so close, so far

After having spent four and a half years at university (bachelor of science with honours in linguistics thank you very much) telling anyone who would listen and anyone else as well that I would not, could not, was not ever going to be a speech pathologist - I found myself a few months after graduation, applying to do a masters of speech pathology.

There was a good reason for this change of heart. I'd been working with a little autistic kid who was having a bit of difficulty with language and in the structure of the programme that I was given to follow, I was basically teaching him English - first pronouns, then nouns, then present tense verbs, until one very exciting day when I looked at the updated programme and saw that we were going to be starting on past tense verbs.

I don't think the kid cared much to be honest but I thought it was probably the best thing ever. It meant that he was going to be able to tell me not just what he was doing in that moment, but what he had done every moment before that. Like this whole world of conversation - heck, this whole world full stop - was going to open up for us. Very exciting.

So then I thought, hey, yeah, I want to do this for a proper living. Not really knowing what speech pathology was - yes, I decried an entire profession without knowing very much about it and now you should know to expect that sort of thing from me - I decided that being a speech pathologist was probably the best way for me to get to do this language teaching thing, like, all the time. For a living and stuff.

The thing about speech pathology is - well, it's a lot of things. It's one of the most broad ranging and varied and misunderstood jobs I know (doesn't everyone think they're the most misunderstood?) - but it really is at least broad ranging, from stuttering and accent reduction to articulation to language to voice to swallowing to literacy to sensory stuff and as far beyond that as people will stretch your job description.

But the one thing it kind of really isn't, is language teaching.

I can help a kid acquire language. I can help an adult regain their language. But what I was doing with the autistic kid, sitting with him and giving him words and showing him how to use them and stuff - teaching language - I just don't really get to do that as a speechie.

And maybe there's something in that. I mean, there is. Language educators could take a couple of pages from the old speechie guide book and instead of just teaching languages in this sort of provisional manner, they could be supporting people to work out how to get language themselves. There's a lot to be said for that approach and I'll put it on my list of things to blog about.

In the meantime, though, at least for me in my situation, it feels like I'm so close but so far from doing that thing that got me going with that little kid. So here we go, then; this is what the blog is all about, with a few meanderings along the way. Me, our loveable protagonist, getting back - no, going forward - to language education.