Most attempts at language learning aren't joyful.
Most attempts at language learning aren't successful.
There are many reasons this is the case. Indwelling Language seeks to identify and counteract these reasons.
There is immense variety among learners and settings. Indwelling Language helps each learner or teacher identify the reasons this might be the case in his or her particular situation and then eliminate or rise above these reasons.
Most of the reasons language learning is often joyless or unsuccessful fall into two categories:
1. The learner isn’t living in the language.
2. The language isn’t living in the learner.
1. If you want to acquire a language, you need to hear and see it enough for it to become natural.
You need to hear and see it enough in ways and forms that you can understand.
This won’t happen unless a good chunk of your life, in some way or another, “happens” in the language.
This, in turn, won’t happen unless (a) you have frequent access to people or media who use the language and (b) you are interested enough in what these people and media are using the language for to keep coming back for more.
If you have a teacher, her main duty is to provide abundant, compelling situations and content that help you live in the language.
If you are a teacher, your main duty is to provide abundant, compelling situations and content that help your students live in the language.
Even if you have the perfect teacher, you spend only a tiny percentage of your time with her.
If you really want joy and success in your language learning, you may have to find your own situations where you can live in the language.
The easiest way to do that is to create such situations.
The easiest way to continue creating such situations is to develop habits that include them.
The best way to maintain such habits is in a community of learners and teachers.
Indwelling Language helps learners and teachers create such situations, habits, and communities.
2. The language living in you is a result of your living in the language.
The language living in you means being able to see the world through the lens of that language.
The language living in you means being able to experience the world with the ethos of that language.
The language living in you means being able to describe the world in terms of that language.
The language living in you means being able to share the world with others who share that language.
It means being able to do all this without mental recourse to any other language.
Although the language living in you is an outcome of your living in the language, it also gives you yet more ways to live in the language:
Once a minimum of the language lives in you, you carry around in you ways of living in the language—stories, phrases, songs, memories, ideas—and you and the language can live in each other in a fabulous feedback loop.
This feedback loop boosts another: joy and success, success and joy.
Joy in the pursuit of indwelling language makes you more likely to keep pursuing it, which makes you more likely to experience success in learning and teaching the language.
Success in learning and teaching the language is a joyful thing! It leads, in turn, to greater eagerness to live in the language, which leads to success, which leads to joy again.
Soon, the feedback loops become simultaneous and constant:
You don’t just live in the language for a while, then let it live in you. You and the language trippily indwell each other.
You don’t just experience joy for a while, then success for a while. Joy and success are foxtrotters on the dance floor of your self.
Indwelling Language’s bold and eclectic approaches support your joy and success, helping you live in the language and the language live in you.
Indwelling Language Manifesto FAQ
-Do you have a fancier, more corporate-sounding version? Yep.
-Is indwelling the same as immersion? Not quite.
-Is there more to the name Indwelling Language? A little bit.
-Are you Karl Marx? Nope.
-Are you Oscar Wilde? Probably not.
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