“My Answer Should Be Accepted” – the frustrations of a language learner

2 days ago

For the purpose of quality control, a popular language learning app allows user feedback options for each exercise item that include responses for identifying technical problems or missing information. And if your attempt at a given exercise example is marked incorrect, another reporting option that shows up is: “My answer should be accepted”. I’m currently studying French (B2 level) and find myself selecting this feedback option rather often. After all, (I reason), my answer LOOKS good, it SOUNDS good when I say it, and it may even pass muster when I feed the sentence into an online translator. Why shouldn’t it be accepted? But frequently I realize that this complaint is born out of frustration. Frustration in language learning usually occurs when there is no easy answer to the question “Why?” in relation to some exception, idiomatic variability, or apparent contradiction of the rules in the target language. Isolated sentence examples lack the living context that determines so much of what is expressed in a language and how. We can learn and memorize all the structural aspects but then find that using a language in the real world is maddeningly filled with situational, regional, and demographic variations difficult to anticipate and impossible to prepare for. So at a certain point, the goal of fluency will require one to become less of a language “engineer” and much more of an artist, that is, observing colloquialisms, noting oddities, and intuitively detecting the coding inherent in slang, accents, and clever turns of phrase. This approach includes the disorienting sense that not everything about a language can be easily explained: sometimes, it’s simply better for me to be open and accept that my technically correct answer is “wrong”. In these instances, I should perhaps not ask, “Why is this weird language item like this?”, but rather instead, “How, when, where, or with whom, does this language item seem to work?”