Lost in English

I got lost. I never get lost! I am one of those people with a ‘good sense of direction’. My dad used to get lost between the kitchen and the bathroom, but not me. I don’t even get lost in foreign countries. Orient yourself to some permanent feature, count the number of streets, match up the symbols and Bob's your uncle – you’re there. Well none of that worked for me last night.

I was meeting my editor west of Toronto at Café du Lac for an appreciation dinner.  After glancing at a google-map to get my bearings I learned 2350 Lakeshore Rd. was between Brown’s Line and Dixie.  I didn’t need any more information than that. From the main highway I took a big road south to Lakeshore and turned right towards Brown’s Line and Dixie. The restaurant wasn’t there. The numbers were all wrong. I kept on driving and stopped at a pizza place (they know where everything is because they deliver) They never heard of Café du Lac. That was a bad sign. I turned around and drove back towards Toronto past Dixie and Brown’s Line, then asked at another pizza place and they said, “Keep going…” By that point, I was very disoriented and very late. Eventually the numbers started to make sense. I got to Etobicoke, 2350 Lakeshore West. and the restaurant – 45 minutes late. I was embarrassed, apologetic and rattled. How could I have screwed that up so badly?  Easy, my map was broken.

At the restaurant we had a nice glass of wine, Sandy was generous and forgiving, dinner was fantastic and the evening was salvaged. Driving home I was still haunted by the experience of being lost and I mentally retraced my steps to try and figure out what went wrong. Turning right onto Lakeshore towards Brown’s Line, was the tipping point. All the numbers were wrong and that was the first clue that I ignored. My original sin was leaving out a critical W in my google search which in turn provided me with a faulty map. Then I followed the map, disregarding all other evidence. Street numbers and maps are two sets of information that I trust – and they didn’t jibe, so I had to choose. I chose wrong. I made bad decision after bad decision till I was hopelessly lost on the correct road with the correct street-number! I felt frustrated and stupid.

English is like being lost.

Whether learning or teaching English the information you have doesn’t lead to where you want to go. The students’ experiences doesn’t ring true with what their teachers tell them. In the classroom we teach “Good morning. How are you?” and in the hall we say “Yo, wasup?” There is no connection between what we teach and what we do.

What we teach is writing and what they experience is speaking. In English – they don’t jibe.

The original sin, the disastrous right turn, the false assumption that created the whole ESL mess is that English is one language, that English writing and English speaking are connected. They aren’t. Lost in English is how ESL learners feel all the time.

The restaurant was a short distance from my disastrous right turn. Had I chosen to pay attention to the street-numbers and ditch the map, I would have turned around and been early for dinner.  But I didn’t. Eventually, I had to accept the map wasn’t working and when I changed my strategy, I found the restaurant.

Teaching people to speak English requires a new strategy. The alphabet, spelling and grammar is a broken map. None of that wonderful writing information is ever going to get students to  dinner. To coin a familiar phrase, you can’t get there from here. Until we change our strategy and teach speaking as speaking, students and teachers feel frustrated, stupid and hungry.