Author Archives: evangardner

In Dalan

Sky Hopinka wraps up the summer trip to China and discusses topics that have come up regarding WAYK, language revitalization, and decolonization.  Sky also wants to say that he is not speaking on behalf of Where Are Your Keys? These are just some of his thoughts about some stuff.

Part One of Two…or Three.

So it’s been quite a while since I last wrote a blog.  I’ll try to be quick.  I have returned from China.  Months ago, in fact.  The rest of the trip went well enough.  We continued working on the POW curriculum after returning from Dalan; David stayed in Beijing for another three weeks after that, where we wandered, loitered, navigated the internet and filmed some stuff for the project.  We also made it to the Peking Opera, which was rad.

After David left, I stayed in Beijing for another three weeks.  I got a job being a private tutor, and I got to teach one on one using WAYK five days a week, twice a day; an hour an a half each go.  It was scary, we blew through the USC we worked out for POW within the first three days, after that it was a lot of mad science and really realizing how interesting English is as a language.  I’m still working on getting everything down on paper, but basically it came down to setting up the prepositions and function words and all the weird times that you’re supposed to say one thing and not the other.  It was fun.  We also started doing TQ: The Walk during the last week of the sessions.  Since the heat was atrocious, we did a short, quick walk in the student’s living room.  It was semi spacious, but a really nice set up with a long couch, a short couch, four chairs around the table, seven chairs total in the house, a tall lamp and a short lamp, and a nice little route around the room.  We got a lot of mileage out of it and would repeat the walk three times each session, reviewing and adding on more and more language as the student learned.

Also, here is the POW video that I made about the partnership between WAYK, BEAM, and the project this past summer:

Since getting back to the States, I’ve been fortunate enough to travel with Evan to many different communities and help out however I can.  It’s really encouraging to see so many people passionate about their languages and doing whatever it takes to ensure its survival.  Yet there are a lot of things that keep coming up; namely politics, identity, race, and colonization.  Yes, those are pretty weighty and heavy, and substantial topics and issues.  But I think that the more that we talk about them and work through them, the sooner action is bound to happen.  To be completely honest, there have been many times while I’ve been working with indigenous languages that I just want to quit.  And I haven’t even been doing this for that long.  But I didn’t, and still haven’t.

I’d rather not go into the political part of this, as it is a little too personal.  But I do want to note that by “political” I am referring to both the governmental, sovereignty based issues and the more individual “politicking” aspects of language revitalization.  It’s a pain in the ass, but it’s there and something that needs to be worked through, for everyone involved.  Teamwork.  Yeah.  We’ve been working on Techniques (TQ) for this.  Not yet contracted, though.

The big concepts that seem to cover all of those issues are:

Colonization.  Decolonization.  <=Those guys.

I became aware of decolonization as an academic term five or six years ago, and mainly through terms of decolonizing pedagogical methodologies.  (There is a collection of essays called Decolonizing Methodologies that I recommend, among many others.) In the past few years I’ve really noticed a surge of voices who are taking this idea to the next level.  It’s great.  Right on.  However, in terms of WAYK, it’s recently become a topic of conversation as far as how can we improve the system to accommodate decolonization efforts.  The discussion involves really making clear what these Techniques can do, and in the next post I’ll share more ideas that I have about decolonization.

But first,

I’ll start with the USC.  The good ol’ Universal Speed Curriculum.  Old reliable.  One thing that needs to be clarified is that the road map that is the USC, is only a suggestion, a conversation starter.  It’s the linguistic equivalent of small talk at a cocktail party: boring and not something that your language particularly wants to be wooed by.  I’ve never been to a cocktail party, but I can imagine.  I can say with almost a lot of certainty that no language will follow the English USC exactly.  And that’s a beautiful thing.  Take the USC, look at it once, put it away, and hunt those fuzzy concepts that the USC represents, not the words.  If there are concepts in the USC that don’t exist in your language, then it’s perfectly fine to change the USC.  That’s when it stops being the universal speed curriculum and starts becoming the Your-Language-Here Speed Curriculum.  Concepts such as want/have/give/take, mine/yours, etc, that are part of the foundation of the USC are still just concepts.  If politeness, norms, or mores occur in your culture that are opposite that of what is in the USC, by all rights, make adjustments to the USC and change it, adapt it, and run with it.

Another issue is intonation.  It is very tempting to impose English intonation when asking and answering questions in the target language, and honestly it’s a hard habit to break, but it’s part of the process, and it can always be fixed with TQ: Accent and explained by TQ: Mumble.  So as you hunt, keep an ear out for intonation, run through the conversation with the fluent speaker and try and copycat along as best you can.  But I suggest not letting it be main focus of your first hunt, or second, or third.  You’ve got to TQ: Limit somewhere, and best to get some language under your belt.  A more advanced hunting TQ is purposefully testing a question with an English inflection to prompt the speaker to 1) confirm or correct what was being hunted and 2) to correct you improper inflection.  It’s easy to get everyone confused by doing this, so be careful.

Really, when you start packaging rides and teaching them off is when you want to go over intonation and make any accent adjustments.  Even if the realization of proper intonation comes when you’re halfway fluent it’s still okay to make that adjustment, and go back and download your brand new accent to everyone you taught.  It’s okay to unlearn.

Intonation and the malleability of the USC are a few issues that come up when discussing language revitalization and the process of active revitalization.  It’s a rational fear that occurs when we start objectively examining the language(s) that we’re trying to save, and are taking into account the obstacles that we face and how the influence that English and the dominant culture we live in affect that process.

Still, remember, that there are some conversations that you need to have about your language that you can only have in your language.  I’m of the Davidedwardsian school of thought that nothing translates.  Ever!  So get fluent.  It’ll be fun.  Then take Grandma to that coffee shop in Spain we’re always talking about.

As in language-learning, studying math involves plenty of rigorous proofs–you take what knowledge you know, and then you use it to find new knowledge. Luckily, language acquisition doesn’t have to be as complicated as this blackboard. (Credit: Clay Shonkwiler, Flickr, Creative Commons)

This post is fifth in a series of entries about WAYK techniques as they occur in everyday life, beyond language-learning.

How do you show someone you’ve learned something? Naturally, you repeat that knowledge to that person rather than simply stating “Yes, I’ve learned it.” You impress that person even more when you apply your newly-acquired knowledge in new, unforeseen situations; rather than simply blindly following instructions in preset environments–which are very convenient, but very rare in life–you show that your brain is flexible and that you’re truly aware of what you’re doing. The WAYK technique “Prove It” takes this element of daily life and applies it to language-learning. You use a bit of language–a word, a phrase, a sentence structure–that you recently learned in a set-up beyond the one in which you learned it. When you “Prove It”, you learn in what situations a piece of language fits and doesn’t fit, and you fix that piece of language more securely in your brain.

