Ask a Missionary - Catch The Fire

Many people still advocate using the Language Acquisition
Made Practical (LAMP) method, which majors on memorizing useful
phrases and then repeating those phrases to twenty or thirty strangers.
Through repetition, you learn the phrases, and you make new
friends. This method, however, is increasingly falling into disfavor.
The LAMP method is useful for standard greetings and phrases, but
it does not teach you how to be creative and develop sentences
you’ve never before spoken. You speak only from a list of memorized
phrases.
Newer methods suggest that you spend more time working
with an individual language helper or assistant. This way, you receive
personal input rather than just listening to speakers use large
amounts of vocabulary you don’t know. Then spend more time talking
and interacting with a small circle of friends rather than parroting
memorized phrases quickly to a large number of people.
Answer from Mike, who served ten years in West Africa and North Africa on a
Bible translation team with WEC International.
A:
Ask others to correct your language
mistakes.
Ask people to correct your language, your pronunciation of
words in the language they are teaching you. Don’t be timid about
asking, “Did I say it right?” They will readily correct your language—
but only if you’re willing and ask.
I remember hearing about an older woman who’d been a missionary
for years in Africa. She consistently bungled the language
those people had been trying to teach her, but she thought she
was doing a wonderful job. One day a young African man had the
boldness to correct that woman’s language. She drew herself up to
her full height and looked up at this tall Nuer man. She said, “Young
man, I was speaking this language before you were born.”
Don’t follow that woman’s example. Instead, ask people to
correct your language, your manners, and your way of life, because
TRAINING: Getting It Right | 107