‘Friendships’ and L3 acquisition on the beach

At the risk of sounding narcissistic, for my MA dissertation I’d planned to study myself. That is, my L3 acquisition experience here in Greece. Unfortunately the proposal looked more like a PhD thesis: too much stuff. So instead I’m going to research language identity by interviewing Greeks about their English language learning experiences.

But the L3 thing is always present in my mind for obvious reasons. After having learned Italian, it’s exciting to be at the bottom of the acquisition ladder again and slowly feel how the pieces are starting to fit together. It’s all too easy to feel complacent here with learning Greek, though, because so many people are proficient in English. I found that Athens was the worst place to learn. It’s almost as if English is an unofficial second language in the capital. Most people switch effortlessly from Greek to English as soon as they hear you’re struggling.

So now I’m on a tiny island and have finally found a few people whose English is marginally less amazing, so it’s giving me more opportunities to learn. I’m trying to follow my own teachery advice: trying out new language without worrying about making a fool of myself, immersing myself in Greek conversation, make notes of new vocabulary. But I have to say that I’m not being very systematic and it’s much more fun to.. erm…let’s say… form a ‘friendship’ with a native speaker.

In my reading about second language identity I came across an article by Kinginger (1) which says that sex can be seen as a valid learning strategy and should be researched more thoroughly.

I feel exonerated.

And in fact many of the competent speakers of English that I’ve met here have told me that they reached proficiency through having a relationship with a native speaker. When I do the interviews it will be interesting to note what sort of effect this experience, what Benson et. al. (2) might call a ‘critical incident’, has on feelings of language identity.

Integrative motivation

Apart from my ‘friendship’ as motivation, my desire to integrate and understand conversations is pushing me forward. I’ve gone back to being that dumb person sitting at dinner not saying anything, but when there are occasional recognisable snippets it feels pretty amazing. I’d actually missed being the dumb person! I remember experiencing something like disappointment when I felt could understand everything in Italian, like there was nothing fascinating about it any more. I guess it works both ways: once you think you’ve integrated you feel demotivated. I’m sure there is plenty of Italian lexis that I don’t know but I’m not particularly driven to learn it any more. Maybe because I don’t have an Italian ‘friend’ any more…

Reading and writing are of course tricky in Greek. Apart from the different alphabet, there are (for example) four ways to write /i/. So my reading speed is pretty poor. SMS messages help with writing thanks to suggestive text, as does my dictionary app, which provides me with essential lexis for my… ‘critical incidents’.


Cook (3) said that multicompetent language users have different sorts of brains. And in fact I can feel that my neurons are firing in two directions. I’ve noticed that: both of my languages activate when I’m listening and speaking. I code-switch between English, Italian and Greek. Some words are similar in Greek and Italian: portafoglio (wallet), cappello (hat) have Greek cognates, and Greek has lots of loanwords from English: ‘hangover’, ‘party’. Not that I’m partying much, obviously (just in case my dissertation tutor is reading this …). But it can be as much of a hindrance as a help. Having been used to communicating freely in Italian for the last few years, it’s frustrating not to be able to say what I need to say, especially in those…erm…important moments.


About my own language identity, I don’t feel ‘just’ English. I feel European. It’s as if my experience of living in Italy gives validity to this idea, and my knowledge of Greek will strengthen it. Dornyei (4) writes about how integrative motivation for learners of English now refers to the international community (as ownership of English is global) and thus also implies an international identity. Perhaps by my attempts to learn European languages I’m trying to psychologically ‘remain’ despite the decision of my fellow countrymen? Maybe my new friend will help me with that. 🙂



  1. Kinginger, C. (2015). Student mobility and identity-related language learning. Intercultural Education 26:1, 6-15
  2. Benson, P., Barkhuizen, G.; Bodycott, P.;Brown, J. (2013). Second Language Identity in Narratives of Study Abroad. Palgrave macMillan
  3. Cook, V. (1999). Going Beyond the Native Speaker in Language Teaching. TESOL Quarterly  33(2): 185-209.
  4. Dornyei, Z., Ushioda, E. (2009). Motivation, Language, Identity and the L2 Self. Bristol:Multilingual Matters

Thoughts from Greece 2. Why do we need grammar?

It’s all Greek to me!


I’m sitting in a bar on a remote island. There are very few English-speaking people around (just what I was looking for) and I’m trying to ‘acquire’ more Greek. But it’s not really working. I decide to whip out my iPad and amuse everyone by reading out loud the bizarre selection of words that my app has sent me:
‘elastic band’
‘Yiannis Parios’ (He’s a Greek singer, my waiter tells me- old people like him)

Apart from the questionable usefulness of the vocabulary, I find that I’m puzzled by the change of form of some of the words in the sample sentences. The verb for ‘see’ is βλέπο or ‘vlepo’ so why doesn’t the sample sentence (‘she can’t see without her glasses’) contain any word that remotely resembles ‘vlepo’?? And if ‘nostimo’ means ‘delicious’, then why does ‘itano stimotato’ mean ‘that was delicious’?? Which bit means ‘that’? Why does the adjective change? Do adjectives have a past form in Greek? Although the guys in the bar are very friendly,  I think these questions may be a tad annoying. So I don’t ask. 

The Lexical Approach

I find that I want and need someone to give me the ‘rules’. This a surprise for me, because I’m a great advocate of Lewis’s Lexical Approach to teaching grammar. He suggests that grammatical ‘rules’ should emerge from samples of authentic written or spoken language, rather than be taught. I have to say that it’s not working for me in Greek. I guess this is probably because:

  • There aren’t enough contextualised samples of the same lexeme/chunk/verb.
  • There’s no teacher to direct my attention to the samples and encourage “noticing”.
  • There’s no teacher to ask leading focus questions to help me work out the patterns, such as ‘Is it singular or plural’, ‘Are we talking about the present or the past?’.
  • Greek’s bloody difficult- many of the Greeks I’ve met have told me I should give up!


We still need grammar! It seems to make the whole language learning process a lot faster, especially in the beginning, so not using it would be pretty silly. As a beginner you are impatient to make sense of the new language and join its parts together. I see grammar as a network that connects the pieces of what would otherwise be a confusing maelstrom of lexemes. Perhaps grammar teaching should/could be seen as a ‘stabiliser’ that can slowly be removed as a learner progresses?

We still need teachers! 🙂 Over time…eventually…I’d probably acquire Greek, but a teacher can direct my attention towards the useful stuff, like how to conjugate the verb ‘see’, and away from the useless stuff, like Yiannis Parios!