Proving your skills is more essential than at first glance. You may receive a diploma from high school or college and claim to have a set of knowledge and skills, but when you are hired, you must show that you, in fact, do possess a given amount of know-how in order to keep your job. You probably wouldn’t want your employers to think you’re a hack, that you got your diploma by achieving the bare minimum for it. If you’ve seen the infamous TV game show Are You Smarter than a 5th-Grader?, you’ve noticed a harsh truth about how grown-ups claim to have learned basic knowledge. Unfortunately for many of the adult contestants–and hilariously for us watching at home–they can’t prove they learned things in elementary school even though they clearly graduated from it. (Maybe they’ve forgotten simple math, science, and grammar, but it’s still basic knowledge.) The ultimate embarrassment is when contestants fail questions that kids answer correctly: the adults must then admit to the world, “I am not smarter than a 5th-grader.”

Life is full of opportunities to “Prove It”. Once, when I was driving a rental car, taking several of my dormmates from our campus to San Francisco, one of my dormmates asked me if I was a safe driver. Of course, I couldn’t rent a car without my license, but of course, that wasn’t enough proof. Many licensed drivers drive unsafely, moving too close to cars and not having both hands on the wheel at all times. I could only show my passengers I was being careful during the trip to SF. At the same time, I was paying attention to my driving as well, so I had to make sure I was, in fact, maneuvering with extra care. The experience helped me improve my future driving as well.

In school, the ways to “Prove It” are obvious: you finish homework, pass tests, and give knowledgeable presentations. They’re usually given with set deadlines. Typically, you can receive outside help on homework, with others “pulling you through it” if you’re having trouble. On the other hand, you’re on your own on tests and presentations.

WAYK is different: you’re tested constantly, but you’re tested only when you think you’re ready, not at pre-determined times. Most of the time in WAYK, your “angels on your shoulder” are “pulling you through it”. However, you’re only tested individually when you need to “Prove It”, whether you want to use just one new word or whether you’re being tested on your fluency on the ACTFL scale; only then will you be on your own. You set your own pace for learning, which makes learning more comfortable and thus a lot more efficient.

I hope you can prove that you know how to “Prove It”! And when you play WAYK with your friends, I hope you prove your knowledge of WAYK techniques and how and when to bring them up “Just in Time”.

In February I received a random email. Qwina said he watched the videos on you tube and vimeo and decided to take WAYK for a spin!  He taped the first sessions and sent them to me to look over.  I was astounded by Qwina’s ability to wield techniques and work through the USC’s first rides up through “mine/yours”.  I was even more astounded by Qwina’s willingness for me to critique his set-up and flow without ever having met me or ever having received any WAYK training.
I asked if we could post the video for everyone to see, and happily, he and his class agreed.  To be honest, they have been bugging me to post it for a few months now!
So for all you other community language classes who are shy… get out the recorder and give WAYK a shot!
Send the video unedited for me to look over and give you pointers, and then we can talk about posting an edited version if you and your community deem that appropriate. Either way we will have a great conversation. email to evan@whereareyourkeys.org

-Evan

Manahu (Hello), my name is Qwina West, I am the Inyo County Language Coordinator for the Nüümü Yadoha Program, and this is one of our Paiute Language Classes here in Bishop CA. This video is my second time teaching WAYK in Paiute, four out of the six student is their first time learning this technique. I seen this technique for a couple of years now on the internet, but every time I would see it, I did not understand it right off, so I would not watch them through. So I ran across the site “Where Are Your Keys” and watched this video (“Where Are Your Keys?” is difficult to explain but easy to demonstrate. Check out Evan Gardner, the game’s original developer, in this first-time players’ tutorial.)
The second time I sat down with my Fluent Speaker and told her this is what I want to teach, we sat down together and watched the video, and she loved it! This concept of teaching is similar to our old ways of teaching children. At this time,  I watch the video twice all the way through and made notes and used the Universal Speed Curriculum, and started teaching the first class only two of my students showed up the second class six showed up and they had FUN LEARNING LANGUAGE and that is very important to me.
I videotaped both classes and took up Evans offer about sending in a video. Evan watched them both and gave me advice on what I needed to work on more. If you need a change in your teaching or you see that your students are getting burned out, try this method and have fun with it. As our Elders would say, “Don’t be ashamed” just do it. Watch the video all the way through and copy/mimic everything you see, than watch it again and turn the sound down and do it in your language.

Alina, Stevie, and Melissa enjoy a serious teaching moment at Portland State University.

The best part of summer has to be no school and homework to get in the way of me focusing on Hunting Navajo and gaining fluency in Chinuk Wawa. My journey and first interactions with Where are your keys?, occurred at Portland State University. I was a transfer student from Utah State University the term before. Every day I truly second guessed my decision to transfer to PSU. I went from a school I had always known with friends and family, to a new school where it was grey skies ( the sun didn’t exist) , not a single person knew me , I had just changed my major (again),  and in every way possible was drastically different from Utah and New Mexico where I grew up.

For my new major I just so happened to register for a Native Language Revitalization class that fulfilled my requirement for graduation. I actually planned on dropping the class if I didn’t like it after the first week because 1. I had no idea what language revitalization was and 2. The brief description was boring and I couldn’t fathom why and how was it even important or relevant to my life.  Within the first week of the term one of the requirements for the class was to attend a language class, so I decided to attend the Chinuk Wawa classes everyone was raving about. Having never spoken a second language, learning languages was extremely new. I will always remember walking into the class, immediately greeted by everyone and invited to join a bucket taught by Melissa, the kindness, warmth, passion, knowledge, and techniques I experienced at Chinuk Wawa made learning so fun . That first day when I struggled or got frustrated I learned the technique, “Don’t think don’t suffer” just relax and head over to “the meadow” (where I might add there was free food, Yaay!:D).  The concept of using sign language as a bridge language was so intriguing and made absolute sense, especially when I was given the mouth dropping news, I would be totally immersed in the language.

The next few weeks to come were probably the most life altering and has changed my life forever.  This was when I realized 1. What language revitalization was. Sitting there starring out onto the class, looking at everyone teaching and just having fun.  I Realized I was a part of it and I could see all of us wrapped and surrounded fully immersed in Chinuk Wawa, it was put into action changing our community. 2. It was everything but BORING and yes it was relevant to my life and others. When I was told I could use it to learn my own language the Navajo Language, I can’t lie, I WAS SOLD!:D lol. I could learn my language that I had only dreamed of speaking. A language so close to me while simultaneously so far away because I didn’t’ speak or understand.

I am a firm believer that things happen for a reason.  I know I was supposed to transfer to Portland State University that I was destined to register for that one Native language revitalization class where 3, Where are you Keys? Interns were my classmates.  I was meant to find my passion for teaching and learning languages.  I need to speak Navajo, no longer will it be something I merely wish for. I can’t wait for all my new Navajo experiences and Chinuk adventures because I saw the Native center at PSU change, due to the gathering spaces being filled with students/friends speaking Chinuk Wawa. I have been given the opportunity to go to California for workshops and see how it has changed and impacted lives of communities with only a few fluent speakers. Where are you keys?, changes lives and communities, it changed mine.

