Dancing Bears and B-Boy Buckwell

In the mid-80's, breakdancing spread out from New York in what I imagine was a cloud of pixie dust crossing the Atlantic and somehow finding its way into a British secondary school. I know this happened because there was no other plausible explanation of how Stuart Buckwell, could suddenly have become a disenchanted black delinquent from the Bronx ... the day before he was just blissfully naive Stuart from a well to do middle class family in Sevenoaks, Kent (a stockbroker's Shangri-La - A British version of "The Hamptons")  ... and now here he was, freshly emerged from his crystallise ... B-Boy Buckwell from the hood. That lunchtime, some lino magically appeared in the common room and the cool kids started breakdancing to this new fangled electronic music, which lets face it, spawned from a culture that was as alien to us as E.T.

And then it happened ... B-Boy Buckwell, the butt of most jokes, the geek of meek ... national health glasses held together with blu-tack and cellotape ... well, he just strutted into the centre of the lino and proceeded to breakdance in a style of a trainspotting son of a parish clergy. It was as if breakdancing had met something as quintessentially British as a cucumber sandwich eaten at tiffin time on Sunday afternoons. We all knew it was terribly crap, he was a most beastly breakdancer for heaven's sake ... but nobody said anything ... no ... we all cheered and pretended B-Boy Buckwell was the latest greatest sensation in the world of hip hop.

We were very convincing too ... and after a few days, despite not wanting to believe the hype himself ... every kid in our school started chanting "B-Boy Buckwell ... B-Boy Buckwell" ... until, eventually, he caved into the pressure and performed his ... er ... unique style of breakdancing.  Years later, Stuart died of leukemia and some of the coolest kids at our school came to the funeral. Now, okay, in the years between school and death, Stuart knew that everyone was taking the piss out of his extremely crap efforts at breakdancing ... however, that wasn't that important ... he entertained us all enormously and we loved him for it. One could say, he was like geek chic before that was even a thing.

Now, what does this have to do with dancing bears ....

Well, then ... when I worked as a technologist, I often used the term, "dancing bear" to describe something that clumsily shuffles around in a style that could be described as dancing if I was being generous. Everyone is amazed; they never expected the bear to be able to dance in the first place ... but yet, there it is ... seemingly dancing before our very eyes!

It's not a very good dancer, but that's beside the point ... it's a bear for crying out loud ... and it's doing it's best ... what did you expect, Darcy Bussell?  Come on, throw it a biscuit ... it's a bear ... and it is kind of dancing. 

In technology, you could think of a "dancing bear" as device that is trying to be something it clearly isn't. How about a digital clock radio? Is it a clock? Yes, kind of. Is it a radio? Yes ... again ... kind of. Is it the best clock in the world ... probably not ... is it the best radio you've ever listened to ... again ... probably not? Yet, we cut it some slack because we appreciate it's trying to be at least reasonable at being a radio and being a clock. 

How about people learning a foreign language? Could it be said, that their native tongue is the essence of who they are, their personality, their very being ... yet here they are, clumsily uttering foreign language out of their cake-holes ... and native speakers, in just the same way as the audiences that once watched dancing bears, coo and applaud the plucky language learner ... for they are not one of us, yet, hark, they can speak our language. I see little "farty pants" Buckwell breakdancing like a  bear encircled by curious onlookers.

They say, "Oh, you absolutely must speak a foreign language in order to get good at speaking a foreign language." Now that does seem to be very true ... however ... speaking at the beginning and speaking through the intermediate stages ... you may well find yourself being the next B-Boy Buckwell, the next dancing bear ... speaking a foreign language for the entertainment of others. You can live with that, and to be honest, when I think about Stuart, I still smile and think, "That guy was actually a legend ... he had the last laugh really ... we all loved him in the end." But he could never breakdance very well by proper breakdancing standards. 

Is that a fair assessment of the situation? Can it be said that all language learners are destined to remain clumsy dancing bears for all of their lives, or is it possible that a bear can learn to dance with elegance and grace .... can a bear master dance and successfully audition for a part in Swan Lake at the Bolshoi Ballet? Well, maybe that's only the very creme of the crop, yet out there on the interweb, one can observe some folks who have reached a stunningly impressive level of mastery in foreign languages. Perhaps they are bears, who can actually dance so well, that if the lights were down low, you might not even know that they were bears. But they are bears ... highly skilled bears that have come a long way.

That's how I see Matt from "Matt vs. Japan". He speaks Japanese incredibly well from what I've witnessed and his techniques for achieving such mastery of the language are absolutely solid. A lot of his core theory comes from Krashen's comprehensible input hypothesis. If a person embarks on this mission AND can actually commit to such a huge amount of effort, I have absolutely no doubt that the end result will be a level of fluency, a depth of comprehension that no other technique will come close to matching. BUT, of course ... it's not for everyone ... it's not feasible for everyone ... and another blog post for another day ... I wouldn't want to be part of the cult of Matt (not at the moment, but the guy has enormous potential to be an utterly brilliant human being ... and I think one of his recent videos at least acknowledges the fact that AJATT can come across as a bunch of elitist dicks blowing smoke up their own bottoms ... and he's moving away from that ... so I'll watch that space and get on with my own way of going about the task in hand).

So how am I going to avoid being a dancing bear ... well ... quite simply ... I'm going to stop performing. I agree with one of Matt's key messages ... massive amounts of input without even trying to speak ... that's what I'll be doing. I see it like this ... I can speak (albeit in sucky ways) some Japanese. I'm much better at reading and writing kanji ... and I'm working on my listening skills. I'm in a fairly good place to be giving myself a massive amount of input whenever it fits into my life. So that's basically what I'll be doing now.

Here's my plan ...

• Using LingQ to rapidly grow passive vocabulary. 
• When I reach 12,000 "known words", I'll make listening 50% and reading 50% of my time.
• When I get to 30,000 "known words", I will start speaking again. BUT ... I will be able to monitor my utterances ... or at least, I believe that I will know if something is natural Japanese or whether it's my old sucky Japanese. Right now, I'm unable to self-monitor ... I need a language partner to look perplexed at what tumbles out of my mouth in order for me to know what I'm saying is good or crappy. Problem is ... without enough input, I'll never know what sucks and what doesn't ... hence my switch to mostly reading and listening.

How long will this take. Well, at my current rate, I'm adding 4,000 words a month to my passive tally of "known words". I actually try to encounter 300 new words a day. Simply by encountering words in the context of natural Japanese articles ... I'm going to end up being able to comprehend Japanese media. Now it may be that I end up able to read and listen to Japanese at a very high level rather quickly ... maybe a year ... maybe two ... I don't know ... I'm just going to keep on going, grinding my way to comprehension. 

I've always maintained that at some point in the future, I'll spend a good amount of time, wandering around Japan, living in Japanese. That will be where I gain the ability of speaking ... as I said earlier, I do believe the best way of reaching a very high level of fluency will be by speaking a lot. Only right now, with my limited active vocabulary and my lack of comprehension when I'm listening ... my conversations are okay for a light giggle in a bar ... but I want to be making well educated, intelligent conversation ... I want to be an elegant ballet dancer, not a dancing bear ... but I want to do it without losing my sense of humour or my love for humanity, fun and the acknowledgement that nobody loves someone who can't see the funny side to breakdancing badly.