Round Tables

The missing piece to getting Language Transfer & The Thinking Method out in the open!

As most of you will know already, my main focus shifted some years ago to getting this way of learning more ‘out there’. This means getting the existing courses better known, but much more than that, getting more teachers employing The Thinking Method and writing new courses. After all, the best way to bring Language Transfer & The Thinking Method to the attention of more people, is more material!

What is most time-consuming when I myself make a course is the fact that, in most cases, I don’t actually speak the language I’m teaching, which I’ve only researched for the purpose of the course itself. Such an absurd and demanding task it is that folk who pry into what I do, and then into how many languages I must speak, meet the confession that I don’t speak all the languages I teach with a familiar look “Oh, I’ve been talking to an idiot!”. How could anyone expect to make language courses they swear to be revolutionary, and even popular, in languages they don’t speak? I’m sure they think I’m simply making it all up, I can’t very well say I’m unemployed after all. But it is an absurd thing to utter, and years of saying it hasn’t desensitised me to it much. It is though a reflection of just how bad things were, or are, as far as educational thinking is concerned; that some barely educated guy monolingual until adulthood has felt the need to do this, or has indeed been able to. It has been a superhuman, nerve and neurone frying effort all the same, which -as I’ve complained of often- is an entirely unsustainable one. For this reason and many others, I shifted my focus to teaching and expanding The Thinking Method itself. First with the publication of the Thinking Method Guidebook (www.languagetransfer.org/guidebook), then with the music course aimed at showcasing the method in other subject areas (www.languagetransfer.org/music), and then with The Platform for new course writers (www.languagetransfer.org/platform), open to both language and non-language writers to build courses with my help. To these efforts we now add Round Tables, the missing piece in all of this infrastructure!

Everything other than the final formalisation of a course (in a language I don’t speak - I’m going to be repeating that more often than usual!) everything but all that painstaking checking and editing whilst depending on (often flaky) volunteers, all that obsessing over the coherence of various threads woven into the course all at once glasses steaming up from the heat my brain is omitting, my concerned dog pleading to lick my forehead cool- hunting for every problem I might have not thought about, unable to rely on any ‘speaker’s sense’ of my own - only on reason, as I listen and re-listen to the audios so intensely I almost don’t know whether I am a keyboard now. When I finished Complete Swahili, I promised ‘never again’, and I took an axe to my headphones. But everything other than that dark and dense world I actually find quite enjoyable, and I miss it! I might even go as far as to say it’s easy, as far as challenges go in this life - the whole dissecting and sussing out a new language, hunting for and breaking codes, the forensic and etymological ideas. All of this comes to me quite naturally at this stage of the game - barely a day goes by in which I don’t make some accidental discovery that could be used in a course or ten, as my brain roams on autopilot, bouncing from some word seen on a sign or heard in a revealing context. I have begun to feel a little wasted, in this sense, and I can feel my brain hungry to do it… just without all that other stuff. It was only ever the painstaking finalisation of a product that was meant to teach you as much as I myself knew the moment you finished it, and without mistakes, which was causing me so much tension to the point where I became sure this was not the life I wanted to be living or indeed could sustain at the same time as my sanity. Focusing on the general conceptual, ideation part of the process, though, is extremely fun, interesting and motivating for me. After that someone else who does speak fluently the language they are writing for can hash out the details and use that experience for self training, through The Platform and with my help. I know I can dissect one language after another without fear of burnout if I limit my role to this part of the process. And I realise this is also the best use of my talents - if I can look at a language and find new ways of explaining its behaviour which outperform the ideas that have been used for sometimes hundreds of years, then I really should get doing and recording that with as many languages as I can (whilst also beginning to broach other subjects), and without being slowed by the all-consuming process of formalising an entire course in a language that… I don't speak! Focusing on language dissection and course planning really is a great use of my time and talents, and much like with the open platform idea replacing my search for a fixed LT team, I really wish I had thought of this Round Tables thing sooner!

A Round Table session is/will be where I dive into a new language just as I would when I begin to write a new course, but around a table with native speakers to indulge my every doubt in realtime and assist me in understanding how they use their language. Whilst I’ll be dissecting the language as if I were about to write the course myself -and although I’ll want to after such sessions- I won’t. In this way, I maintain my focus on getting more Round Table sessions recorded for forever more languages and subjects. The video of the Round Table session will be made publicly available on The Platform for new course writers, where I am available for guidance. The Round Table sessions are also a masterclass in how to use native speakers to get to the bottom of how a language is behaving, which -as described in the guidebook- it would be foolhardy to assume is a straightforward task! When there exists a Round Table session for a language, it means the material uploaded to The Platform for it should, from the outset, resemble much more closely the Thinking Method courses we are used to. The more Round Table sessions that are recorded, the more lively The Platform should become and the sooner the material there should reach the level we have come to know and love, and -as is my hope- to even surpass it. Every time I get this done for a new language, it will also become much more likely people start writing material for said language, and the whole process is now streamlined, too. What I would be working out slowly about any given language through my interaction with a new writer over time and many re-writes, is mostly all already figured out in a Round Table session.

Funding/helping organise a Round Table event is the perfect way to invest in the language (or subject) of your choice, so please spread the word and let’s see what we can get done! If there is a language or subject you want to see The Thinking Method broach (and even if there isn’t!) please have a think about any organisation or institution that might have a mutual interest in the Round Table session happening, and hit them up with all the enthusiasm for this project that you can muster! It could be anything from a university department or society, to a cultural centre, an embassy, philanthropist, research centre or company where these aims or interests could coincide! All help is appreciated whether it’s with costs, hosts or participants. As the LT usership grows, we collectively enjoy forever wider potential access to different avenues of collaboration and public exposure, and so I hope you can all help generate through your social and professional networks as much interest as possible to collaborate for specific Round Table sessions! Whilst I’m awaiting the results of your busy-bodying, I’ll be seeing what I can do with the donations and organising everything myself, starting local. I'm currently in the north of Spain, so that's looking like Portuguese and Basque! Two great languages to begin with, the former is very requested and the latter is somewhat of a mystery regarding origin and the like, and so taking the Thinking Method to it should be a revealing endeavour! I hope to start Round Tables in the Autumn with one of those local trips! Anyone in Portugal or Bilbao that might be able to help find interested parties, give me a whistle sooner rather than later! :)