Alina, Stevie, and Melissa make WAYK Portland State University

Blog 1: What did WAYK at PSU give you?

I was a Senior at Portland State University in my second to last term when I decided to attend a Chinuk Wawa language class held at the Native Center. There were two passionate teachers, Sky Hopinka and Stevie Lemke that made me feel welcome even though I did not really have an idea of who they were or what this Where Are Your Keys?  was about. They both taught me the basic techniques and would spend extra time outside of class to speak Chinuk Wawa. When attending the Chinuk Wawa class, I noticed it was the first time in a language class where I did not feel pressured to know how to speak or forced to reproduce answers for a test.

I started out playing the game and quickly was told to teach, like many of the people who come at least once. After my first couple of classes I became interested in having an internship with WAYK to learn more about the methodology while receiving required college credits. I was able to witness and be a part of this Chinuk Wawa group that became a community of speakers, not only from PSU but other community members would attend. It evolved into Chinuk being spoken in the Native Center and having a home in the Native center 2 days a week for 2 hours. I learned how to teach a language and work with all different levels of fluency by using the techniques as guidelines. More importantly, I understood how to listen and help other people reach their goal of fluency.

 Initially, I knew nothing about Chinuk culture nor knew anything about the history of their language. I was fortunate to be able to ask people in the Chinuk Wawa group and many other knowledgeable community members about the many influences on Chinuk Wawa and it’s speakers. The most remarkable aspect of the class was how we all learned so much about the history of the Portland area and the people who resided there, even though we were not in a formal college class. Being a part of the Chinuk Wawa group resulted in me getting heavily involved in many of the activities at the Native Center. I ended up enjoying, volunteering, and attending events at PSU and through out the Portland community.

By participating in the Chinuk Wawa group, I was able to attend many workshops and conferences through WAYK. We were able to travel to California and other parts of Oregon to meet other people who were trying to revitalize their language. It was inspiring to hear the stories of language groups who were introducing WAYK to their community and adapting it to their language. The Chinuk Wawa group and WAYK showed me that I was passionate about language revitalization and how I want to pursue this work for my future career. I realized creating language communities is a goal for all groups and the struggle is finding a method that is fast and easy for all ages.

Being Passamaquoddy, I have always wanted to learn my language and the cultural traditions of my people by communicating in our language. Where Are Your Keys? (WAYK) was a teaching method that revitalized my hope and ambition to learn how to build a strong language communities while continuing the path to fluency. The reason why this teaching method works is because it is a game designed for all members of the community. Our philosophy is that we create “language teacher makers”, its the idea that every person must develop teaching skills while learning the language to be able to share the language and build a community of speakers. The game utilizes the strengths of sign language, various techniques, and props. The design is about reaching fluency as quickly as possible and modifying the lessons to achieving this goal. After nearly seven months of being a part of WAYK, I am ready to take this PSU experience and head back home to see how we can continue the movement in other tribes.

Thank you to Evan Gardner, a mentor and friend who encouraged me to take on the world. To Sky Hopinka, Stevie Lemke, and Alina Begay for always teaching me how to be a better human being. And finally, hayi masi pus konaway Chinuk Wawa tilicum uk kumtux pi wawa Chinuk Wawa.

Xianqi on a Train

Our next project was to go to a small town south of Shanghai called Dalan, or Dalanzhen, and work with a group of teenage volunteers who were running a three-week English summer camp in three villages surrounding Dalanzhen.  There were two or three volunteers assigned to each of the villages and each had their own way of running things.  We were showing up the last week of the program and not really sure what to expect.

We left for Dalanzhen Sunday morning, taking a cab to the Big Beijing Super Fast Train Station.  I’m not sure if that’s what it’s called, but that place is huge.  It was a five-hour train ride to Shanghai in a pretty nice, super fast train.  Along the way David taught me how to play xiangqi in Mandarin, so that was enjoyable  It’s a lot like western chess, but a few more quirks that make the game a little more interesting.  I didn’t win the first two, or three, times that we played, which I promptly blamed on learning the game in Mandarin, not English, but still it was fun and passed the time.

After we arrived in Shanghai, we transferred trains to one that would take us to Yuyao, which is about three hours by slow train.  On that leg we sat in a sleeper car with four other people.  David and I continued to play xiangqi and noticed this younger dude watching us.  After David beat me, we conversed in chinuk a bit about David asking him if he wanted to play.  After we agreed that it would be all right, David asked him and the competition commenced.  A quarter of the way through the game, David turned to me and, in chinuk, said that the guy was playing really badly and making some big mistakes.  We went back and forth really quick about what to do, and decided on just letting him win, to draw the game out, and to not be insulting.  The game went on for a while longer and both David and the guy were playing pretty horribly. It’s also worth noting that before while David and I were playing, this guy had a rubix cube and looked like one of those competitors who solved them in 20 seconds flat.  So it’s easy to assume he’d have a knack for games.  Then David turned to me again, and in chinuk, said that the guy might be trying to lose, so as to not insult the foreigners.  Seemed plausible, we agreed that might very well be the case, then David went ahead and won.  Or maybe everyone won?  I don’t know, but we maintained the peace.

It wasn’t that much longer before we arrived in Yuyao and were met at the bus station by one of the teenage volunteers.  He took us to a waiting car and we got on our way.  But first we stopped at KFC.

There’s something about KFC in China.  During the weekend after we got back from Fangshan, David and I went out and explored a bit and along the way got pretty hungry.  It was hot; the humidity here is insane, and just said to hell with it and went to KFC.  It was the most awkward experience I’ve had a fast food restaurant ever.  Beside the fact that I didn’t have enough language to order from a menu, it was intimidating.  They yell at you and everyone behind you is cutting in line.  David also had a hard time with it, and after some time we got through the ordeal and sat down and ate our food.  David mentioned how it was a bit of a humbling experience for him, like he didn’t know as much Mandarin as he thought he did, and this was a whole nother kind of language test.  Like a solid Intermediate-mid test.

In Yuyao we got a chance for redemption and stopped in for food.  It was just as bad this time around.  One of the cashiers was laughing at us and I think they hosed me on the fries.  We will be back…

We met up with the rest of the teenage volunteers, got to meet the girl that was organizing the whole project.  They’re doing cool things.  But they wanted to split the three of us up and send each of us to a different village for the week.  That didn’t really fit well into our plans or with what we were expecting before we got there.  It turns out that the volunteers didn’t know that we were coming until the day we arrived, so there was some awkwardness there, and we really didn’t want to step on anyone’s toes the last week of their summer camp.  We had some figurin’ to do.

It was an hour drive from Yuyao to Dalan, and by the time we got to Dalan we had it decided that Irene, David and myself would be staying in a hotel in town and going to the closest village the next morning, Monday, see the lay of the land and plan out the rest of the week from there.

