Today I stumbled into one of the recent NPR News Podcasts and listened to it. The first half of the episode covers the Missionary Training Center and the report was so impressed by the systematic foreign language instruction provided for young missionaries at MTC and spoke highly of it:

http://www.npr.org/2014/06/08/320073766/missionary-language-school-children-of-the-imprisoned-opening-up-with-tom-chang

"The Missionary Training Center is widely recognized as one of the best language instruction institutes in the world, because what they do here is truly extraordinary. In a matter of weeks these enthusiastic young students around me will be speaking foreign languages fluently enough to spread the gospel..."

"How do they learn foreign languages so quickly? For our cover story today, I wanna take you inside the Missionary Training Center..."

As a former missionary and language instructor myself, I know the reporter is quite naive to think that these young missionaries go through the most effective language training in the world and they can speak the target language "fluently enough to spread the gospel."

It is true that most of missionaries serving abroad return with a pretty good speaking proficiency of the target language (which enables them to communicate with locals on everyday topics). But this is not because the language training at MTC is the best in the world or effective, but because they are forced to interact with natives in the field day in and day out for the duration of their sojourn.

According to my observation in the field, almost all of the new missionaries stay "dumb" for the first few months because they can't function well linguistically despite "the best language training they received at MTC." Then they are gradually picking up the local language and by the time they return home they will be able to speak well when it comes to talking about familiar topics.


I am pretty sure we have quite a few returned missionaries in this forum. I'd like to hear your opinion on the alleged claim of the reporter.

A typo: "the report was so impressed..." It should read "the reporter was so impressed..."

Earlier there were some real negative comments by ex-Mormons. It seems that they've all gone away, or that they've released it a second time.

I had 4 years of HS Spanish and one semester of college BEFORE entereing the MTC.


I thought the training was good. Not great. I was so far beyond everyone else that I spent a lot of the "language" time reading the BoM. BUt you're quite right, no one is remotely fluent when they leave, including people with 5 years of Spanish in school.

To illustrate your main point let me tell a story:

Towards the end of my stay in my first area we were eating one meal a day at a members house (we paid, it was a win win, we liked the food and she needed the money.) SO she starts telling my second companion about when she was interviewed to be baptised the missionaries who interviewed her thought she had had an abortion when she had really just had a miscarriage. (Same word in Spanish) so she had to jump through all these hoops only to find that the ones who did her first interview were just idiots who didn't speak the language that well.

I asked a question about something, and she goes, But Elder, I already told you this story a couple of months ago. I look at my second comp in the area and we both laugh. We tell the hermana, when we first get here it takes a while before we can understand what people are saying. In my case it was at least a month, most people its more like 3. She says "So you were nodding your head like you understood but you didn't?" "Eso" ;-)'

LOL

Be glad that nodding didn't get you into anything worse.

My companion didn't understand the language much at all when he asked an old woman how she was doing. She started telling us about her problems and how her had just son died. My jaw dropped when my companion assumed she had given the usual polite response and enthusiastically shouted, "Wonderful!"

Japan RM here, I don't think the language training is as good as they think. I agree that most missionaries get to the assigned country and possibly can give some common greetings. If talking with a native speaker and something comes back that hasn't been in the recited repertoire, the green missionary won't understand a thing. Used to take 3-4 months before you could carry on a conversation. IMHO. They get all starry eyed and think they have the "gift of tongues" when actually any normal person would pick up the language just as well if immersed in the daily conversations that missionaries are forced into. Get assigned a native companion and your language skill will skyrocket too. Your forced to learn the language then. If you always have English speaking companions your language ability will suffer. Most missionaries get semi-proficient, but it is mostly with religious topics and basic conversation. Talk about anything but religion and more than likely they will get lost and not understand much. I know there are several RM's here that have returned and lived in Japan. I think they can comment on how much more they learned AFTER the mission. I know I did. The MTC is mostly for enforcing and deepening the brain washing, not learning a language.

