Listening

James and I have chosen to use the "Thompson Method" of language learning as we are pretty much navigating our own language lessons in Arabic.  For those of you who aren't familiar with the "Thompson Method", in short, it's a simple way to learn a language, trying to mimic the way a young child learns a language.  Phase 1 (a & b) is a total of 250 hours of language lessons where the "participator" (that's us) listens to a language "nurturer" (that's our tutor) without speaking much, if any at all.  We spend the time listening and re-listening to words and phrases and answering questions by pointing or doing some sort of actions.  We record much of what we learn so that we can go home and listen and re-listen again.  It takes a great deal of pressure off to not have to speak anything until you are more familiar with the sounds that your new language uses.
It has been very helpful and though I often find it hard to only listen and not speak, I am already amazed at how much I can understand even if I can't say much.  Today as I sat and listened to my friend speaking with a group of ladies, I was pleasantly surprised to find that I understood many chunks of conversation even though I never entered any of them.
It has been fun to see Noa begin to talk in complete sentences, and piece together the english language.  She often repeats the same phrase over and over again, hoping that I will engage with her and give her the same response over and over again.  It reminds me how important it is for us to listen before we can talk.  This week we graduate into Phase 1b.  Still mostly listening, but now we get to respond with some one word answers.  The pace is beginning to pick up, and hopefully before we know it we will be able to have baby conversations like Noa does now.