Again, David and I were sharing a room and a bed; a routine we’d grown accustomed to the past week in Fangshan and the two weeks before in Bend.  We settled in and went to sleep.

Getting to the Party at Chuangwei Elementary School

The rest of our time at Chuanwei was exciting and interesting in finding ways to implement the game. We got set in our routine and made it through the rest of the week. The classes went great, and the kids really responded to WAYK, and in the end, so did the teachers.

One of the problems that we ran into when we got there was that the teachers weren’t sold on the methodology. It wasn’t a surprise, as most people aren’t on this non-traditional method, but they were willing to hear us out. As David demonstrated the game over the course of the week, the teachers had all of the usual concerns; how to talk about abstract concepts, what do you do if you don’t have a hand sign, etc. Yet their biggest concern was that the students already knew the material we were covering, and that’s why they were responding so well to it to what we were covering in the language. The thing was, they weren’t responding that well. Students in China are more focused on written English and not spoken, so while they can compose comprehensible sentences in written form, they can’t speak it fluidly or fluently. After talking about about that issue they got the gist of what we were going for with fluent oral proficiency.

Sometime during the middle of the week it became clear that what the teachers were concerned with was the students passing standardized tests. From what I understood, it’s a bit more of a complicated issue there than in the States. I remember taking state testing when I was growing up, and the issues surrounding controversies where teachers would just teach what would be on the test. But there, the way for these kids to get into better secondary schools, high schools, universities, whatever, is to do well on these tests early on. So we looked at a copy of their textbook and tried to figure out how to adapt the system to work for that purpose, or at least supplement that purpose.

After looking through the book for a bit, David found that the students we were working with haven’t been introduced to the concept of “can” yet, so we decided to go for that. In the morning on Wednesday, we taught the kids “can” using WAYK, not translating, and they got it. The teachers then asked us to create a more advanced ride that none of the students were exposed to, (we were working with a range of kids from 3rd to 6th grade) and basically teach them how to get to a party, how to plan a party. So we got to throw a party.

It’s a very difficult thing to teach concepts such as “where,” “when,” “who can do what,” “who can bring what,” to a group of kids in a day, but David did an excellent job and we planned our party with the students Wednesday afternoon and had our party Thursday afternoon. The time in between was getting everyone ready and taking part in doing something, with “what can you do at the party?” A group of kids wanted to play basketball, some wanted to sings, two wanted to dance and we asked Luofan (David said that’s the right way to spell Lo Fan’s name) to play guitar and he agreed.

It ended up raining on Thursday, so the kids couldn’t play basketball at the party, but the rest of it went well. There was candy and dancing and singing and guitar playing. Victory!

On Friday, our last day there the teachers treated us to some dumplings for lunch which were pretty damn good, but before that we got the chance to see two of the teachers apply the system to their curriculum. It was good to see them embrace it, and to use the techniques in the way they were teaching. Hopefully they use them more, and use the WAYK manual that David is writing.

We weren’t exactly doing WAYK the way we would have liked to, but we managed to adapt the system enough to incorporate it into the program that the teachers were already using, which really is an important aspect of WAYK: adaptability. And we learned some very important things that we can hopefully refine into proper WAYK Techniques that we can begin teaching off. It really was a lot of fun at Chuanwei, the students were great, the teachers were excited for the method, and next we’ll continue to help them implement the method throughout the upcoming school year.

That evening we got in a bus and headed back into Beijing for a day of rest before we left for our next destination: Dalanzhen.

Everyone has a hand, and everyone is equal. It’s a good day to play.                        Credit: mrwynd, Flickr, Creative Commons

This post is third in a series of entries about WAYK techniques as they occur in everyday life, beyond language-learning. The previous two are on “Craig’s List” and “Full”.

People say “the best way to learn is to teach”, the “natural conclusion” would be that everybody would be teaching all the time. WAYK accelerates this teaching through the technique “Everybody Deals”: everyone in the Inner Circle plays a given role. For instance, the fluent speaker in the Inner Circle might have everyone Copycat what she is saying, then have the person on her left do the same, and so on along the circle until the last person is reached. “Everybody Deals” is therefore an extension of “My Turn/Your Turn” and naturally progresses to “Teach a Teacher”.

“Everybody Deals” takes its name from multiplayer card games, in which the role of the dealer is passed on clockwise for every round of play. The custom was established to make sure every person was playing fair and had the same opportunity to play well. WAYK ensures the same result: if one person is using good techniques more often, then “Everybody Deals” gives a double bonus: everyone else can then copy-cat the same techniques, making the game both faster and fairer, never creating “single points of failure”.

At Stanford, inspired by the gameplay of certain rounds of Mandarin Chinese at the November 2011 workshop, I decided to coin a name for the way we repeated a pair conversation in a circle: “Rotation Conversation”. [1] As I’d later learn, this would be a subset of “Everybody Deals”. I’ve found it’s a powerful reinforcement of learning lines because every person in the circle plays the roles of receiver and giver, one right after the other. Personally, I like “Everybody Deals” a lot more than “Rotation Conversation” because the former encompasses a lot more content and emphasizes the notion that everybody is involved.

Many sports also make use of “Everybody Deals” in having both teams play offense and defense within the same game. This arrangement motivates both teams to be competent in both roles and makes athletes’ brains more flexible; players are generally not stuck in the same role throughout the game. Everyone on a team is shuffled in and out of play; sometimes you’re on the field, other times in the bleachers.

Even around the home, “Everybody Deals” appears. You’ve had to work on your fair share of chores when you were little, but at some point so have your parents and siblings. Most likely, you didn’t have to be stuck with the same chore every day. Most likely, you lent a hand at washing the dishes, doing the laundry, taking out the trash, and mowing the lawn on certain days in the week, and your other family members worked their chores on other days.

“Everybody Deals” teaches you to be alert of what you should say next when you’re in an Inner Circle. It also forces you to be flexible; your brain should be agile and able to switch from role to role as needed, not fixed in a particular role all the time. Finally, “everybody deals” highlights and strengthens the collaborative aspect of WAYK, making sure that everyone has a chance, at some point, to play in the same way.

While we learn languages, we should never forget that languages belong to cultures and that we should embrace both languages and cultures at the same time. When we make sure “Everybody Deals”, we include everyone and build the culture around the language we hunt. This inclusion strengthens the language, the players, and the community.

[1] Alice would be giving something to Bob, sitting to her left. Afterward, Bob would then give something else to Charlie, to his left. Charlie would have the same interaction with Dana, then Dana with Emily, and finally Emily with Alice.

Brother, ima Bassist

I didn’t have enough Mandarin to be able to speak to anyone but a few people and hunt from the friendliest of players, and I mostly took pictures, took video, and helped David with some table game pointers. The kids were great, really bright, and really sweet.  David had his posse of boys running after him and he’d play basketball with them and the girls would follow Irene around.  They took to WAYK pretty well,

In this Video Sky and Evan demonstrate how the quest for rapid fluency can be measured in a systematic, universal, and accessible way using the American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages Oral Proficiency Interview (ACTFL.org OPI).

