From teacher to learner

To set the record straight I will confess: as a teacher I was a touch sanctimonious about telling students how easy it was to learn English. Then I arrived in Chile in July 2010 about the only words I knew were hola and amigos. Would what I’d been telling students to do work on the other side of the language learning experience?

Come with me as I live, eat and talk what I preach.

Getting Started

I rearranged my life so that Spanish becomes front and center. The language-learning formula is that you will quickly be able to read and follow what is happening. The context will help even if you don’t understand every word. Next you will be able to increasingly comprehend what people are talking about. Moving right along you may start to talk like an 18-month old, but vocabulary will develop. Writing is the most difficult. Even people who speak the language exceedingly well, rarely write like native-speakers.

Live

So how do I live Spanish? When I get up in the morning I tune in to RTVE radio and/or television out of Madrid on the laptop. No commercials and the announcers speak in clear, crisp voices. If the people you are listening to speak well, it is much easier to follow the conversation.

And when you really listen, you will start to hear how many words are, in fact, the same as English, but with a different pronunciation. English stresses the first syllable; Spanish the penultimate.

Another perk is that the newscasts are repeated so what I miss the first time I’ll catch more of on the second go-round. My usual station is the 24-hour radio exterior – en directo. I became fluent in economics as 23 of the 24 hours are devoted to discussing the financial crisis in Spain.

For newscasts on television, watch the announcer’s mouth. Remember this is now deaf people learn to speak, so pay attention and imitate. Sports broadcasts are also good listening exercises as the vocabulary is limited.

Now I only listen to Spanish music. And only watch Spanish movies. Sub-titles – which makes it a bit of a waste of time as you are reading in English rather than listening in the target language – isn’t a problem on RTVE. If your family and neighbors complain about the gongs and wailing in the Chinese opera you’re listening to/and or watching, get head phones and tune them out.

For the first few months– when I was reading the news in Spanish on the BBC– I really didn’t know much about what was happening in the news. But once I could follow it, I realized I hadn’t missed much anyway. However, my reading skills improved.

I have kept a diary since August 1981. So I force myself to write a bit in Spanish every day. Is t is not great literature, but it is amusing to re-read it after a few months and pick out the mistakes. When I read or write, I try to concentrate on the verbs. More on this topic later.

To live the language, also check out local food festivals, multi-cultural events, language-exchange programs and Internet offerings. Even if you want to learn rather obscure languages – such as Khmer or Inuit — there are online resources ready and waiting.

Eat

Studying Spanish – and one should live the culture – is so much more fun with a glass of sauvignon blanc from Chile in one hand and a tapas in the other. The same is true for steak and Malbec at midnight. In fact, after a couple of glasses of Piso Alto vino I get quite conversant.

While you are in the bookshop, pick up a cookbook in the target language and whip up a few dishes. If in doubt about the ingredients, check with a translation program as you don’t want a cup of sugar in your soup. Then put on some music, pour a drink, light a few candles and mentally transport yourself to the target language country.

Talk

Once you get past the grunt-in-single-noun stage, it is time to tackle the verbs so that you can talk to people. Even though memorizing how to conjugate verbs rivals getting a root canal all languages hinge around these stubborn little critters. No verbs, no action. End of story so get on with it and embrace verbs as your friends.

Turn learning verbs into a fun activity of saying a sentence in the present, past and future. Then reward yourself with a sip of saki if you are learning Japanese. Read a passage and underline all the verbs.

Also make a note of which tense they are in: past, present, future. All of a sudden you will have a “eureka” and patterns will start to appear. It will all begin to make sense. And when that happens, take yourself out for a meal at your target language restaurant. Hopefully the waiters in the Korean cafe will be able to talk with you.

To learn to speak well you have to practice every day. When I started to work as a lecturer at the University of Waikato I used to practice my lessons in front of a full-length mirror. By watching myself I learned how I presented to the 400 or so beaming second-years in the auditorium. I now do the same things with Spanish. And it is a good thing, too, as I now live in Phnom Penh and Spanish speakers are not readily available.

I would pour a glass of wine, pull up a chair in the front of the mirror and review my day. Topics include what I did and what I will do tomorrow. Sometime I just sort of wander off and talk about whatever. I take my Spanish book with me so I can refer to it – particularly the verbs – when I need to.

