Apparently there is something quite otherworldly about how well people are able to learn new languages in the MTC. Governments have tried to mimic the program but it mysteriously doesn't work nearly as well. I was wondering if anyone else had heard this bit of faith promoting nonsense.

My Dad used to tell me this all the time...until I learned to speak better Spanish than he does while washing dishes at the local burger joint when I was 17. Hell, at my last job, there were several people who spoke 3 or more languages fluently by virtue of miracle I call being European.

the mtc is immersion and if you're immersed in an environment where you can't speak your native language, you learn really fast.

But there are lots of ways one can learn by immersing oneself in a language. Growing up, I was told by several people that learning at the MTC works better than any other method, immersion or otherwise. It's all complete crap, I was just wondering if anyone else had heard it.

"teaching by the spirit!" I am fascinated by foreign languages but always have to learn then them the old-fashioned way - asking questions, writing down what the words mean in English and then memorizing them, etc.

The mishies assured me that the church has most generously shared their teaching method with the CIA and god knows what other Government agencies, but because with them, the languages are not taught with "the Spirit," the method just doesn't work as well.

Gee. Here I thought we night have another budding Rosetta Stone on the horizon. . .What a bummer.

to eat, find a bathroom to use, etc. :-) I was a Spanish language instructor at the MTC in the early 80s. The MTC works pretty well, actually, for the time you have and that fact that you get kids with all sorts of abilities. It isn't the only way to learn and certainly when you arrive at your mission, you aren't fluent, but you aren't 100% lost either. The prior experience speeds up the process. The biggest drawback is the narrow range of topics you converse about. I don't use Spanish much any more so I have lost much of my fluency, but it wouldn't take long to get it back if I were motivated.

I'm only sixteen. Furthermore, I don't plan on serving a mission even when I'm old enough. My dad and two of my uncles, who learned Spanish on missions, say that they learned to speak the language in the Spanish-speaking countries in which they served missions, not in the MTC. My dad said he barely had survival Spanish skills when he first arrived at his mission location.

Most missionaries who come out of the MTC really do not know their target languages very well. The focus of the MTC is on memorization of the missionary discussions and a limited range of basic expressions needed in daily life, such as "how much is it?" or "where is the bathroom?"

Unless they already had a background in the target language, they will not be fluent when they arrive in country. This even applies to Spanish, which is relatively easy for English speakers to learn compared to languages such as Russian, Japanese, Korean, Chinese, Finnish, etc.

For example, take a 19 year-old kid who never studied Japanese prior to entering the MTC. The kid will study Japanese intensively for 2 months, but when he arrives in Japan, he or she will be completely lost in any conversation that goes outside the boundaries of the expressions memorized in the discussions and the basic conversational patterns studied. Even missionaries nearing the end of their mission service are often out of their depth whenever a native wants to talk about topics such as politics, philosophy or any other subject other than Christian religious concepts. One problem at the MTC is also that the missionaries are often learning from returned missionaries who are themselves not all that expert in the target language. They know enough to give guidance on the basics, but they don't necessarily have the best pronunciation and may often perpetuate errors.

I don't know what Mormons compare the MTC to when they make those ridiculous claims. It makes no sense to compare it to a semester of a foreign language at a college because that typically only involves a few hours of study per week. The one edge that the MTC may have is motivation. Many of the missionaries are highly motivated. They are the ones who do the best (provided that they have a basic aptitude for language). But put those same individuals into the relevant country for two months with the same degree of motivation and they would probably make faster progress than they would have at the MTC.

I'm not sure how you can say that the MTC is not very effective. The vast majority of the folks I learned Spanish with were better speakers than I was, and I scored a "superior" rating on an ACTFL language test four years after I finished my mission.

The MTC isn't a good language school because of faith or any other crap like that, it is a good language school because of the context of the school. It places people in classes designed to prepare them, and eventually put them in the middle of an extended immersion atmosphere. Those are about the best circumstances for language learning, and there is almost nothing else to compare it to.