The WAYK system is based on the notion that fluency can be attained rapidly, passed on easily, and measured scientifically.  Our efforts to promote transparent testing and rating must have a universal scale or calibrated measurement to critically assess our efforts and expenditures in time, human resources, and budget.  If we find  a more efficient route to fluency (both linguistic and cultural) then we must be prepared to discuss, improve, and adapt our approaches to creating vibrant healthy language communities.

We cannot understate the importance of community training in the ACTFL testing system.

Disclaimer: WAYK is not affiliated with, or supported by, ACTFL… We are just HUGE fans!

This video shows what advanced WAYK looks like.  This is no longer the simple “What is That?” game.  Now that Evan and Sky are both seasoned WAYK players, they can push and pull language using a wide range of techniques although the untrained eye may not notice the high level of cooperation they employ.

The advanced stages of WAYK look like a casual conversation.  There isn’t a lot of technique throwing. There is also hardly any sign language. These techniques are still available to the players, but are no longer critical to the flow of information.  Now Sky and Evan just use the techniques on each other without any grand announcement.  They both know what the other is doing.  Sky and Evan have an expectation from each other that they will both do their upmost to   move as much linguistic structure and vocabulary as possible in this short and “casual” conversation.

Now we can really play!

Bad things can happen when something goes Full; worse, when beyond Full. Extremely heavy rains in Tokoroa, New Zealand pushed the local drainage systems well over their Full levels, leading to this dangerous scene here. Stay safe when you’re around WAYK players who are Full, and unfill yourself when you have to! (Credit: Sarah Macmillan, Flickr, Creative Commons)

This is the second in a series of blog posts about how WAYK techniques can be applied to learning in everyday life. The first post is “Craig’s List.”

David Edwards, one of my fellow WAYK interns and Stanford alumni, is notorious for describing “full” in a way like this: “If you eat too much, you puke. If you learn too much, your brain pukes–all over the table, and it gets really sticky and messy and hard to clean up.” No truer words have been said in a game of WAYK. If you’re overwhelmed with foreign words and phrases, they start mixing with each other in your head in very bewildering ways; your vocabulary and syntax may come out garbled (you have a harder time putting phrases together; people have to pull you through every single step). Therefore, you should call Full and excuse yourself from the game to protect yourself–and your teammates–from this confusion.

(And if you’re reading this entry and feel you’re learning too much already, please get up and come back when you’re ready. Do this as often as you’d like and as often as you need to. I’ll be patient; don’t worry.)

In everyday life, one does–and should–call Full. When I jog and run around my neighborhood, I know that I need to catch a breath after about 10 minutes of continuous running (15 on a good day), so I stop occasionally, walk for about 5 to 10 minutes, then run some more once I regain my strength.

Technique “Full” takes this idea from daily life and applies it to learning by inverting a core principle of traditional education: in WAYK, students, rather than teachers, control how long they learn. As much as I’d like to say that Full can be applied everywhere in daily life, it can’t always be so. (Imagine getting up and leaving in the middle of class whenever you felt Full! I don’t think you’d want to ask your teachers for letters of recommendation in that case.) But Full can, of course, can be done in all other non-time-constrained situations. When I’m studying outside of lecture or section, I like to take breaks every so often so that I don’t feel overwhelmed by my work. The breaks help me solidify and secure the information in my head.

Notice that I mentioned that the amount of time I can run continuously without being exhausted isn’t constant. Depending on the task, the environment, and your mood, your Full capacity is very changeable, so it’s important to be able to gauge yourself accurately. More than that, if you’re not sure if you’re Full, you probably are. In that case, it’s better to call Full early and stay sane throughout a task rather than to avoid calling Full to the stage at which you keep doggedly working, go insane, and ruin what you’re working on.

I hope you took enough breaks reading this post! Get out and find some fresh air, go about your life, and come back next time for more WAYK goodness.

These Colors Don’t Run
Basically, why we were in Fangshan was that the Principal runs a school for the children of under privileged migrant workers, the Boshi school.  She was working with Irene’s NGO (non-governmental organization) to put together a project where the teachers who work at these schools for migrant children use the WAYK method for teaching their students English.  We were coming not to work with the Boshi school, I’m assuming because it was being renovated, but to work with another other school about fifteen minutes away called Chuangwei Xuexiao

The next four days went by quick.  We’d get up, Lo Fan would meet us at Boshi and take us to breakfast a few blocks away.  The breakfast place was literally a hole in the wall.  The hole was round and you’d never know that it was a restaurant if it weren’t for the steady stream of locals going in and out to get their morning meal.  Good, simple food and not a terrible way to start the day.

This whiteboard is busy with Craig’s Lists upon Craig’s Lists–some within other Craig’s Lists, too. Clearly, the student who made all these notes knows what she’s doing to succeed in class. (Denise Chan, Flickr, Creative Commons)

For this post and more in the future, I’ll be writing about how WAYK techniques can be useful in life outside of language-learning contexts. Although just about all WAYK activity focuses on second-language acquisition, we’re also aware that WAYK’s techniques can be–and often already are–useful in learning material in any discipline. No matter how concrete or abstract, academic or practical, rote or conceptual, learning can be accelerated through the techniques WAYK players invent and use. Through this series, I’ll explore how I have noticed and used WAYK techniques in my life. I hope these posts will inspire you to think about using WAYK in your daily life.

One of the techniques that most remarkably and repeatedly appears in my learning outside of WAYK is “Craig’s List,” which organizes information into convenient sequences of related things that help you remember items one after the other. In basic WAYK play, you may have Craig’s Lists for vocabulary items, as simple as “yes/no”, “mine/yours”, and “want/have/give/take”. More than that, Craig’s Lists can be melded with other WAYK techniques and methods, like “Travels with Charlie” (“Tarzan at the Party”/”Getting to the Party”/”What Happened at the Party Last Night?”/”What if Parties Were Illegal?”). Combined with “Copycat”, “My Turn/Your Turn”, and “In Threes”, Craig’s Lists are excellently efficient tools for memorizing language that eliminate the need to pore over long and tedious written vocabulary lists.

If the idea of organizing bits of knowledge into sequences doesn’t sound new to you at all, it shouldn’t. You’ve probably wielded this technique a lot in school before you ever even learned about WAYK. Maybe you’ve memorized mnemonics, like the colors of the rainbow or the names of the planets in our solar system. On more intense fronts, you might have known someone who was dedicated to memorizing the first 100 digits of pi or parts of crucial documents in your country’s history. In my college years, as a Materials Science and Engineering major, I successfully practiced Craig’s Lists to memorize properties of materials. [1]

The magic of Craig’s Lists is that they can start off short and become longer and longer without having to tax your brain. Once you practicing reciting a Craig’s List, as soon as you rattle off one item in the sequence, your brain will instantly recall the next item, and the next item, and on and on all the way to the end. In typical WAYK games, new Craig’s Lists have a maximum of four items (words or phrases). When new items arise, if they are relevant to existing Craig’s Lists, they are tacked on the end, so when you are later asked to recite a Craig’s List with the new item, you can easily remember both the new item and the old items.