Okay, so it may sound a touch strange, but believe me it does work. Another option is to video yourself. If you are concerned that other people might think you need a mental health assessment, tell them you are trying out for a part in the Ukrainian play. As long as you have a cover story nobody ever asks.

Learning another language is mental gymnastics. The more practice the better you get. In summary live, eat, and talk it and it will be more fun.

“Given my travel schedule and steroids and everything else, I’ve been sidetracked.” This was a quote from Major League Baseball’s Commissioner, Bud Selig, as given to the Washington Times on November 18, 2005. He was referring to the ongoing interview process of potential ownership for the Washington Nationals baseball team which was re-located to Washington, D.C. from Montreal, Canada, just prior to the 2005 season and now makes RFK Memorial Stadium its temporary home. But Mr. Selig’s quote only references part of the ongoing troubles of a ball club in total limbo, forcing it into a state of unpreparedness for the 2006 MLB season.

Not unlike the on-again off-again dash to finalize an agreement with the city of Washington, D.C. in December of 2004, the end of 2005 looms as a potential death knell to getting a stadium built, a lease agreement finalized and the installation of an owner or ownership group in the near future. In order for a General Manager, field manager and coaches to be named, the future owner must be chosen and ratified by 29 MLB owners. As long as MLB continues to haggle over the 2004 agreement with the city of Washington, D.C., which was rushed and was arguably a poorly drafted document according to D.C. City Council members and community activists, the Washington Nationals have less and less opportunities to sign free agents and attract management personnel.

The agreement made between the city of Washington, D.C. and MLB last December was dependent upon the city to build a stadium for the Nationals by 2008. In order to do so, the city must raise the capital through the sale of bonds to publicly finance the $535 million price tag. However, the cost of the stadium has risen due to unanticipated construction and raw material expenditures and now the key features which the original plans called for such as an underground parking garage, escalators and elevators, improved roads outside the stadium and expanded Metro train platforms, jeopardize the success of not only the stadium but the gentrified area surrounding it.

The aides of Mayor Anthony Williams, who negotiated the stadium agreement with MLB, estimated that the stadium of 41,000 seats would cost $395 million. However, no money was allocated for infrastructure such as the roads and Metro platforms as they assumed that the federal government or Metro itself would pick up the tab. Additionally, Natwar M. Gandhi, the city’s CFO, raised the estimated cost since the water for the stadium was not included in the original agreement. The architects chosen for the stadium’s design also escalated the original cost of $244 million to $337 million as land costs could now be as high as $98 million, but not certain. The ceiling now for the stadium, based upon whose calculator you believe but supposedly set by the City Council, now stands at $535 million.

With a final stadium architectural plan still yet to be approved, the mayor believes that either MLB, the federal government, private developers or even the new owner should pick up the tab on the ancillary costs not accounted for in the $535 million bargain. Should MLB, private developers or the federal government not chip in, then the taxpayers of Washington, D.C. will be left holding the bill for the balance, which was what started all of the arguments a year ago. Therefore, millions of dollars earmarked for other projects for the city of Washington, D.C., such as improvements in homeland security first-responders, would be sacrificed.

But it gets better. Have your eyes glazed over yet trying to comprehend the numbers? Well, here are some more. Also holding this whole thing up is a $6 million lease agreement which the city says that MLB is responsible for but is being contested by MLB. And the stadium’s financing is contingent upon the lease agreement as bond raters will not provide grade ratings until the agreement has been executed. The complete financing plan must be in place prior to Christmas 2005 in order to begin the process of selling bonds. It will be another race to the finish line much like last year. However, had not Bud Selig procrastinated last year there would not have been such a rush in the end and the agreement would have had more time given for better cost estimates and more time for bids on an architectural design. Such failures have come back to haunt the Nationals a year later.

At issue with the lease agreement is MLB’s argument that the lease agreement must be in place prior to selecting a new owner for the team, while the city wants a guarantee in writing that MLB will pay $6 million a year for the lease of the stadium. Yet, MLB says the agreement was to have included money for the lease. In addition, the city is asking for a $24 million letter of credit from MLB in the event the stadium cannot be completed due to a terrorist attack, natural disaster, or even a MLB strike. And should other resources fail to come through, they are also requesting MLB for an agreement of $20 million for the underground parking.

