By Professor Emeritus Joseph Lo Bianco*
It’s a bit cold and rainy today, a typical near-winter June day in Melbourne, but for Athens a sunny 26 is forecast. Many Greek Australian families have the sunny skies of a Greek summer on their minds, but they aren’t going to Greece just to escape winter. So, this brief article, the fifth in the series of Pharos Tips, focuses on a question from a reader to The Greek Herald of how families can ensure their children continue to engage with Greek language learning during their holidays in Greece.
So, what can you do? First, it is important to prepare. Discuss with your child the routines of starting a conversation, of closing a conversation, of being polite or straightforward, and follow the tips below of how to manage the pace and rate of talking in Greek, and how to fix things up when miscommunication happens. These are simple talk routines for preparing a visit to Greece so your children can have productive conversations in Greek, managing the talk that is directed to them by adults and, gaining as much language input as possible.
In linguistics the concept of ‘input’ is very important. It tells us about how much language is directed to the learner, but when tied to ‘intake’, meaning how much of that input counts as learning, we have a couple of concepts that powerfully support communication.
Expectations:
If your children don’t already know, it is important to introduce them to the idea that conversations reflect culture, and therefore Greek conversations are not the same as standard English conversations in Australia. You should chat with them about when to be formal and when informality is ok, how they can expect intimate adults (relatives) will communicate, such things as expression, gestures, touch, eye contact, and what they will expect in relation to respect, topics to avoid or broach.
The more knowledge they have about how communication works in Greece or Cyprus, the better. The more they use the language the more input they will attract, the more input they attract the more this input will become intake and in turn this will expand vocabulary and extend what your child can say. Improving expectations also requires better listening, and you can help your child with focused listening by doing exercises in fast and slow talk, and formal and relaxed language, so they can pick the differences. If the place you are visiting is a rural area, or a small island or village that has a local accent or dialect it is useful to discuss this with your child.
Managing a conversation:
In preparing your time in Greece or Cyprus you can pre-teach phrases that allow your child to control the pace of a conversation, the rate at which people speak, (such as asking them to slow down, repeat or explain things), and how to repair a conversation that’s not going well.
Conversation management phrases might be:
Μπορείτε σας παρακαλώ να μην χρησιμοποιήσετε αγγλικά; Προσπαθώ να βελτιώσω τα ελληνικά μου. Can you please not use English? I am trying to improve my Greek.
Μπορείτε να με βοηθήσετε να καταλάβω τι σημαίνει αυτή η λέξη (ή φράση); Can you help me to understand what this word (or phrase) means?
Δεν είμαι σίγουρος/η τι εννοείτε. Μπορείτε να το διευκρινίσετε; I’m not sure what you mean, can you clarify that?
Expressions like these help your child to control the input they receive and to convert more of it into intake, but parents must adapt them to the age and confidence level of the child.
I only have space here to discuss two aspects of ‘communication prep’, which I am calling managing a conversation. First, I will discuss Pace and then Repair and provide some practical tips on both.
Pace:
Pace means how fast the conversation is and the rate of delivery of ideas or requests or information. Native speakers often don’t realise that it is helpful to slow down a bit for new learners, or to use ‘redundancy’, which means to say certain things in different ways so the learner can get what the intended meaning is. For example, if your child asked someone where the shop is located, the local person might reply:
Το μαγαζί βρίσκεται κοντά στο τέλος της προβλήτας, ξέρεις, εκεί που είναι αραγμένα τα σκάφη και δίπλα στο άγαλμα. The shop is located near the end of the pier, you know, where the boats are moored and beside the statue.
Even though it is long and a bit complicated for learners this is a helpful sentence. The speaker is giving you three separate pieces of information about where the shop is located, that it is near the end of the pier, that the pier is where boats are moored, and that the pier is beside the statue and information about what a pier looks like. This is called redundancy, giving apparently unnecessary extra information which increases the chances the listener will get the location right.
We all know that in English a pier is a platform jutting out into the sea, but the word pier is a low frequency word, and many English-speaking Greek Australian kids might not know the Greek word for pier. So your child benefits when input like this is directed at them.