For example, in a game of WAYK in English, a list of locative prepositions may start simple, like “above/below”. You practice language using the words in this list first. If you are ready for more language, you may learn a longer Craig’s List, “above/below/in front/behind“, and practice the new prepositions while refreshing the already-taught ones. This Craig’s List can be further extended to “above/below/in front/behind/between/next to“, and so on. Notice also that in each pair of items introduced, the items are very closely related; two of the three pairs are opposites, in fact. Craig’s Lists can pack extra punch when portions of them are in some natural order; the long list above should be easier to recall than a less-ordered sequence like “between/in front/below/next to/above/behind”. An even better bonus comes up when items come in a natural order, as in “one/two/three/four”.

Craig’s Lists may appear to become complicated when you are dealing with networks of things. You can use multiple Craig’s Lists for this purpose, with some of the lists containing the same item. Naturally, you may need to be careful not to mix the lists accidentally, but you may think of these lists like a string of dominoes: you may memorize the connections between two items at a time, and put those connections, rather than simply the items themselves, in the lists. This is how I remembered the independent state variables that the four thermodynamic energy values of a material are dependent upon. [2]

You can solidify the connections between elements in Craig’s Lists by working the items into paragraph form. Separate Craig’s Lists can be woven together to build strong connections between words, even if the words aren’t intrinsically related. For example, if we have the Craig’s Lists “fork, knife, spoon”, “before, now, later”, and “above, below, in front, behind”, we can construct a (strange, yet helpful) string of sentences that reads: “Before, the fork was above the knife. Now, the fork is below the spoon. Later, the fork will be in front of the knife but behind the spoon.”

Outside of language learning, Craig’s Lists can be applied to practical matters from grocery shopping (milk, butter, bread, bagels: notice the dairy/bread segue) to bike check-ups (brakes, gears, tires, tubes: notice the rough front/back, out/in order of this list), and even to fun things like song lyrics. Meanwhile, our education system is shifting focus from rote recall to holistic conceptual understanding, but believe it or not, Craig’s Lists can help even with the latter. The sequential order encoded in Craig’s Lists can help you recall cause-and-effect chains, like the water cycle. [3] Craig’s Lists can help you memorize loads of information, which you can then process to find and analyze the connections between pieces of information. (This processing is encapsulated in another technique, Riddle-Me-This, in which you figure things out on your own.)

It’s always better, on the whole, to have your things and thoughts in order rather than to have them all scattered about, with no rhyme or reason as to where they are. Craig’s Lists conveniently help you learn and recall related items. Perhaps you could make a Craig’s List out of the techniques I’ll be writing about for the rest of this series of posts!

[1] For a basic example: I took a list, from one class, of certain basic crystalline structures (hexagonal close-packed (hcp), face-centered cubic (fcc), body-centered cubic (bcc), diamond cubic) and recalled some of their properties as I went through each item in the list (hexagonal close-packed planes are stacked in an ABABAB… structure, each atom has 12 neighbors, and the unit cell is a rectangular prism and has 4 atom-equivalents in it; face-centered cubic planes are stacked in an ABCABC… structure, and each atom also has 12 neighbors, but the unit cell is a cube and has 4 atom-equivalents in it; and so on).

[2] Internal energy is minimized, at equilibrium, with respect to given entropy and volume values; enthalpy, to given entropy and pressure values; Helmholtz free energy, to given temperature and volume values; and Gibbs free energy, to given temperature and pressure values.

[3] The relevant Craig’s List for the water cycle could go, “ocean water, water vapor, clouds, precipitation, runoff”. Ocean water is evaporated; it changes from a liquid to a gas due to higher temperatures in the air. Water vapor may be blown by wind toward land. When water vapor reaches higher air, which is colder, it will rever to its liquid phase in small droplets and form clouds. As the droplets become heavy enough, they fall as precipitation (rain, snow, and other forms). If precipitation happens over land, water will move downhill as runoff, through rivers or sewer systems. (Naturally, this is a simplified picture of the water cycle; I’m ignoring complications like water seeping into the ground and entering the underground water table.)

We Took the Long Way Home and The City Country

We had a day of recovery before we were set to go to Fangshan for the week.  David and I took that opportunity to go jog around the Haidian district in the morning.  Judging by the looks of people on the street, running through Beijing isn’t that common, or we just didn’t look the part. Either way, we had our destination and were just two more vehicles jockeying for position amidst the mash of pedestrians, cyclists, 9 to 5ers, buses and taxis.  It was a bit intense, and David’s advice for crossing the street worked well enough: go when the Chinese go.

Our goal was to design a TQ: Same Conversation by doing a TQ: Walk (or Run) for the coming weeks.  There was a lot of potential for good topics to cover, such as crossing the street, waiting, stopping, yelling at cars cutting you off (Hey! I’m walkin’ here!) and general directional language.

Thinking back, it was definitely a same conversation between David and I.  A few weeks before I had to go to San Francisco to apply for my visa.  I meet David there and we went in together.  I had my trip timed out so that I would only be in the city for a day, but it didn’t work out that way.  We met at the Chinese Embassy in the morning, got in, I found out that I forgot a piece of my application, so we had to go to a UPS store to get it faxed to me.  David and I ended up running about a mile from the UPS store back to the Embassy to get there before they closed for the day, and we were talking in Mandarin the whole way there.

This time, we were trying to get to this park near Beida University, or Peking University, where last year David went and did Tai Chi in this early morning group ran by an older woman.   After a few mistaken parks and wrong directions we ended up there, too late for the group Tai Chi, but still we sat for a bit and watched the park goers.

Evan (left) and I are working on cleaning the spaces between floorboards on the patio. The situation lent itself to a lot of Obviously!-made Set-ups and Same Conversations, while we were Whistling While We Worked throughout.

While I was helping Evan over the past few weeks improve his house to sell, I had some time to learn Spanish from him. We didn’t have to set aside some time for lessons. After all, language is about communication, not classroom exercises. We simply made a deal that if I wanted to help out Evan with his housework, he’d want to speak to me in a foreign language he knew well on the ACTFL scale, Spanish. Of the languages he knew and could teach me, Spanish was the one I saw as most useful and wanted to practice the most.

(Despite my name, I don’t come from a Spanish-speaking culture myself; my family just happens to be from the Philippines, a country where many people were given Spanish names. All spelling errors here, if any, are mine.)