But the missing quotient in this whole scenario is the missing owner. Had there be an owner in place by now it would then be up to such owner whether or not they want to pay for a lease. At the very least, they could offer input on the design of the stadium and cost containment and work directly with the city rather than the city indirectly asking promises of MLB, which may never come to pass.

But Selig has been “sidetracked.” MLB has missed six of its own self-imposed deadlines to appoint a buyer for the team. To date, Commissioner Selig has only interviewed five of the eight interested groups having failed to address any more prospective candidates since September. So is that the fault of the city of Washington, D.C. too? First Selig said he would choose an owner by the spring of 2005, then it was the 4th of July, only to replaced by the date of the All Star Game, and since then we have seen the date of the beginning of the MLB playoffs, the World Series, and the November owners’ meetings come and go as other promised deadlines, to no avail.

The reality is, that regardless of the details of the agreements on construction and financing, the longer MLB drags its feet on getting an owner in place for the Nationals, the closer it gets to the 2006 season without management in place. And as it is the prerogative of the new owner to choose new management, without it, deals and trades cannot be accomplished. Manager, Frank Robinson, as well as General Manager, Jim Bowden, are twisting in the wind regarding their jobs. But even more importantly, and even if they are dismissed, it will take time for any new manager or General Manager to get organized let alone basically re-build the team all over again. New players are not looking to go to a team with no management or guarantees of potential salaries or management’s ability to ensure that a good team awaits blue-chip free agents.

As good as the Nationals were in their over-achieving first half of 2005, with a 50-31 record, they tailed off dramatically after the All-Star break with a record of 31-50. Nevertheless, they finished with a .500 record. But trading for additional personnel was part of the problem during the season and is crucial to the Nationals now. For a team being sold by MLB in the amount of $450 million, a payroll of $50 million pales in comparison.

“It’s not fair to this ball club and this organization to be put in this position for the coming season because we’re behind on moves and things we can do and approaching players, the free agent market, either signing free agents or even really seriously talking to them. Just overall, the feeling and the atmosphere around this ball club is that we’re at a disadvantage,” according to manager, Frank Robinson. He has been the consummate professional in taking over the helm of the disenfranchised Montreal Expos and now Washington Nationals during the past four seasons, which initially was to be a one-year deal for him and then perhaps going to the front office to help manage the transition between cities and the release of MLB ownership of the club to a new owner.

Frank Robinson’s coaching staff has been directed by Jim Bowden to start looking for new jobs. This has also angered Frank, and the Nationals are very close to losing Robinson, even if the new owners wish to retain his services. He has worked with virtually no payroll, and in two different cities in two different countries, for four years. And in one of those years his team played a third of their games in Puerto Rico. But Robinson is not the only upset party in this twisted tale, which could largely have been avoided. The Mayor of Washington, D.C. is upset, certain members of the City Council are at odds, the residents of Washington, D.C. are concerned with absorbing potential cost overruns, and the candidates who want to own the team are anxious.

Finally, the players, manager and coaches of the 2005 Nationals deserve better and fans of MLB are being taken for granted. Without ticket prices set nor a television contract in place it will be difficult to continue to generate as much interest in 2006 as in 2005 in Washington, D.C., since fans want a good team put on the field too. And now that its maiden voyage is over, any success the Washington Nationals enjoy in 2006 will be in spite of Commissioner Selig, not because of him.

A man with a spider phobia walks into a room. His phobia means that he can’t even look at a picture of something that looks like a spider without having a panic attack. So he unconsciously scans the room for spiders as he sits down in a comfortable chair opposite a therapist. Twenty minutes later he is standing in the middle of the room with a spider on his hand and a smile of his face.

A remarkable therapist? Probably not. A fluke? No: this kind of thing happens all the time. A remarkable treatment? Yes: the man has just experienced the Fast Phobia Cure.

WHAT EXACTLY IS THE FAST PHOBIA CURE?

The Fast Phobia Cure is probably the single most reliable and effective tool in psychotherapy today. It is reckoned to be about 90% successful on most phobias because it does what it says – it cures phobias fast. The twenty minute example above is quite typical. And it does this without the scare tactics, psychological archeology, drugs and exposure used by the older and less effective phobia treatments.

HOW IT WORKS

Most of us have experienced traumatic and upsetting events in our lives. When we look back on these events, they are never pleasant memories but they don’t upset us to the extent they did at the time.

