Certain students in my literature classes never say a word. Sometimes this is because they are blatantly uninterested, regardless of how I stress the importance of participation. Sometimes it’s because they are unprepared, scouring the wall to avoid eye contact. Then there are those brave few who work up the nerve to contribute after weeks or months of coaxing, making me feel like I’ve won a gold medal in teaching.
But the most confounding group is the students who never utter a peep but who are otherwise totally engaged with the work. They sit in the front row. They scrutinize the text. They see me after class or during office hours with questions. When I assign group work, they chat happily with their peers. Yet when it comes time to present their findings to the rest of us, they leave it to their more boisterous partners to share.
It didn’t take long to realize that one reason for this silent majority at the Manhattan college where I teach is a language barrier. English for many of these students is a second language, and, although they have plenty to say, they don’t want to risk being unable to articulate their ideas in front of 30 other students. Having floundered my way through restaurants and stores in many foreign countries, I can’t say that I blame them.
Then one day my class read a selection of Pablo Neruda poems. I decided to bring in the original version of “Tonight I Can Write ... " and see if someone who spoke Spanish would read it aloud. Hands all over the room shot ferociously into the air, including several I hadn’t seen raised all semester.
I divided the poem between two women. As they elegantly worked their way through the piece, the rest of the class sat silently. I looked around at almost universally captivated faces. For once the students weren’t combing their texts, searching for answers to questions I had poised. Instead they let the language wash over them. I’d tried to replicate this response earlier in the semester, asking them to shut their books while I read “My Last Duchess,” “Ulysses,” and “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” aloud. But although my readings helped them more thoroughly understand the poems, they never had quite the desired effect of total engagement. This new linguistic angle seems to have provided the experience. I just didn’t know why.
So I asked. I didn’t know where exactly to start the conversation, so I clumsily inquired: “How did it feel to hear that poem in its original language?”
“It was more beautiful in Spanish,” one student offered, saying that he felt that way even though he didn’t speak Spanish.
“It made the poem more romantic,” another piped up.
From there I could see my way in. “Why did hearing it in Spanish make the poem more romantic or beautiful?”
“The Spanish is smoother,” a young man said.
“The words seem to belong together more,” another elaborated.
“It’s the rhythm,” the next student explained.
Jackpot, I thought. From there we worked our way into a discussion about how Neruda’s poem does not have a regular rhyme scheme yet attains a distinct rhythm through consonance and assonance—effects heard much more clearly in the Spanish.
Hearing these two students read Neruda aloud was a revelation. Reading levels in my classes are often troublingly low, with many students stumbling over even simple words. But listening to my students easily articulate aloud a text in their native tongue reminded me that I often don’t get to view their work at its highest level. Of course I understand that they must be able to complete assignments in English, since they are at an American college. But I also think that excelling in moments (rare, for some) when they are comfortable in the classroom instills in them a crucial sense of pride and confidence in their daily efforts.
That night I struggled through the poem in my very poor Spanish, looking up words I didn’t know and feeling utterly tongue-tied at certain phrases, forced to refer back often to the English version. It proved a powerful way to appreciate some of my students’ challenges and reminded me that my job as a teacher is to continually seek ways to remind often-frustrated students of their capabilities.
I decided to repeat the translation experiment when we read Carlos Fuentes’s short novel Aura. I found a recording of the author reading it in Spanish and played five minutes at the start of class. Then I asked those students who spoke Spanish to tell us what differences they noticed between the Spanish and English versions.
“The English translation has simplified some of the vocabulary,” one student said (this from a woman usually on the verge of slumber). “The story in English is really easy, but it’s not in Spanish.”
Someone noted that in five minutes we had made it through only three paragraphs, whereas reading the English out loud we’d read double that length. One young woman pointed out that more words are used to make a point in Spanish, and that this strengthened a story like Aura, in which the author wants to lure us slowly into his dark and suspenseful world.
Another student drew our attention to a single sentence in the text that reads “Everything is the same” in English versus “Nothing changes” in Spanish, pointing out that those phrases mean very different things. Someone else noted that we were listening to Castilian Spanish, which led to a brief discussion about the many variations of the language.
Since so many of my students speak Spanish, I’ve continued offering up original versions of texts in that language. But I’ve also tried out audio translations of work in languages no one in class speaks: Russian, German, Greek. The conversations that follow are briefer, but the students still appear charmed while listening. As with the Spanish, I think they sense how much more naturally a text occupies its own language. Even if they do not understand the words, they connect with them.
That makes sense. After all, this is where we all start with language—with sound and rhythm. This is also how many of us fall in love with great literature: It mesmerizes us, like music, on a visceral level. No matter how we attempt to deconstruct it, on some level its effect cannot fully be put into words.