Comprehension-Based Language Learning – A Student’s Perspective

Years ago I took a Spanish class in High School. We did a lot of memorization and studied Spanish grammar. But most of us never really learned Spanish.

When I came on staff at New Tribes Language Institute, I found out that there are better ways to learn a second language than the methods that were used in our High School Spanish class. Over the years we have improved our language acquisition course as we have implemented comprehension-based methods in the classes that we teach.

A student couple in second semester recently wrote a newsletter describing the language acquisition class that we teach here. It provides a bit of a glimpse into our comprehension-based language learning methods.

Have you ever studied a foreign language in school? Did it involve endless hours of textbook reading, memorization, and, might we say, beating your head against the wall?!

That's how we studied French in school, and, not surprisingly, we are not fluent today. But in our last few weeks at the training center, we have been learning Portuguese using a whole new approach: TPR - Total Physical Response.

This method involves learning language the way little kids do: listening, comprehending, and then speaking. Instead of reading and memorizing, we've gotten both our minds and bodies involved. In some exercises, we point at objects on the table, pictures, and things around the room. In other activities, we jump up and down, kick the wall, and spin around in circles. Our Brazilian language helper describes the object or our action in a Portuguese phrase. He also gives us directions in Portuguese, and has us point at the objects or perform certain actions. After listening and comprehending for a few days, we even got to attempt speaking Portuguese ourselves! From trying out TPR, we are excited to learn another language, and convinced that it is possible!

Comprehension-based language learning is a great improvement upon the methods that were traditionally used in the past. Our missionaries have found this approach to language learning to be very effective. Here at the Missionary Training Center, we are continually developing our classes so that our students might have the best tools to use when they arrive on the mission field.