At this point, I should bring up a new name we coined for a new technique: “Whistle While You Work.” Naturally, it takes a cue from Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs: doing something else while you work helps to make the job lighter on the learner and to give the fluent speaker more time to teach. While we were scraping dirt off the gaps between the floorboards on the patios and wiping down some walls inside the house, Evan brought up a lot of vocabulary words relevant to our tasks. Our conversations used lines like Nosotros limpiamos las paredes con trapos un poquito mojados. Cuantos huecos has encontrado en las paredes? The technique combines a handful of other techniques that connect language to real, live activities:

• “Be Here Now” (we were using words and phrases in their corresponding contexts);
• “Set-up” (the chore environments were laid out and ready for us to work on);
• “Obviously!” (we had concrete objects to work with that weren’t hard to describe);
• “Same Conversation” (though we worked on two separate tasks, we focused on the same grammar structure: has encontrado).

Evan was also bringing up some other topics that weren’t related to our work, but which he hoped I could understand and talk about. He asked me (if I remember correctly) how many years ago my family moved to the United States from the Philippines. I tried to answer using the correct tense and conjugation (which can’t be hunted easily), but Evan must have noticed I was taking more than five seconds to answer. At that point, he called the technique “Sorry, Charlie” (don’t try to speak on a more advanced level than you’re proficient at) on me, which meant that he wasn’t expecting me to continue answering. Sometimes, I felt disappointed that I couldn’t remember a certain verb form, but at other times, I felt relieved that Evan was keeping my mind safe and free from stress. Later, in his “No-grief Debrief”, he explained to me that calling “Sorry, Charlie” was necessary for many WAYK players: people want to try to express themselves, but if they’re taking too long, their brains revert to English as they search for just the right word or phrase that suits what they’d like to say. Once you switch to English, your learning decelerates, and it’s harder to switch back to your target language than it would have been if you had never switched to English.

After asking the complicated question about my family moving to the US, Evan asked a simpler question: how old my parents were. I was able to answer, using the right verb forms–a task that was a lot less taxing on my mind. Then came a question about how many years old I was when I moved to the US. I couldn’t answer the question accurately because I couldn’t express how old I was in years when I moved, but I did know the word dia; to hunt a certain word, I asked, Qué es trenta o trenta-y-un dias? Evan must have seen what I was going for, so instead of just giving me a single word, he provided me with a whole “Craig’s List” of related words: minuto, hora, dia, noche, semana, mes, año, combined with their corresponding American-Sign-Language-based signs.

The magic of the technique “Same Conversation” appeared as well. One day, Evan and I were working on cleaning up floorboards, and he told me he’d found plenty of nails where he was working. As it turned out, it took a long time for me to find my first nail. Evan told me to tell him if I did eventually find one. When I finally did find one, I commented on it. Then came another nail soon afterward, and another, and I remarked on them, too. I was able to practice the lines He encontrado cuatro clavos, He encontrado cinco clavos, He encontrado seis clavos until I made myself fluent in that particular phrase. A few days later, when we were about to wipe the walls, Evan pointed to examples of huecos on the wall and asked me to tell him whenever I found un hueco, just like I did with the clavos. Similar expressions helped pave the way for a “Same Conversation” that would immensely help me remember a certain phrase structure, plus a useful verb form to boot, just by repetition.

The wonder of WAYK is that it acknowledges that language is a tool that helps us accomplish things, not something that stands alone in a book. Through WAYK, people use language combined with the real world so that one person more readily teaches expressions to another. I’m glad to have seen how WAYK works at the Intermediate level while getting tasks done around the house–it’s reinforcing how to push and pull language through WAYK beyond tables of objects and The Walk.

We’re happy to announce that two new videos are on the WAYK Vimeo account. Both feature Evan and David pushing and pulling Intermediate-level expressions in two different languages from each other using advanced WAYK techniques. One is of Evan hunting Mandarin from David, and the other is of David hunting Spanish from Evan; both are below. These aren’t your simple “what is that?” games, with one person just teaching another; these examples show how WAYK players can actively seek and capture new words and phrases and how players can help each other teach and learn. We hope you can pay close attention to the ins and outs of higher-level WAYK in these videos so that you too can practice them!

Evan hunts Mandarin from David:

Since July 8th, David Edwards and Sky Hopinka have been in Beijing for a WAYK partnership with a student run NGO called BEAM (Bridging Education and Mobility.) BEAM’s mission is:

“To serve as a central platform to launch independent service projects that improves the quality of migrant education in China and the quality of life of migrant students. Our vision is to fundamentally revolutionize the philosophy of education and method of teaching in migrant schools to better fit the needs and unique circumstances of these students.”

Together WAYK and BEAM are developing a program called POW (Play On Words) where our goal is to develop an English curriculum. We plan to give this curriculum to teachers at migrant schools so that they can use the WAYK method to teach disadvantaged students English within the limitations of their budget.

Sky has been keeping a personal blog about their experiences on the trip, learning Mandarin, and playing Where Are Your Keys? We’ll be posting their story here during the weeks to come.

Here is Sky’s first entry:

I Remembered to Bring the Medicine

The flight was long enough, but that discomfort was abated by the thought that we were going to China, and agitated again by the thought that we were going to China.  David, who I met last summer working on the WAYK Numu program, was going back for his second visit, and this was my first.

During our flight, and the weeks leading up to the trip that we spent in Bend, David taught me some Mandarin.  Now I hadn’t taken full advantage of the opportunities presented to learn from him.  I kind of assumed that it would just be easier to pick it up when we were actually in Beijing, but the simple culture shock of sitting at the gate in SeaTac had me wishing I took a little more time to learn some before we left.  Ridiculously surprising to me, there were a lot of Chinese people there.  The flight itself didn’t make the regret any easier, the flight attendants barely spoke English and as David ordered his food and drinks in Mandarin I just mumbled what I wanted in simple English and tried to leave the conversations short and quick.

Now, David and I were going to China with two goals: one, to develop a WAYK based English curriculum, and two, to develop a WAYK based Mandarin curriculum and get me as fluent as possible in the language during my time there.  I’m debatably (don’t ask) between an intermediate high and advanced low level of fluency in chinuk wawa on the ACTFL scale.  With chinuk being my second language, Mandarin seems like a good choice for my third.

Eleven hours after we left Seattle, we were in Beijing going through customs and waiting for the train to take us to the city proper.  After a failed attempt to buy a train ticket, all I could think about is that “yeah, this is China.”  I’d gone out of the country a few times; Canada doesn’t count, since I grew up 10 minutes from the border, and New Zealand provided a familiar enough environment (the English thing made it easier,) and the only other time that I felt like an alien was when I went to La Paz, Mexico for friends wedding.  That place was far enough from the border to make communicating in broken English a reprieve.  And like my time in Mexico, I was in China with a friend who new the language and had an idea of the culture.

