Learning English in a Jungle

If you are learning English, you are usually in school, in your own room or in that of an English course. To make it comfortable, the room has been designed in such doing and equipped with air conditioning, audio-visual learning aids, or anything that will support the process of learning. Have you ever heard learning English in a jungle? It looks like strange, but if you watch a legendary film of Tarzan you see that Tarzan speaks English fluently. Is there any English course in the jungle where he has been so long surviving in the midst of animal world?

Do you know why Tarzan speaks English well? Ok, do not take it seriously. The film is only a fiction and the actor who is taking the role of Tarzan maybe a native speaker. That is why Tarzan is speaking English perfectly. But, I do not mean that, do I?

What I mean with learning English in a jungle is that we learn the way as Tarzan has been surviving in the midst of the jungle, the place where no one offers any help to his life. It is not a logic that a powerless baby can live in a juggle, without anyone else, surviving in the wild jungle where almost dangerous animal’s attacks may threaten. The most valuable lesson is that how he is learning to survive.

Supposed we are now stranded at any place of an English speaking country, say England or USA, and without any adequate knowledge of English we have to survive over there. What will we do to preserve living? There is no other way rather than just adapting to the local basic condition, and to do this we must learn the language in use: English!

Since learning English is not just as like the one that we are doing here, and in the above illustration it is a compulsory, we are forced to learn it with no other choice. It is a matter of do or don’t. And as you must survive in the remote-far-from-homeland place, you will be leaning English faster.

Of course, we do not need to be a Tarzan and go to wild jungle, nor we are stranded in other countries. The way of learning that is valuable to take is that we should learn like Tarzan. Don’t be afraid of taking the start; don’t worry of making mistakes. It is a common practice, as a learner, if we make some errors in learning. From these ‘good errors’ we can learn to avoid the same things happen for the twice. We built the excellence from the errors, and build perfection from the limitation.

Tarzan in the real life may be similar with the street vendors who are selling souvenirs in the tourist resorts like ones in Bali or Yogyakarta. To offer the merchants and get money from foreign tourists or visitors they have to speak English; and to do this they learn the language. They way they are learning is not like what the students do, who are sitting in the class with the guidance from their teacher, but vendors do like what Tarzan does. They learn in the jungle, they learn from the wildness of living, from the resorts where they may expect for some rupiahs.

We may have been learning English for many years, perhaps from the first year we were in school until now when we had left the class. But we should be dare enough to question ourselves, is our English in proportion of sense with the long time we have taken to learn it? Or, even until now we still do not speak? Street vendors who are learning English in a Tarzan’ way, learning from the hard life, may be more capable. Not like we are who always prefer to wander in doubt of learning.

Let’s start learning like Tarzan.

Mojokerto, 15/07/09
the site keeper ( a friend of Tarzan, but not an orangutan )

Related Post