Entry #4

This entry is one that I spent quite a bit of time thinking about.  I originally thought that I would look at a foreign language and the utilize my resources at TRHS to find text.  That language would have to have a Latin base as I know right off the bat that there was no way that I could make any sense of Mandarin Chinese and this would be a short experience as I would simply have to go all the way back to the beginning by asking many questions of our Chinese teacher and reading up in English to try and obtain comprehension.  The problem I found with Latin languages was that the association of my knowledge of Spanish was providing me an unfair advantage.  In college, I focused upon Latin American History and had to learn Spanish.  I got to where I could read pretty fluently, but could not speak it fluently.  The transfer of words in Latin bases similar to Spanish made it easier to comprehend the texts I was trying to read.  Where, I admit that it has been a while, I was able to make a rough, disjointed understanding of adult literature.

So where did that leave me?  I wanted to have a true experience with having to struggle with a language.  It wasn't until I came home Monday afternoon and realized that I had the perfect "language" to use for this assignment.  Over Christmas, my loving wife got me an electric base.  I had played the standup base in high school and she thought it might be fun to have more music in the house (She plays the flute incredibly well and my daughter who is in 6th grade plays the clarinet).  The problem is that there are distinct differences between reading sheet music for the electric vs. the stand-up base.  I found a challenge now as I had not spent any time on the instrument since it was opened Christmas day (simply not time for it LOL).

I began with trying to read the music and play it without having done any research.  This did not turn out well and my wife started to doubt the fact that she bought it as I could not get anything out the way it looked on paper.  I tried to figure out fingerings, guessing on notes from what I could remember.  I could get the beat down, but nothing sounded right.  There was not a song in the book that I could get to sound remotely the way it should.  I tried to slow it down and take each note individually in turn.  I found the song on Itunes (She knew I enjoyed Pink Floyd and that was the first book of songs she got for me) and played it a second at a time and then tried to experiment finding the same sound. All was futile.  I finally asked the master musician herself to come help me.  She started talking in notes and not how to play the note.  Lost me right away even though I knew I once had this language down pat. After about an hour of getting no where, she final told me that I needed to get a method book.  In a way I was extremely disappointed as I did not realize I had lost so much ability to read music.  I would have thought that I would have had similar if not better success then I did with the attempts to read French because of the connection to Spanish.  I was definitely wrong.

So, this afternoon after school, I went and got two method books; one intermediate and one beginning and each contained an audio CD to help.  If I was going to do this experiment right, I figured that I would work my way backwards to see at what point I might be able to make some head way.  Quickly realized that a majority of the intermediate book was still over my head.  Too many notes were not sounding correctly especially since I had no clue where the fingerings were for each note.  At this point I thought about calling up and expert bass player that I know (current student), but could not bring myself to admit that a high school student had more knowledge then I did about being able to play the darn thing.  So I dove backwards into the beginning book.  I started to find some common ground about halfway through, right about where the fingerings for each note started.  So here I was realizing that I had to go completely back to square one.  All the way to page one!

So where did this take me?  Upon reflection, it is easy to see how an ELL student can feel when learning a new language.  Even if it is a language that one might have some limited exposure to.  I found the frustration of not being able to read at the level I should be able to or once could. I also found that I had to slow way down.  Repetition was going to be extremely important to providing me the ability to advance learning.  On top of that, I was going to need time to process the language.  All of these things are important elements that teachers have to keep in mind when instructing ELL students.