If we were to compare the MTC to anything else, the best we have would be military language schools. The MTC is much better than anything they have to offer.

"But put those same individuals into the relevant country for two months with the same degree of motivation and they would probably make faster progress than they would have at the MTC."

This isn't necessarily true. Some language learners have the ability to immerse themselves in a country and pick up the language very quickly. For most learners, though, research has shown that taking a semester of classes, or being taught in a graded, semi-immersion environment, allows for the fastest language learning and least amount of frustration. The latter type of classes are usually found in organizations such as the Peace Corps or some international NGOs.

The "secret" is the amount of time spent on studying the language. The missionaries are essentially locked down for two months with nowhere to go. As brother of Jerry says, 70 hours a week beats fewer hours a week. There is no other special technique that they use. That's why I say it doesn't do a particularly good job of it. GIVEN THE AMOUNT OF TIME that Missionaries in the MTC devote to studying, the result is not that impressive. Memorization of the discussions is a good start, but it doesn't prepare people for most language situations that they will face when the arrive in the country.

Comparing the MTC to other institutions is like apples and oranges in a way, because there are few, if any, institutions where so much time is spent on memorizing. Even the military schools give their students considerably more time off.

You are giving credit to the MTC for test results you got "four years after you finished your mission." That doesn't make sense to me. You were obviously motivated to keep learning after you left the MTC, so I would give more credit to your time in the country and whatever studying you continued to do after you left the MTC.

I'm not saying that the MTC is a waste of time. If you're going to learn a language you have to start somewhere. But they don't have any super special techniques or great teachers. Their only "secret" is that they have a captive set of students who are religiously motivated to spend more time memorizing religion-oriented texts and dialogues during a two-monthy period. Most other language education institutions are not set up to lock down students for two months and few students would volunteer for something like that. But given the amount of motivation and the actual time spent, the results of the MTC aren't that impressive.

I'm sure that you can find motivated individuals around the world who, if they spend an equal amount of time studying during a two-month period, can get better results without attending the MTC.

to think they do anything worthwhile except endoctrinate those boy's with salesman techniques. Anyone will eventually learn the language if they go to the country. Most of these average ability Elders don't learn the language well enough in the MTC except to carry out the most basic of conversations. I was a repairman at the MTC for two years whilst I was finishing my degree, and I will testify that it's all bullshiz..in the name of cheese and rice amen.

for the language skills that missionaries develop over the entire 2 years of their mission. The valuable language skills that missionaries acquire are actually 90% or more attributable to the time they spend among native speakers in the relevant country. The MTC can give a reasonable foundation to build on, but that's it. I've known missionaries who pretty much stopped actively studying the language after leaving the MTC. They chose to basically rely on what they memorized in the MTC, thinking that all they really needed was to get into the door and give the discussions. As a result, their language skills never developed and if anyone wanted to converse with them on anything other than what was in the discussions or for setting a baptism date or a range of similarly limited Mormon themes, they were useless and clueless.

I really think that a person genuinely motivated to learn a foreign language would be better off spending two months in the relevant country. For example, if you took a non-Mormon who was excited about learning French and put them in a town in France and gave them a nice dictionary set, a couple of good textbooks, some interesting essays and dialogues to memorize, an instructor to meet with them an hour per day and arranged a number of social events with natives--I'm quite sure that after two months they would be running circles around any missionary fresh out of the MTC. And they probably would not have needed to spend as much time. About the only area that the MTC graduate would have an advantage in would be in discussing how one can "deeevelope a testeeemony of zee prophette, Jyosepu Suhmiss," which is not something most people would care about anyway. ;o)

I think we agree on most things here :)

"But they don't have any super special techniques or great teachers."

The MTC isn't a magical place, but, I did mention some special techniques they have. As I said in another comment, they force immersion and use faith and religious fanaticism as a way to force motivation. These are things that other language schools don't do. That is comparing apples and oranges, I agree...but it looks like we are in a comparing mood in this thread. :)

Also, they keep up pretty well on L2 acquisition research. So does the military for that matter.

