consider him much of a friend at all, but sometimes I must give credit where credit is due.
By way of a preface, let me say that I have been a Japanese language student for some number of years now (it is my major), and I often watch streaming Japanese television on my laptop during these tiring nights of no sleep. There are no subtitles, and I very certainly cannot understand all, or even half, of what is being said on these programs. It was then, in the middle of some kind of criminal drama, that I realized something very important: the power of critical thinking. How, without some subconscious adlib, could I sit and watch a foreign television show, take in small bits and pieces of conversation, and know what was going in the story beyond what I could infer from the images alone?
This shows the importance of critical thinking within language learning, the ability to piece together whole thoughts and concepts without actually knowing or having been introduced to every part of speech being used. Through specific slides and exercises, Mango has really focused on this aspect of language learning, as it is crucial to actually functioning in your new language. For instance, when you go to a foreign country, you will most definitely be unable to understand everything a native speaker is saying to you. It is your critical thinking that will get you through these situations, not just stock phrases such as “Hi, how are you?”, or “May I have another?” In this way, you can begin to bridge the gap between language learning and language learned.
So, while I still haven’t gotten any sleep, I’ve at least managed to crack a foreign murder mystery using a bit of my brain.
Do you have any experiences where critical thinking helped you through a language barrier?
Jason Teshuba was recently interviewed by Crain’s Detroit Business about running a second stage company.
