Accuracy vs. Fluency: Find a Balance and Keep Moving Forward
by Andrea Murau Haraway
When I was in my early 20's, I accepted a job teaching English in Japan. While I had never studied Japanese or lived in Japan, I did have experience learning other languages and living in other countries.
When I arrived in Kyoto, I joined two other English-teaching colleagues -- also new to Japan. We spent our first few months teaching, and outside of teaching, struggling to get by in daily life. We soon realized that we needed to take language classes, so as summer break approached, we enrolled in intensive Japanese classes.
It was very interesting to watch our different approaches to learning (and using) our new language.
One weekend, we decided to take a day trip to Ryoanji, a famous rock garden, located in the outskirts of Kyoto. We took a train to the area, but from the train station we had to ask directions to the garden. Here is where I discovered our different approaches.
One friend was very particular about speaking correctly. She would spend several minutes quietly thinking to herself, checking her dictionary, and planning how she should best ask how to get to Ryoanji. Five minutes passed before she would even open her mouth!
Another friend was very open and gregarious and rather indifferent to language structures and cultural convention. She grabbed the first person she could find, and asked him for directions. The problem was that he had difficulty understanding what she was saying. When he finally understood, he offered the directions, but then she didn’t understand everything he said, so she asked again and again for him to repeat the directions. Several minutes passed and she was still not clear on the directions and he was trying to find a way to escape!
My approach was different. I considered what I was going to say, and then asked the nearest person for directions. She said, “You go down this road and take the second right. Then you…” Unfortunately, my Japanese was only good enough to retain small chunks of information, so I couldn’t understand the rest of her directions. But I thanked her kindly, walked down the street, and took the second right. Now out of sight of the first person who gave me directions, I simply asked a new person for the next set of directions. And so I continued until I made it to Ryoanji!