Leading up to the train ride from the airport to the city, every step of the way felt like a small arrival to a foreign place, or idea.  The days leading up to the drive to Seattle were filled with a fair amount of anxiety.  It wasn’t until a few days before we were set to leave that I started to get nervous.  At the airport, it was just about making it to get gate and getting past the security checkpoints, and being at the gate all I could think about was getting on the plane and hoping my seat wouldn’t be like riding trimet for eleven hour straight.  The plan ride was all about landing and hoping to seeing the country and city from the air (which I couldn’t) and once we landed it was about getting to the house of our host.  But all those short chapters of nerves stopped once we got on the train.  The nature of the place was a force, and I began to respect it more when anxiety used up all the distractions to hide behind.

I’d been told about the humidity, but it was worse than I imagined, as are most weather conditions explained and never experienced, and the smell reminded me of Riverside, CA during summer when the dry heat would mix with the stale, smoggy air.  On the train, leaving the terminal, I caught my first real eyeful of China, and the furthest I could see in that initial sighting was about a half a mile.  That field of view was the norm for the first four days, until we were a few days in teaching WAYK in the outskirts of Beijing in the Fangshan district.

Miguel by the beautiful Molalla River, just in the backyard of Evan’s countryside house.

Oregon’s been treating me well lately, and I’ve been approaching this summer with a lot of wonder. Here’s what I’ve been up to the past several weeks so you can catch up with me to the present.

Late June

David, Sky, and I were in Bend. Evan was accompanying us most of the time, though toward the end of the month, he was hosting a WAYK workshop with Oklahoma Latin teachers, sponsored by the Classics Department of the University of Oklahoma, Norman. The three of us in Bend were working on a consolidated, easy-to-follow manual for new WAYK players, explaining the most essential techniques and how and when to wield them. David and I joined in Hayden’s Mandarin circle on Tuesday, the 26th. We were in awe of how Hai Xing, a 6-year old girl adopted from China, used some of the WAYK techniques on her own while she was having us sit down on certain places on a playground (Set-up, Same Conversation, Same Rotation). She even made a stop/go game for us (Red Light/Green Light)! To us, these were surefire signs she would be an excellent WAYK hunter in the future.

While I was in Bend, I experienced many firsts: my first time eating pansies (in a salad), my first dessert with raw milk, my first WAYK game with someone under 10, my first experience at a dedicated Chinuk-language night at Portland State University (PSU), among so many others. The art of language hunting was alive and well in Bend and in Portland, and I was happy to meet other WAYK devotees around. One night, in Bend, all four of the WAYK crew in Oregon–Evan, Sky, David, and me–joined three Spanish-language learners in the cozy outdoor patio of the Bend Brewing Company. We were all at different levels; Evan was Superior, while our three hosts and David were between Intermediate and Advanced, and Sky and I were Novices. Nevertheless, we made ourselves comfortable in the Spanish circle; to push some Spanish words on both David and me, Evan and the hosts asked us a barrage of questions about our lives, pulling us through the conversation and suggesting possible responses when we looked like we were stalling for answers.

Early July

Evan came back, and the four of us made a trek to a small town on the outskirts of Portland, called Molalla, spending several days and nights in Evan’s nearly-empty house there. Free of distractions just about all throughout each day we spent there, we shot videos of advanced WAYK and made podcasts, which will be uploaded over the next few weeks. It’s about time the world should know how WAYK operates beyond “Want/Have/Give/Take” and “The Walk”! More than that, David improvised on a piano–a talent I never suspected he had–to compose a fresh, frivolous WAYK podcast theme song. I thought it particularly fitting that WAYK should have music that is just as spontaneous, flexible, and simply fun as WAYK is.

Mid-July

I came back to Bend and marveled at the gorgeous scenery all around, as well as the charming used-book stores, the vibrant coffee shops, and the active yet unpretentious atmosphere downtown. Hai Xing’s adoptive mom, Robin, had a niece of hers, Breanne, stay with her for a few weeks. Breanne was very interested in Japanese animation and comics, so she wanted to pick up the language herself. At the same time, a preschool teacher named Yoko, who happened to know Japanese, was visiting Robin’s house. Evan and I were visiting Robin’s house on the usual Tuesday afternoon, expecting to play WAYK in Mandarin. When we saw Yoko, though, saying “Konnichiwa” to us, we immediately saw an opportunity. Evan would be throwing his techniques at everyone, while I would help explain the techniques in Japanese to Yoko while honing my own skill in the language. So we decided to be flexible that night and play in Japanese rather than Mandarin. We were amazed at how readily Yoko picked up on the techniques, like Copycat, Same Conversation, and Everybody Deals. Even though we hadn’t gone into the archetypal first WAYK game, “What is that?”, she took the situation we had–introducing ourselves–and threw in a Bite-Sized Piece of her own, asking us what nationality each of us was.

The Japanese-language hunting followed for the next few weeks while Breanne was around; one night, one of her friends, Michaela, came over to join the fun. Luckily, Yoko was also available on Thursdays, so we established Japanese-language nights twice a week. We played typical games of “What is that?” using typical objects around the house: pens, cups, dollar bills. We threw in some apple slices and water as well, combined with a new ride we collaboratively composed, “Eat/Drink”. (We tried using cell phones for a while, but we limited ourselves away from them because the Japanese word was too long to remember for Novice speakers.) All the while, we were making sure I was pulling Breanne through the target expressions and went all the way to “Want/Have” before it was time for Evan and me to leave Bend for Molalla again. (If I had a chance to stay for just one more night, I would have come up with rides to tackle the complicated way Japanese handles the verb “to give”. But, as it happens, WAYK sometimes has to give way to real life.)

Late July and early August

For the past several days, I’ve been staying with Evan and helping him work on improving his countryside house, which he wants to sell soon, in Molalla, Oregon (about an hour’s drive south of Portland). He made a deal with me that if I wanted to assist him in a task, like wiping the house walls or cleaning the floorboards on the patio, then he’d want to speak in Spanish with me to help me practice and improve. (Believe it or not, I’m not fluent in Spanish, even though I have a Spanish name, which just happens to be an artifact of my Filipino origins. I never took a class in the language, so I’m only at the Novice-Mid level.) I managed to pick up quite a surprising amount of vocabulary over a few hours of talking and working. We even managed to coin a new technique name, “Whistle While You Work”. I’ll cover that technique and my Spanish-language sessions in more detail next week.

At the same time, I’ve been having several deep conversations with him (in English, naturally) about the future of WAYK and what it means to revitalize a language. How do we motivate people to study their own native minority language (like Basque, Yurok, or Irish) if another language is just more useful to them to know and to study (like Spanish or English)? How does a grassroots movement with complicated politics sustain itself, and what kinds of tools, people, and skills are needed? Are certain languages not worth revitalizing, especially if the few remaining speakers can only use the language up to an Advanced level, not reaching Superior?

Later this month, I’ll touch on our answers to these questions on the bigger picture of WAYK. These are important topics that deserve their own essays, not simply things that are worth only a passing mention. I’d encourage you to think about these issues over this month, and I hope you can join the discussion, too.

Until next time!