Besides all of that, my teacher in the MTC was very good and that is anecdotal.

"You are giving credit to the MTC for test results you got "four years after you finished your mission." That doesn't make sense to me."

It should make sense. I was directly talking about the idea that most missionaries who come out of the MTC have crappy language skills. When I got the "superior" rating, it was 4 years after my mission and I was a much worse speaker of the language. When I was actually a missionary, my language skills were significantly worse than most of the other missionaries.

When I was a Peace Corps volunteer, only maybe one or two of us got to the same level of language that most missionaries in my mission were speaking. Peace Corps volunteers have almost the same amount of language training (much inferior language training, sadly), spend more time in country, are more intelligent people in general and don't sit around and talk religion all day.

In my experience I would say that religious fanaticism wins over almost any other method when learning a language.

Edit: Last note. There is also a lot of SLA and learning theory that would support the idea that religious fanaticism would help someone learn a language. It would also be something easily verifiable. However, I don't know a single other linguist (of the applied sort) who would find any interest in actually doing a study at the MTC. For me, my research goals lie in language acquisition that is happening in far away language hot spots and very far away from anything Utah related. That sounds a lot more exciting :)



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 08/17/2011 12:54PM by snb.

When I was in the MTC I actually saw military folks touring the building and watching classes. I saw this three times.

In that sense, it is not just a faith promoting rumor.

Also, the MTC is a very good place to learn languages. They force immersion, use faith a religious fanaticism as a way to force motivation and use excellent pedagogy. Of course, the MTC is geared towards language learners who are immediately going to jump in the middle of a country and continue learning the language. Their methods wouldn't work as well for learners who would not continue the immersion experience.

For what it does, I don't know of a single American language school that performs even close to as well as the MTC.

...is that in most cases, you are immersed with only native English speakers. So you are not really immersed the way you are when you arrive in country.

I did great at the MTC. That is mainly because I was a language major in college and I had already taken several years of Spanish before the MTC. (I had taken 12 years of French, but God in His wisdom wanted me in S. America.) So the language part of the MTC was a piece of cake.

Even so, when I arrived in Argentina I was clueless! They didn't speak spanish like yankees do. They spoke faster and used slang and other things we were never exposed to at the MTC.

To this day, I really hate trying to speak Spanish with somebody who isn't a native Spanish speaker. When 2 native English speakers get together to speak spanish, they always throw in things that don't really translate but they both understand it because of their background.

I don't think it's really immersion if you are immersed with non-native speakers. You just pick up the bad accents and improper grammar from your non-native teachers and perpetuate it.

i went there with other "gringos".... i was THINKING in spanish by the time i left! i was definitely "immersed"...without "having the spirit" and learned quite well for just 5 months!
and Duffy:
"To this day, I really hate trying to speak Spanish with somebody who isn't a native Spanish speaker"
get over yourself and try and help a brother out if they need help! sheesh



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 08/16/2011 09:45AM by bignevermo.

Help out Americans with their spanish? I don't get many requests for this - um, like none. But of course I would try to help them.

I frequently get requests to help translate between people who speak English or Spanish but not both and need help. Of course I help them if they need it.

stance when you say:
"To this day, I really hate trying to speak Spanish with somebody who isn't a native Spanish speaker"
but if not s'ok......

I had 5 years of HS and college German, and got shipped to Brazil, after a 12 week MTC back in the 1960s. I knew more Portuguese after the 12 weeks than I ever knew of German, and after a year in Brazil I was dreaming in Portuguese.

BTW, I am of the opinion that Spanish and Portuguese are probably the two easiest languages to learn for a native English speaker. The grammatical structures are quite similar, and there are whole blocks of vocabulary words that are recognizable in all three languages. "Rapido" is not hard to translate, nor is "rapidamente", especially when you are told "mente" is the equivalent of the suffix "ly" in English.

