"Benim adιm Suzanne". The Turkish teacher points at herself. From the programme I know that Suzanne is her name. So my brain concludes: 'Benim adιm means something like 'I am called' or 'my name is'.

I'm at the FUNN conference in Frankfurt and I find myself in the Turkish language lab. During three mornings Suzanne Cardiou will teach us Turkish. Suzanne teaches with Comprehensible Input: we are being immersed in the Turkish language and she makes it comprehensible.

She tells a story in Turkish about how she and her husband went to a football match of Fenerbahçe and arrived late at the stadium and couldn't get in. She draws the story, makes gestures, repeats parts of the story every time. Not a single moment my brain says: 'I've heard this word 7 times already, I know it by now'. No. The Turkish language really stands further away from other languages I know and my brain is constantly 'switched on', is constantly thinking: 'what does this mean'? 

Thanks to the drawings, gestures, repetitions and the context of the story I understand the story very well. And that makes me super happy.

But someone else in these lessons is less pleased. She ask the fair question: "How can I speak this language?" We have been in the Turkish lesson for 2,5 hours.

A new born baby doesn't speak after 2,5 hours. And with regards to Turkish, we are new born babies. We don't need to speak Turkish yet. In fact, our brain is simply not capable of speaking Turkish right now. However, we are capable of answering Suzannes perfectly aligned questions with 'evet' (thumb up; yes) or 'hayir'(thumb down; no).

In a language class the main focus of the students should be: listen (and read) to understand. First they need to be able to understand all the input, that creates language in their brain. And when that language sits better in their brain (that takes way more than 2,5 hours) they can slowly start to say something in that language: 'Türk ekek' when being asked if Faruk a Turkish or a German man is. 'kapalι' (closed) when being asked if the door in the picture is open or closed. 

Let's first teach our students to listen (and read) with the goal of understanding the language. The less focus we put on language production, the more time we give them to build the language in their brain. That eventually brings the language production forward. That's how our brain works.