There's a light at the end of the tunnel!

We'd like to give a big THANK YOU to all of you who prayed for us yesterday! 

The day didn't start like we'd planned: I got a 6am phone call from our immigration lawyer and ended up spending a couple hours at the ID office (still working on visa paperwork, another request for prayer!) which pushed Kaylee's evaluation back to later in the morning.

In spite of a rough start to the day, Kaylee did a good job on her evaluation and advanced a level!  She is now at Intermediate High (6 of 10) and just one level short of her goal.

I also went up a level, to my surprise!  Mauge, the director of the language school, said I am DEFINITELY in Advanced Mid (8 of 10), which was my final goal for Spanish study!  It's kind of surreal, but that means I am technically done!  Talk about an unexpected Christmas present. :)

Our focus now is to get Kaylee finished: as I mentioned, she would like to advance one more level, to Advanced Low.  This will most likely include me taking over the lion's share of household duties (aka Mr. Mom) so that she can devote more time to study and class.  We will be doing lots of thinking, praying, and talking with our overseers about how I can make the most of my time.

The most exciting part about this is that the light is finally showing at the end of the tunnel on our journey to the Guarayos!

Progress!!

Kaylee and I both had language evaluations this week, to determine where we are at in the process of learning Spanish.  We are excited to let you know that we both advanced a level! 

Here's where we are at:

The language-learning process requires constant adjustment of expectations.  The higher you get on the scale, the more time it takes to reach the next level.

I also just uploaded a 4th video from my trip to Urubichá.  Even if you've seen the photos (in our last post), this may give you a better feel for the town:

The Worst Stage of Language Learning

As I (Nathan) move into the Advanced levels of language, my progress gets harder and slower.  To continue progressing, I have to fine-tune my pronunciation.  I have to increase my speed and grammatical accuracy.  I have to speak in paragraphs.

My biggest roadblock at this point is learning and incorporating higher-level connectors.  You know, the ones that show purpose, reason, cause/effect, and hypotheses; words and phrases that express complete thoughts.

Essentially, I'm learning how to speak like an adult, but not just any adult.  I want to speak as someone educated, well-spoken, and confident, with the ability to influence people through my speech.

I'm trying to accomplish in 6 months, in a second language, what took me about 15 years in my first.

Progress!

As we mentioned in our last post, we had a language evaluation on the 1st.  Thank you for praying!  We both feel that we did our best, and we both went up a sub-level!  Remember my boring chart from before?  Here's where we are currently at in our language ability:

Kaylee broke into Intermediate!  I didn't quite make it as far as I hoped, but am "comfortably Intermediate-High, entering Advanced-Low."  To get to Advanced, I need to speak more fluidly, which means more speaking time.

All Greek to you?  Hopefully this post from a couple weeks ago will help you out: Language Learning: Why is it taking so long?

After my evaluation, I took a jaunt through the countryside to a little Quechua village called Sankayani:



(Click on a photo to see them larger!)

We also had a birthday party for Addi last week. She turned 3! As usual, photos are in Picasa Web Albums - Sirviendo a Cristo

Evaluation Dec 1!!

Here we are at evaluation time, again.  Tomorrow, both of us will be having giving Oral Proficiency Interviews to see how far we have advanced in the last 3 months.  Kaylee's is at 9am (6am MST) and Nathan's is at noon (9am MST).

While we both feel like we have progressed very well, we have both been sick in the past couple weeks and we feel like we've been struggling a lot in our conversations the last few days.    We both hope to cross critical steps in the ladder of progress (for more information about it, see this post).  Please pray that we will sleep well, wake up refreshed and ready, and perform to our best ability in HIS strength.

We hope to be posting good news soon regarding our results!!

Language Learning: Why is it taking so long?

As we approach the 9-month mark here in Bolivia, the question we get asked the most right now is, "When are you going to be done studying Spanish?"

You've probably seen programs that advertise "Fluent in 6 weeks or your money back" and the like. Well, like most things, it just isn't that easy. The big question is how to define fluency.

Our language progress is measured using a system similar to the ACTFL standard for proficiency testing. Essentially, we have regular proficiency evaluations that very accurately place us on the ladder of progress. Basically, it's 4 levels, broken into 10 sub-levels, as in this very boring chart I made just now:


Where are you right now?
Our evaluations establish our "floor" of language use. That is, when we reach a particular level, it means that we never speak below that level. Our last evaluation, at the end of August placed me between levels 5 & 6 and Kaylee right on the high end of level 3, reaching for 4. We will be having another evaluation in another month and both hope to break into the next BIG level!


What is your goal?
Obviously, we want to speak as well as possible. Our organization has established a standard that we do not teach publicly until we have reached at least Advanced: Low (level 7). I am shooting to reach Advanced:High (level 9).The reasoning behind this is simply explained by a mistake I made in class recently:

I was talking about the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah and got to the part about Lot's wife turning to the city and becoming a pillar of salt. I said:

Ella dio una vuelta a la ciudad. (She walked around the city). . .nope. . .um:

Ella dio la vuelta a la ciudad. (She turned the city over). . .nope. . .er:

Ella se dio la vuelta a la ciudad. (She turned toward the city). . .Whew!

How would you like to sit under a teacher/preacher that made mistakes like that? The only reason I changed my statement is that my instructor corrected me. If I had been teaching a Bible class, I would have just kept on going after the first statement, without realizing that I had led everyone astray. Not a big deal, right? But what if I made a similar mistake when teaching about the life of Christ, or the nature of salvation?

Unimaginable harm has been done here because of people teaching at low-level "fluency."

But isn't Spanish just a trade language? Why learn it so well?
Yes, that's true to a point. We do plan to do the bulk of our ministry in the Guarayú language (an indigenous language completely unrelated to Spanish). However, Spanish is the most widely-spoken language in the country, and anytime we are out of the tribal area, we will need it! Also, we are building relationships now with the local church here in the city. For them to share in our future ministry, we need to be able to accurately share with them.

However, the most important reason is that we work with Bolivian nationals! At this point, it looks as though we will not have any expat missionaries on our tribal missionary team. The other families that are getting involved in this tribe are Bolivians that have gone (or are going) through our organization's national training program, similar to what we did in the US. For us to work and fellowship together, we must be able to communicate with them at a high level.

When will you finish and move into the tribe?
That's a complicated question! If we continue to progress as we have, I hope to finish my Spanish study next spring. Kaylee will hopefully finish around the end of the year or early 2013. A lot of that depends on what I get involved in after I finish Spanish and how much I can take over at home to give Kaylee more study time.