That is this old timers view. (Pre-internet) I do think the missionaries now can go into the MTC a little more language prepared than in previous years, but it is still not a great language learning facility. Mostly an obedience boot camp.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 06/20/2014 08:12PM by mankosuki.

I agree with the language immersion aspect of your post. I learned more Japanese at the bath house than I ever did at the MTC. And there were many missionaries who fell off the edge of the world if the topic of conversation strayed from Christianity at all. Personally, I found that some guys got it while others just didn't regardless of their study habits or personal righteousness. The most fluent missionary I ever met was taken in by the police for stealing bikes from the train station and riding them down the front stairs of various buildings around town. And the most god awful accented Japanese (he pronounced the "r" like he was still in Wyoming) was spoken by one of the APs.

the stupid missionaries who can't learn another language get sent to english speaking countries.

no wonder the ones I run into seem to be dumber than a bag of hammers.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 06/20/2014 08:12PM by Dave the Atheist.

Not true. I love languages and have studied several, but I got sent stateside. I spoke enough Spanish to teach first discussions, so they encouraged me to do that, but forbade me from study because I was called English. Sigh.

& was still sent stateside. I think someone thought she was "uppity".

Must be a female...? I think that generalization applies more to guys...

Perhaps it depends on the language and the available resources. Spanish instruction is probably pretty good in the MTC, but when I had to learn Albanian, the training was dismal as we only had a couple of RMs who had learned the language moderately well on their missions and the scriptures (BoM translation was horrid) as our instruction.

The language training is great, but it is because of the circumstances that the missionaries train in, not because they have some special technique. There are three main things that make it work:

1. They are thrown in the deep end of a semi-immersion environment and deal with the language daily. Doing this for 2-3 months wouldn't be very effective if the missionaries went home and didn't pursue the language any further. Instead, they are shipped off to another country and are speaking the language every day for the next two years.

2. They focus on and practice a very specific kind of language in very specific scenarios. Any language learner can do this and sound much more fluent than they normally would in other situations.

3. They are brainwashed and are constantly working at it. This is bad for their psyche, but really good for their language skills.

I can't think of a single better program for short term language learning in the world. That isn't because of anything special they are doing, it is just because of the circumstances they are in.

Most foreign language RM's I've talked to say that they thought they were pretty good with the language toward the end of their mission. But post-mission, in a real-world scenario (as opposed to mormon preaching) they really weren't that good. So, it took further work for them to use that language outside of the missionary paradigm, in a work scenario for example. For this reason, only a few of them seem to continue to use that language to any advantage later on.

Of course, just my view of things.

RM German speaking in Switzerland. I had two years of German in High School and after the 8 week boot camp of the MTC I thought I had a pretty good understanding of the language. My first day out street contacting and going door to door I can honestly say I didn't understand a word.

Granted the various Swiss dialects were not the High German we were taught in the MTC. I didn't really feel comfortable in the language until about 6 months living in Switzerland.

Post mission I ended up majoring in German and taught High School German for several years. I soon realized that my everyday conversational German was pretty limited to talking about the Gospel.

I took a university Spanish class, with returned missionaries. I was too intimidated to speak, at first, but when I understood their various dialects, and realized that their grammar was really bad, I could understand them. I got an A in the class, and the missionaries didn't do very well, because they couldn't read or write in Spanish. They told me that reading and writing just wasn't important in the mission field. Just memorizing, and practicing discussions, and bearing their testimonies.

I'm a native French speaker who moved to the States when I was 6. I could take a French-speaking RM to school, and have done so multiple times.

