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The GaelMinn Gazette

The GaelMinn Gazette is a monthly e-newsletter from Gaeltacht Minnesota. The Gazette carries news of interest to local and regional students, as well as helpful items for anyone who is studying the Irish language, anywhere.To sign up, go to our subscription form here.

This e-zine is a supplement to our eight-page print newlsetter, An Gaeilgeoir, which is mailed to subscribers four times a year ($12 subscription). Go here for more information about An Gaeilgeoir, including a link to a subscription form you can mail in with your check.

Our Most Recent e-zine

Issue #35, sent out April 25, 2008

CONTENTS

• Tips, Tools, & Tricks
  • The Library in Your Head
• GaelMinn News & Announcements
• Lessons Learned: From the Classroom
  • Your Workshop Experience

TIPS, TOOLS, AND TRICKS

----------THE LIBRARY IN YOUR HEAD

A couple of musicians have me thinking about input vs. retrieval. (Beginners: bear with me, this note will make sense to you if you stick with it.)

Teaching at our recent workshop, well-known singer and guitarist Dáithí Sproule mentioned the value of memorizing bits of Irish, a poem or a song, now and then. But I have noticed that when people visualize themselves learning a little bit of Irish by heart, they think mainly about the memorizing part. They often overlook the fact that the real value of the effort comes from retrieval, from the use you make of it AFTER you have it memorized.

This was nicely summed up for me in a class taught by the late Frank Harte, a wonderful singer, who told us, "I can learn a song in a week, or even in a day, but it takes me about a year to learn to sing it." He was saying that there was a difference between memorization, between knowing the words and the tune, and the real meaning and performance of the song, the purpose of the whole thing.

Now, in limited space, let me suggest just a few of the benefits of memorizing some short bits:

• It gives you a mental library, a couple of things that you can carry with you wherever you go. That means that when you are riding the bus or waiting in line, you have something you can "study" even if you don't have your (physical) Irish materials with you.
• We need to develop memory skills in Irish, somewhat independently of our first-language memory. For example, even advanced students and teachers find that as they listen to conversation, they have much less short-term memory for what was said. I can pull up much more of the last few sentences of a conversation in English than I can of a conversation as Gaeilge. But working explicitly with memorization in Irish can help.
• Repeated visits to the same material -- whether reading a text, listening to recordings, or pulling something up from memory -- can gradually reveal things that you just can't catch the first time you go through that material (or the fifth time, or the tenth). Experienced students will tell you that sometimes they'll look at a poem or song they have known for years, and realize that they understand something new about it all at once (something about what it means, or something about how the language works). Their understanding has advanced to catch up with the material. Having something in your head to revisit again and again provides opportunities for these great learning moments.

Now, where do you get something to memorize?

• First, if you are just starting out, don't think this is a technique that only applies to more advanced students. Many beginners learn a favorite song, especially since both audio and text are available for the best known songs.
• Don't be embarrassed to memorize a conversation from a children's book, a dialogue from Buntús Cainte, or other things that may not seem to be of great literary merit. It's a place to start, to build your memorization skills in Irish, and it will open the door to learning more interesting things.
• Ask other people for ideas -- more advanced students, teachers, classmates, study buddies. A group of people has a wider range of reading experience than an individual, and that larger pool is more likely to provide something simple, but interesting, for you to work on.
• A frequently overlooked source of good bits to memorize is longer works -- memoirs, novels, etc. -- in which little incidents can be isolated. For instance, the novels of Pádraig Standún, besides being a bit racy, are full of short little side stories, a paragraph or two, and many are in reasonably simple Irish. In one of our classes we're looking at the Blasket memoirs, and although a fairly new student wouldn't want to tackle those books, it would certainly be possible for someone to pull out a single event in one of those memoirs that would be nice to carry around in your head.

Be creative about sources at first. Practice memorization for the sake of memorization, until you get used to it.

But once you have something in your mental library that you enjoy, make sure you "check it out of the library" frequently. It is the use you make of the material after you have "learned it" that will make all the difference.

GAELTACHT MINNESOTA NEWS & ANNOUNCEMENTS

----------SCHEDULE REMINDER

No class on Monday, May 26, Memorial Day. The week after that is probably our last in Central for the summer, and we'll go to the summer schedule at various locations.

(Students, you might keep an eye out for locations that would be handy for a Monday class and pass information along, it will help the instructors set things up.)

