Neuro-Dams--Mom's and Mine

Since I was writing about my mother's love of everything French, I should share a letter I wrote to a neurologist, whose research on stage fright was reported on in the SF Chronicle this past week:

Sent: Sat, Jun 22, 2013 4:25 pm
Subject: Stage fright in speaking a foreign language

Dear Dr. Gannon,

                I was really interested in your article about stage fright because of what I’ve sometimes experienced when speaking a foreign language.  I don’t speak French or Spanish like a native, but I range between speaking them pretty fluently and speaking them not at all.  When the not-at-all experience comes, I’ve attributed it to self-consciousness.  One example is when I was in Turkey, and I spoke spontaneously with a guide who was leading French people around.  Then I noticed that my friends who don’t speak French were listening, and I couldn’t utter another word.  It wasn’t out of courtesy to them, I’m sorry to report.  I just became aware that they might be passing judgment (even though they don’t know French), and I froze.   I had another experience when I was giving a English-teaching methodology seminar with other American teachers in Tokyo, and one of them, knowing that I had lived in Madrid a year,  asked me for the words for “Stand up” and “sit down.”  I drew a blank.  I couldn’t remember a word of Spanish.  Then, when I found out that a Japanese teacher had lived in Spain for four years, he and I spontaneously began a conversation in Spanish and it flowed.  The teachers I’d failed to help looked at each other as if they thought I’d been holding back on them, but I certainly hadn’t wanted to do that.  These are not “big” moments like being in front of an audience.  They’re just with two or three people, and in all cases I see that I’m feeling self-conscious—maybe thinking too much about how I’m coming across.  When I was being evaluated for language classes in Oaxaca, Mexico, and Besancon, France, however, I was quite fluent, and after being tongue-tied with the manager of a hotel in Paris who needed something translated form Spanish, I spoke to a Mexican housekeeper with great ease.

                Have you studied this kind of coming and going of a foreign language? 

                Tina Martin

He responded the same day and invited me to contact his office.  But I'm really more interested in the reason than in the solution to the problem.  I advise my students that they focus on what they're saying--interesting (we hope) information or insight--so they can stop thinking about how others see them.  

Neuro-Dams keep the river flow from taking its normal course.  I've thought about Mom's different moods and states in terms of how I feel at different times of the day.  I wake up in a really good mood, but if I take a nap in the afternoon, I feel very gloomy when I awaken.  I wondered whether Mom was affected by the different times of day.  I thought of her mind as an accordion with rooms separating hours and years in different files until the accordion is pushed in (note my incredible music terms) and all the hours and years are pressed together.  

 But now, back form my road trip that took me to Hoover Dam, I'm thinking of dammed rivers.