CanadaVancouverBritishColumbia here!! 86-88

I haven't said "ehh" / ay in 15yrs.
And I have never ever said Selleeka / the Celica model car, and also Shedule / Schedule.
I'd get mad inwardly because, a majority of Canadians or their ancestors were FROM America. Could never understand why they dug their heels in resisting showing or being any "connection" to America.
:P

The language training is mediocre at best. It is usually taught by a returned missionary who is not a native speaker of the language. When I was there, it was being taught to the lowest common denominator. I would say my nine weeks in the MTC were roughly equivalent to one or two classes of the language at a local community college.

The MTC is completely abusive. The missionaries are overworked to an absurd degree.

After about 5 days you're supposed to only speak your new language 24/7. Try that with Japanese.

Guilt

Guilt

Guilt

Sleep deprivation.

We would be walking to the Cafeteria and couldn't remember if we were going to Lunch or Dinner.

The classes were crap.

More guilt.

They didn't teach Japanese conversation, they taught us the discussions.

More guilt because we weren't learning as fast as the last group.

On your half a day off per week you were brow beaten into attending a 3 hour temple session.

My companion was a nightmare.

My companion was a nightmare.

My companion was a nightmare.

I became so famous for being able to smuggle in contraband Pizzas, that the son of Joe Christensen the serving MTC President, came to ME to score Pizza for him and his buddies. And he was in a different building and learning Spanish to go to Uruguay iirc.

When pizza becomes contraband and ordering one becomes a serious offense, you know you are in a cult.

Yep .

One night, it was after midnight, and two girls from my home ward got busted by security smuggling in about 6 pizzas to me.

Luckily the guard was one of theses guys who preferred to lecture me in his self righteous way instead of turning me in.

We had a great party when he left!

I served in Japan. Amen to everything you said. They pile on the guilt for failure to do the impossible.

my ex's father went to Finland on his mission. He never even learned how to speak or read basic finnish during his mission.

Ah, don't be too hard on him. Finnish is a devilish language and we Finns prefer practising our English to trying to communicate in simplified Finnish with confused foreigners.

A Finn

Heard the program the other day on PBS. They talked about the language training but that was about it. Never mentioned were smuggling pizza or about the white washed Mormon underwear.

I was in the MTC in 1982, so I'm sure things have changed quite a bit since then. But when I was there, I found the language training to be completely ridiculous. I was called to a French-speaking mission, supposedly because I was already fluent in the language. I had studied it for five years in school and then spent several months living in Paris, so my knowledge of French was not that of a novice.

The language training was pathetic. There was little to no focus on conjugation of verbs, sentence structure, nor vocabulary outside that required to discuss LDS matters. Basically, missionaries were being taught to recognize and understand key phrases that people might say to them, and then to parrot pre-recorded responses that they had memorized. There was no attempt made to teach anyone how to *speak* French, only how to *talk* in French. I had more than my share of companions who could not understand a word that was said to them if it wasn't directly about the LDS religion.

If I may tell a story that shows how lacking the language education was at that time:

One companion just stared at a man who came running up to us as we walked back to our apartment. I answered the man and got him calmed down while leading him to our apartment to use the phone. He was asking us for help because there had been a minor accident, but his wife was stuck in the car and could not get out. After this was all resolved (she was unhurt, fortunately), my companion said, "If he had been speaking French I could have helped." We argued about that one for a while as I tried to convince him that the only problem had been his nearly complete lack of a French vocabulary due to the fact that his only language instruction had come from the incompetent instructors in the futile MTC program. (I already knew the LDS church was crap and was just finishing out the mission for my own reasons. I didn't care if I insulted them or got reported to the mission president. What was he going to do...punish me for calling emergency services to the site of an accident?)

Did anyone have to take a language test before submitting their paperwork? The church made up a language and gave you a test on it. I had to take it. Your score had a lot to do with where you were called.

I remember a test like that. It consisted of a few vocabulary words and counting to ten IIRC. It wasn't like any other language I'd ever seen. We were told afterwards that the language was Urdu (a real language, BTW).

I aced the test and got sent to Montreal.

I took that weird language test in the 70's and got sent to Taiwan.