schizophrenia of language learning

some thoughts on language learning since my lesson was cancelled this morning. I told my teacher I wasn’t feeling well, and she ran from my house like she was scared she was going to die. I don’t know if she’s that afraid of getting sick or if she just didn’t want to teach me today:-)
Anyway I pulled out a book on language learning and read a description that describes my life right now, and so I thought I’d share:

“Stages of Language Learning and Cultural Adjustment
Stage 1: Excitement and euphoria
Stage 2: Culture Shock: withdrawal, complaints regarding the local culture
Stage 3: Culture Stress: tentative adjustment and recovery, though with vacillation
Stage 4: Near or full recovery: assimilation or adaptation

It turns out that “Stage 3” is the key stage for language learning. It’s “when linguistically a person begins to ‘master’ the foreign language” that anomie is the strongest. It is here that one feels the most “uprooted,” homeless,” adrift. This is the first symptom of the 3rd stage, and one can be powerfully tempted to revert or regress back to one’s native language.
Interestingly, and perhaps frighteningly, passing through this stage has been likened by the second language learning observers to schizophrenia. In fact, some wonder if disequilibrium might not be “the key motivation for language acquisition: Language interacts with cognition to achieve equilibrium” (Brown 1994:60)
This is the most crucial period; it’s here we sink or swim. It’s here that we must also pay careful attention to the challenges and the payoffs, the sacrifices and the gains. There is a definite dying to self at this point, a losing of self, a letting go of who you have known yourself to be and a willingness to become someone else: as Jesus put it, he who seeks to save his life will lose it, while he who loses his life for my sake will find it. This may become much more real than you ever imagined possible. Do I say this to scare you? Maybe; regardless, you must count the cost and be prepared to pay it.” -from PLANTS language learning strategy

That is the best description of everything that I’ve been feeling for the last couple of weeks that I can find. (I'm at stage three if you didn't guess) I thought I was going crazy. Now I know its just part and parcel with learning a new language. I still don’t know who I’ll be when I come through this stage; but as long as I stay close in the arms of the father, I can rest assured that it will be someone better able to love my local friends.

Then this is just funny...for all of you who get a kick out of personality styes...it comes into play in language learning too, and when I read my assets and liabilities of my personality, I just laughed cause its so true! A good reminder that although I may feel a little schizophrenic right now...there are other people out there like me!

Assets
E:Willing to take conversational risks
N:Inferencing and guessing from context, structuring own training, conceptualizing and model-building
T: Analysis, self-discipline; instrumental motivation
J:Systematic work, get the job done (whatever it is)
Liabilities
E:Dependent on outside stimulation and interaction
N:Inaccuracy and missing important details, sought excessive complexity or discourse
T:Performance anxiety because self-esteem was attached to achievement, excessive need for control (language, process)
J:Rigidity, intolerance of ambiguous stimuli

this is just a good reminder it is only by the grace of God that I can make it through this process!