Language study is finished for Steve

What a nerve-wracking few days! 8 months ago we had a language speaking test where I scored level 8/9 leaving only a single level to go. Would 8 months of work be enough to get over the final hurdle? I had finished all of the paperwork required, but had my speaking level also improved?

In the weeks leading up to the test, I experienced the normal ups and downs of language study. I made discoveries and found ways to say things that had tripped me up on the last test. Sometimes I told stories and it went great; other times people didn’t seem to get what I was saying. I was afraid that though I’d improved, perhaps it wouldn’t be enough!

I’m glad to say though that I passed! I got that final level and now I’m officially done with my full-time language study! That makes me “fluent” in the Kovol language, but what does that mean? It certainly doesn’t mean I know everything, can say anything I want to say or that I sound like a native speaker! I still speak with ums and ahhs, I still get vocabulary wrong and some things I try to communicate don’t come over. It does mean though that I can speak at a good speed at paragraph level and communicate the main idea of what I want to say.
That level is enough to get started with the next 3 tasks:

• Preparing the Kovol literacy program
• Starting to translate Scripture
• Starting to prepare Bible lessons

In doing those tasks my language ability will continue to improve with the expectation that when it comes time to teach I’ll be up yet another level. The important difference is that there are no more language exams and that my full-time work will be in translation and not in language learning.

My 3 big speaking tasks in the test were 1. to introduce our consultant Aaron by telling them about a PNG man we both know, an indirect introduction. That went very well. 2. I had to explain solar energy vs coal energy in terms of their environmental impact, introduce the idea of carbon credits to incentivize not cutting down trees and then list the positives and negatives of both ways of producing power and which I think would be a good option.
I did well talking about solar as people are familiar with solar panels. When talking about coal I referred to it as “mut igugum” which is the black soot from the fire. I was thinking charcoal with that, but unfortunately, that didn’t seem to communicate too well. People had some kind of dust in their minds and were stuck thinking about burning wood in their houses. Going through it afterwards my consultants warned me to watch out for that. Using specific Kovol words might miscommunicate, whereas if I had said coal was a “black rock in the ground you can burn” I would have signalled that this is something new that they are not familiar with. Taking familiar vocabulary and attempting to give it an additional meaning can get you into trouble, and it did for me! The concept of trees removing the carbon dioxide from the air never came across. I tried 3-4 times, but every time it failed. Despite my using the correct word order to say that the trees cleaned the wind, they came back with the idea that the wind was cleaning the black dirt off the leaves, reversing the grammatical order I was using because what I was saying was so unexpected. The words cleaning, washing and making new air all failed.
I sat there thinking “I’m in real trouble here, this is just like the last test. A key part of the story has completely fallen flat, and I’m sure to get the same score again!”. With the unfamiliarity of the material I needed to dumb things down and go way up to a bird’s eye view of things. Trees cleaning the air was too specific, I would have done better to talk about how mining destroys the area and kills the trees and that is a bad thing because trees are good.

The rest of my test went well though! I had to translate a pair of English proverbs which both succeeded and then the grammar sentences I was asked to translate went well. It was a real relief to hear the final verdict in the evening: congratulations I had done it 🙂
When I told the Kovol people, they surrounded me in a bear hug and jumped up and down in their excitement!

The next day was Gerdine’s turn and she was aiming to go up from level 4 to level 5. I had a sneaky feeling she’d do more than that and go up to level 6. She achieved the level 5 she was after and has been told she’s right on the doorstep of level 6. Great work from Gerdine too!
Having completed my full-time language study I have been encouraged to put some more time and effort into coming alongside Gerdine and coaching her through language study. Gerdine gets Fridays to work on language and I need to be helping her a little to make the most of that language study day. Meeting with her early in the week to discuss her plans for Friday, arranging for ladies to be there for her at a certain time to work on language and things like that are ideas which were suggested. It’s good advice and I’m going to be moving into that coaching and helping role to maximize her language time so she continues to improve.

It’s good to have visitors come in, check on us and help us figure out how to keep going and how to tweak things to be as effective as we can. We’ve been on our own for 6 weeks so it was nice to have some friends to chat with 🙂

So next steps. My language learning consultant is going to write an email passing me on to literacy and translation consultants and they’ll be in touch about the next steps and what to be working on. For the moment I’ll continue to prepare post-literacy materials by translating readers into the Kovol language. I’ll continue to work on finding my groove as a translator.
For the moment though we’ll take it easy for a few days 🙂 It’s our 10th anniversary tomorrow so maybe we’ll do something special like take the kids to the stream for a paddle 😀 Maybe we’ll watch an episode of the Great British Bake Off? You know: treat ourselves as best we can in the middle of the jungle 😀

How does it feel to finish? It feels like an accomplishment. It’s a relief, it’s exciting, but it also doesn’t feel like much at all. It feels like arriving at Everest’s base camp — we’re about to start the climb of translation, teaching and discipleship.