To manage the pace and rate of input you can pre-teach simple phrases like the following which help to slow down the input they receive, or to add redundancy, both of which give your child the ability to manage and control the pace of the conversation.
Μαθαίνω ελληνικά, μπορείτε να το επαναλάβετε; I’m learning Greek, can you repeat that?
Θέλω πολύ να μιλήσω ελληνικά, αλλά μπορείτε να το επαναλάβετε ή μπορείτε να το πείτε πιο αργά; I really want to speak Greek, but can you repeat it or can you say it slower?
If they can know a range of age-appropriate expressions like: How should I say it? In Greek then they can take charge of conversations, at least a little bit.
Repair:
Fixing up a conversation that has gone wrong is super important to build confidence and to encourage children to keep trying to communicate in Greek. If this doesn’t happen then your child might opt out of talking to people in Greek, or rely on others to interpret for them, or just stick with safe subjects. This would be a shame because stretching yourself to talk about new topics, with new conversation partners, is excellent for learning, for extending vocabulary, and has been shown in research to consolidate the new knowledge the person achieves. Success is important as an encouragement but also as a cognitive reinforcer. You can pre-teach some ways to help your child patch up things when things don’t go as planned.
I will show this with a made-up example. Imagine your daughter is called Vasiliki. You ask Vasiliki to go to the local shop and buy something.
The local shopkeeper is an elderly person and Vasiliki says: “Γεια σου, τι κάνεις;” (Yassou, ti kanis?) – “Hi, how are you?” (using the informal greeting and “you” singular). The elderly shopkeeper reacts against the informal “you” by saying: “Τι; Έτσι μιλάνε τα παιδιά στους μεγαλύτερούς τους;” –“What? Is that how children speak to their elders?”
Vasiliki used “εσύ” and “Γεια σου” (Yassou) and these are not appropriate for speaking with a more elderly person.
If Vasiliki had said: “Γεια σας, τι κάνετε;” (Yassas, ti kanete?) – “Hello, how are you?” the shopkeeper would more likely respond positively as follows “Καλησπέρα, είμαι καλά. Και εσύ τι κάνεις;” (Kalispera, eimai kala. Kai esý ti kanis?).
Vasiliki’s mistake is not fatal; it can be repaired. To repair, she could say
Ω, συγγνώμη, μόλις μαθαίνω ελληνικά. Oh, I’m sorry, I am just learning Greek.
Strategies to repair conversations going wrong mostly involve repeating or rephrasing, with explanations but the mistakes can be avoided by teaching them to do simple “confirmation checking”, like this: Το είπα σωστά; Did I say that correctly? Another useful phrase would be Καταλαβαίνετε τι εννοώ; Do you understand what I mean?
Conclusion:
Ultimately, the most useful thing tomake sure the kids get language learning on our Greek holiday is to enrol in a course that is conversational and suited to their age. If you can do this I recommend to speak with the school running the course to make sure the input they provide students is practical, but even if your child is doing a course there is no substitute for actually using the language and the tips I have mentioned are simple ways to get the most out of conversations. So, to summarise, communication prep is important, and you can turn it into a shared and bonding exercise to do with your children.
1. Expectations checking, to make sure they know what communication is like, about cultural norms in conversation and to understand how others will see them and relate to them. The key ideas that influence how conversation works are relationships: between intimates and strangers and settings: formal and informal.
2. Managing conversations: controlling the pace and rate of talk
3. Managing conversations: repair.
You can attend the next session of Raising Children Bilingually on June 8 to learn more about the role of the home in bringing up Greek English bilinguals. The seminar is free of charge, and open to all. Register: http://www.mgtav.asn.au/seminar—language-in-the-home.html
For further queries, please email at pharos.au@gmail.com
*Joseph Lo Bianco is Professor of Language and Literacy Education at the Melbourne Graduate School of Education. He is also the President of Pharos Alliance, dedicated to preserving Greek language in Australia.
Do you have a question you would like the Pharos Alliance to answer, send your query to editor@foreignlanguage.com.au.