----------WEEKEND IN WINONA

Our annual weekend-long event has been scheduled for July 11-13 at the University of St. Mary's, in Winona, MN. Always a great time with a lot of learning.

We'll have more information next time, and, of course, on our web site.

----------THANKS FOR A GREAT APRIL WORKSHOP!

THANKS to everyone involved with our April workshop. We had more than 60 students attend the event, and they had a great day learning the language from our fabulous team of instructors, Kia Cashman, Shari Hartshorn, Eddie Kelleher, Nancy Stenson, and Dáithí Sproule. Our thanks, as well, to the University of St. Thomas, and especially to the Center for Irish Studies, and to Jim Rogers and Fintan Moore for their help in making it all work.

----------CONGRATULATIONS IN FARGO

Jessica tells us that the Fargo study group had a great success with their first afternoon workshop. More than twenty people attended this event, most of those brand new students. It's another great example of taking the reins and making your own opportunities for learning together!

LESSONS LEARNED: FROM THE CLASSROOM

We've learned a few things in our Monday night classes -- from both instructors AND students.

----------YOUR WORKSHOP EXPERIENCE

Didn't make it to our last workshop? Don't have one near you?

No problem. You can still have a great workshop experience, you'll just have to do more of the work yourself.

We hear from people all the time who are studying on their own and wish it were easier for them to get to a workshop, to overcome challenges of scheduling and location for this experience. Well, let's look at that experience and see what we can do to recreate it.

We know we're having a great workshop (like our day-long event just a couple of weeks ago) when, by mid-afternoon, the students are looking kind of dazed, but no one has a bad headache! Sometimes students are a little hard on themselves because they don't understand or remember every single thing that goes by them at a workshop.

But that's not the point. An intense workout in Irish is intended to bump you out of your routine a little, make you sweat a bit, and to give you the time and resources to focus on one or two things about the language, to give you an in-depth exposure to a topic.

Many athletes and fitness buffs know about the intense workout approach. They don't train for running marathons or taking long bike rides by going as far as they can every day. They don't build strength by lifting the maximum weight they can handle at every workout.

Rather, they have a steady base level of activity, perhaps gradually increasing. But on a regular basis, they throw in a long ride or run, or an extra set of repetitions. They step up to a level that they can't (healthily) maintain every day, but that definitely advances them toward their goals.

With Irish language workshops, then, you are supposed to be a little overhwhelmed (just a little). The extra work carries over, in knowledge and confidence, to your daily routines. And the most important product of a workshop is motivation -- you finally get that chance to spend some "quality time" with the language, as you keep promising yourself you'll do, and that adds a little enthusiasm to your regular study.

So what do you do if you can't get to a formal workshop? Or even if you can, why wait six months or a year before your next one?

• Schedule your own workshop, or retreat, if you will. Be hard nosed about setting a time, place, and agenda, and stick to it. (Sticking to it means that you don't run over your allotted time, either -- that will just discourage you, the way running way too far would do.)
• START SMALL: If you're getting in 10-15 minutes of study a few times a week (which is pretty good, frankly), don't make your first "workshop" longer than an hour. And holding your own workshop once every couple of months is just fine. Build to longer times gradually, only after you've got the short retreats working well.
• Go someplace other than where you usually study. Turn off your cell phone, make it clear to yourself that this is a special event.
• Break the event into several smaller activities, don't spend the entire hour on one thing. Some great activities to start with, perhaps 15 minutes each, would be: reading aloud from text materials; listening to recorded Irish speech; doing a set of exercises from a text; WRITING a set of exercises for yourself, to do later; talking to yourself -- start talking, with a stop watch, start over every time you are silent for five seconds, and see if you can stretch your time.
• Get help -- from someone who is NOT studying Irish. Find a friend who would like to do an hour retreat on something else -- meditation, learning a skill, painting, whatever. You go to your retreat location together, share your schedules, and check in every 15 minutes or half hour to report on how it is going. You don't need to know how to paint, your colleague doesn't need any Irish, to provide support in just following through with a plan and enjoying it.

The point is that you can give yourself that extra workshop, and it can really help pick you up, truly add something to your routine. Just make sure you keep it simple, move along in baby steps, and take responsibility. You'll be surprised at what you can cover in your own series of workshops in the time other students spend waiting for a formal workshop to come to them.

P.S. For An Gaeilgeoir subscribers, you can find a much more thorough discussion of retreat ideas in the issue from Lúnasa, 2007.

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