For the phobic, it’s different. Very different. When they recall their trauma, they feel pretty much the same as they did at the time it first happened, even if that was decades ago. They have vivid and affecting memories of the event.

It is these kinds of memories – held in the emotional part of the brain – that drive and maintain phobias. Such memories are so strong and present that just recalling them can bring on fear responses. That is, the phobic is associated into these memories so it’s almost as if they are in the situation again, experiencing similar responses – panic, pounding heart, shaking, sweating and an overwhelming desire to run.

For the rest of us, our traumatic memories are disassociated – they are more factual and carry less emotion – because they have, over time, been processed by the logical, thinking part of the mind. For the phobic, this disassociation hasn’t happen. But it needs to.

The Fast Phobia Cure is a process of rapid dissociation. It allows the sufferer to experience the traumatic memories from a calm and dissociated, or disconnected, state. The other part of the mind – the unemotional, rational, thinking mind – can then go to work turning the memories into ordinary, factual, neutral, non-threatening ones. Like the memory of what you had for breakfast. With the emotional tag unstuck from the phobic encounters, the phobia is de-conditioned. It’s gone.

THE MECHANICS

The way to achieve this dissociation is to have the sufferer imagine watching themselves from a remote, third person or detached position going through the traumatic event.

The classic scenario is to have them imagine themselves in a movie theatre watching an old black and white movie of them going through the experience at very high speed (like watching a video on fast forward). The dissociation can be increased by having them imagine being in the projection booth watching themselves sitting in their cinema seat watching the film of their younger self going through the experience. This creates the distance and comfort for dissociation to occur.

They are then asked to step into the safe time at the end of the movie and imagine physically rewinding through the experience at very high speed. This step is repeated several times. It creates dissociation because the mind has never experienced the traumatic event backwards and thus has no prepared fear response for it, so they experience it in calm. The memory is recoded by the brain and saved with less emotional charge attached to it.

These steps are the core of the Fast Phobia Cure. They are run on the key traumatic memories around the phobia – typically three or four such memories are used – in a process that can take as little as five minutes.

VARIATIONS

Variations of the Fast Phobia Cure can involve changing the cinema scenario to just watching a television screen, or having them imagine witnessing the event as a bystander, from a helicopter or birds-eye view, or seeing it played out on a stage. Or, once the memory is more comfortable, having them watch a “director’s cut” by adding their own soundtrack (light or silly music is often used) and changing something about the way it looked in a creative and humorous way.

MEASURING AND TESTING THE CHANGE

Before, during and after the Fast Phobia Cure is run, the individual is asked to rate their level of discomfort around the traumatic memories. Very high levels of discomfort fall rapidly to zero or thereabouts when the Fast Phobia Cure is run. Such rapid change is often a shock and a delight to the subjects.

The final step is to test the new responses by searching out the old trigger (going on a spider hunt with the man in the example above). Again, subjects are usually surprised by how keen they are to do this and by the feeling of not being scared around the old trigger. To many it can indeed seem miraculous. But the Fast Phobia Cure isn’t miraculous: it’s just based on good brain science, on current neurology.

THE ADVANTAGES

As well as its reliability, the Fast Phobia Cure has three key advantages over traditional phobia treatments.

Firstly, as the name suggests, it’s fast. The treatment usually takes only a single session. The mind learns very quickly. It learned to be phobic very quickly, perhaps in a matter of seconds. Learning how not to be phobic again can be, and is necessarily, equally quick. So long painful treatment is not necessary.

Secondly, it’s safe. There is no direct confrontation with the phobic trigger and the phobic is calm and comfortable throughout the treatment.

Thirdly, it’s non-intrusive. Because the “movies” are the patient’s, the therapist does not need to know the precise details of the traumatic memory or phobic encounters.

WHY IS IT NOT MORE WIDELY AVAILABLE?

The Fast Phobia Cure is a remarkable treatment that can be learned and used by any competent therapist. But it’s not being widely used. Why?

The answer seems to be that it works too well. And too fast. It can be done in minutes and easily within a single therapy session. And there’s the rub: therapists using the Fast Phobia Cure will probably need to see a client just once, so they don’t make much money. And traditional old-school therapists and counsellors when faced with fast, painless results start to question their own models of long, drawn-out painful therapy.