Asian languages, Native American languages, African languages, and Indian subcontinent languages would be a tough row to hoe for English speakers. Most European languages*, easy-peasy, relatively speaking.

* - does not apply to Finnish or Hungarian. Oy!

Exactly.

When I was a linguist going through school at the Defense Language Institute in Monterey I always heard that rumor. I would talk with other students who were mormon and without fail they would say something along the lines of, "you know, this school is good, but they send teams to the MTC all the time because they just can't understand how mormon missionaries can become instantly fluent in a language. They don't understand it is a gift of the priesthood."

Gag. I got so tired of hearing that crap.

acquired instant fluency. Institutions like the military may look at the relatively impressive language skills of a missionary after a two-year mission and try to attribute the result to a training institution. Since the MTC is the only training institution involved it gets the credit by default, but it doesn't really deserve the credit. The main credit goes to the missionary who continued to apply himself/herself throughout the time in country and who engaged in more conversations with more native speakers in a week than most other people would do in a month.

Missions are quite unique in the sense that missionaries are there primarily to meet as many native speakers as possible and to engage them in conversations and "discussions." This is the aspect of "Mormon language training" that institutions like the military would have the hardest time duplicating. Most military personnel, for example, already have private social lives that they continue with people speaking their own language--not the target language. Additionally, most of their daily work-related interactions are within the military organization and they usually are not placed in any situation where they are constantly meeting with various native speakers from morning until night time on a daily basis. The MTC itself is really nothing special and deserves very little of the credit for the language skills that Mormon missionaries eventually develop.

just gave me a flashback that caused the shakes. I'm sitting in a big MTC study hall with my red noise suppressors over my ears pounding a Chinese discussion into my head. It's about 8:30 at night so I'd already been at it all day. I stop, take the suppressors off and just stare off into space for a second. One of the fascist instructor/monitors is on me in a second with a "what's up elder?" "I'm just sick of this" I honestly replied. Holy Bloody Blasphemy you'd of thought I'd committed the unpardonable sin. Got my ass chewed out for my lack of diligence for the next half hour. Did I learn Chinese in the MTC? Fuck no. I learned how to be a well-versed parrot spewing out sounds and tones that I had no clue what meant. I was in Taiwan for more than a year before I finally felt comfortable with the language and I don't think my story is unique.

I took 3 years of german in high school, so the MTC was a cakewalk for me. Others in my district struggled, and still struggled for several months once they got to Germany.

I learned Estonian in the MTC well enough that I could carry on a basic conversation by the time I got to the country, as long as it was on a religious topic. Memorizing phrases, the way they did in the MTC, is probably a faster way to learn languages than the traditional method of memorizing vocabulary words. You automatically get the grammer right because you memorized it as phrases with correct grammer, and if you want to say something slightly different, just change the noun or the verb. It's also pretty easy to learn by reading the Book of Mormon in the second language, because after all that seminary and scripture mastery, you pretty much have it memorized in English. Pretty easy to figure out that "Ja juhtus" at the beginning of every verse means "And it came to pass". High levels of motivation and total language immersion (Speak Your Language program - no English allowed) also make a difference. There's nothing magical about it.

Funny, talking to a nevermo co-worker he said that about 6 months is all he needs to become fluent in another language, if he immerses himself in it. I told him that that's almost the exact amount of time it took me to feel I was fluent in Italian, from the day I entered the MTC. I guess there's not much difference after all.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 08/16/2011 12:54PM by kimball.

I heard that crap constantly in the MTC where I "learned" Korean. We were told all the time that Korean was the 3rd (or similar) hardest spoken language for an American to learn due to the different sounds, sentence structure, etc. (Ironically, the written language is one of the easiest to learn how to read, it is truly phonetic, almost no rules are broken and we all learned in about an afternoon)...

Anyway, we were told all the time about how the "Gift of Tongues" would help us learn... Once I got to Korea I realized that I would only ever barely understand what was said to me, and if anyone understood me at all it would truly be a miracle. Prior to that, I had 3 years of Spanish and a year of Japanese (I figured I would learn a couple of languages from different areas to try and help prep for the mission).

