What is Language School?

I am trying to figure out what exactly language school is.

Is it the four hours a day I spend with my language instructor as he tutors me in grammar and structure? Or is it when I spend two hours cooking in the kitchen with Charlotte and talk to her about my day? Or maybe it is when I know I have to make that phone call in French and it scares me to death, so I spend fifteen minutes looking up all the possible vocabulary words. Or maybe it is when I have to order something at a restaurant or tell the man how to fill up my car with gas. It could even be when I play in the street with the kids and have to explain to them how to play a new game. 

What exactly is language school? My life right now is language school. My best friend is my little orange notebook where I write down words and phrases, sometimes a hundred a day. I then study those words and phrases each night, and I finish each day by reading a passage out of my new french Bible. 

Sometimes I am amazed at how God provides the words that I need. For example, I read John 1 one night before bed and picked out one word to remember: temoignage, the word for testimony. The very next day in language class with my instructor, he used that word, and I recognized it and was able to participate in the conversation. Then that same evening, as Charlotte told me over dinner about how her friends, colleagues, and neighbors do not understand why she is moving to the village, I was able to encourage her by telling her that her choices are a great testimony to the people around her of what it looks like to obey and serve God. 

All in one day with just one word. 

And you would be amazed at how often stuff like that happens. 

Sometimes, I memorize a random word that I think I'll never use, but then for some reason I will actually need it in a conversation five minutes later. Other times, I might look up an obscure word in the dictionary, and then I will hear that word during our talk around the dinner table that very night. So I would not have understood if I had not just so happened to look it up.

Such incidences are constant reminders that it is actually God who is teaching me language, and he knows the exact words that I need at their exact moment. Since he is my teacher, I must respect his plan of instruction, which means I should neither lag behind nor rush ahead. (Although for me, my tendency is definitely to rush ahead!) I must take what he gives me each day at a time, so I cannot try to take in more words than what he gives in one day. 

It kind of reminds me of how God provided manna in the desert for the Israelites. He gave them just enough to last one day - nothing more and nothing less. If they took too much, it turned sour and ended up wasted. In the same way, God gives me just what I need one day at a time, and if I try to take too much, it ends up wasted. 

I think it's that way with a lot of things in life. Think about money, food, time, relationships, work, service. If we settle for less than what God wants to give us, we leave hungry, but if we take more than what he wants us to have, we end up wasting something. 

Here is something else about language acquisition: it always involves four elements: reading, writing, listening, and speaking. Two of these - listening and reading - are considered "input" because language is being taken in. The other two, writing and speaking, are "output" because language is being produced.

One must spend equal time in all four aspects to really grasp a language. At the same time, though, there comes a point when you have to get out of the classroom and onto the streets to actually interact with people. That's when language learning truly occurs. Trust me, I've done the classroom thing, and I've done the immersion thing. The classroom is way easier and more comfortable, but the immersion is what really makes you learn to communicate. 

I am beginning to think in the same terms when it comes to learning to communicate with God. We must spend significant time in each of the four aspects: reading the Word of God, listening to him, writing responses, and speaking back to him. I find myself asking, "How well am I doing each of these things?" 

In the same way, there comes a point when you have to get out of the classroom (or out of the chapel, or auditorium, or seminar on the topic of prayer) and actually interact with God. The classroom is more comfortable, but getting on your knees is when the real communication begins. 

And when you find yourself on your knees, even if it feels like stepping into a new place where you don't yet know how to communicate, I bet you will be pleasantly and amazingly surprised at how often he provides just the right words that you need at just the right time to communicate with him in just the right way.