After two years, I could give a passable "Discussion" and talk to most people about church. I don't know a single american missionary that felt "comfortable" with the language if they had to speak it, even after two year, even the ones who were the best at it. I can't tell you how many times I sat across a table with someone looking at me with a blank stare, politely pretending to understand, hoping that the "spirit" was filling in... When we'd ask a question, they wouldn't have a clue what we were talking about, unless I had used my trusty flip chart.

If the "Gift of Tongues" in the MTC were true, why would one language be harder to learn than another? Is it some test of faith? If so, do they send only those who need that particular test to the same language instead of just not helping out with any language?

The MTC is no better at teaching languages than any other place, they simply have more time to dedicate to it for the specified period of time while there... Where else do you have people who spend 2 months studing one language and then are sent to a country where they will be immersed in it...

Altaic languages are tough for everybody. Switching from our style of grammar to an agglutinative style is incredibly awkward. I speak one fairly fluently, but it'll never ever be as good as my Spanish.

and 2 months at the MTC I can confirm that the MTC was a far better way of learning than one our a day nine moths a year.

I can also confirm that actually moving to a foreign country and speaking (perhaps trying is more accurate) for 2 months is far superior to the MTC method of formal instruction.

what about deaf/hearing impaired?



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 08/16/2011 08:47PM by guynoirprivateeye.

I used to know some of the signing missionaries. But that was a long time ago and I haven't kept in touch with them.

Story I posted this on another thread a couple of months ago!! But its definitely worth a repost,

Male Chauvanist Pig of a language instructor tried to pick on good friend of mine --ex missionary sister. She was there grading papers -- best job they would let her have --could not teach because she didn't have priesthood..

The MC.Pig first tried it in French -- she was totally fluent in speaking and writing in *French*. She held her ground until he backed off.

The MC.Pig, now red faced and ready to explode, tried to belittle her in schoolboy German -- BAD MOVE as she was totally fluent in speaking and writing *German*. She held her ground until he was done and she obviously made him look small, and all but emasculated the poor guy. How could a sister do this to this fine priesthood holding teacher...

Then as the MC.Pig was about to Lay down the Law and instruct her what to do --she had just about had enough of Elder Jerk -- So she ripped him a new one in fluent *Italian*.. She stood up and left the classroom, the students and the MC.Pig absolutely stunned to silence and absolutely speechless.. I wish I knew what was said after she left the room !!!

She also left the Church and with her language skills, and because she holds a Masters in another subject, she has created a wonderful life for herself and she works in many countries.

JB

The best way to learn a language is to learn the basic structures. In essence, you have to know the verb very well. Once you know the verb, the rest follows. For example

I speak
I am speaking
I was speaking
I spoke
I used to speak
I will speak
I should speak
I must speak
I can speak
I could speak
If I spoke
If I had spoken
I could have spoken
I would have spoken
I might have spoken

If you can't say these or the equivalent in your target language, you are effectively a Tarzan. (of course, in some languages, I speak, I am speaking is the same, etc.). I have used this way to learn various languages and I never went on any mission. I am currently in Thailand, learning Thai.

Of course, there is also adjustments. If you learn a language like Finnish, you also have to learn noun phrases (pienässä kylässä, suomalaista silliä, etc. pardon my spelling mistakes if there are any, it has been a while with Finnish) or if you are studying a language like Russian, you have to know how to work with all the declensions. In Chinese and Thai, you have to master the tones and deal with measure words.

Finally, you have to learn vocabulary systematically. The best is to learn in word families. In the meantime, you have to learn chunks of the language for everyday conversation. (Il n'y a pas de quoi, es tut mir leidt, mai pen rai, mei you guanxi, não faz mal, da igual, etc.) Finally, it is best to start reading stuff that you are interested in your new language. I don't like Rosetta stone but I do like the old FSI language courses. They rock.

Just my point of view