We know that the words we use here and how we use them may be unfamiliar. We hope this helps clarify some of our terms.
Community of Practice
This is a group of people in a languacultural world who spend time together for some particular purpose. Examples include a group of workers on a job, or a leisure-time club, a class in an educational institution, a church or mosque, or a group of regulars in a teashop. It is called a community of practice because people in the group following shared practices. Growing participators should be participants in one or more such community of practices by Phase 5, Widening Understanding
growth
We see learning as a kind of growing. To change in ways that are good is to grow. We grow in host life by participating in it and with the help of nurturers.
host people
When we go as a foreigner to another group of people, those people are called our host people and the practices of that group of people are call the host practices. Their way of speaking is called host speech and so on.
home-world
The people group you grew up among, and that you consider yourself one of, is your home languacultural world. Even when you are in another people group, if you are meeting with people from your home world, you may be following your home-world practices,, even though you are in your host country.
languaculture
We don’t learn the language and culture of a people group as two different kinds of learning. Language and culture are not separate, and so we refer to all the practices of a people group as their “languaculture” and we say that different people groups live in different languacultural worlds. The people group you work in, if it is not your own original people group, is your host languacultural world.
lifestyle
The way I carry on my life in line with the practices that I live by is my lifestyle. We want to have a lifestyle of participation in the lived story of host people. Lifestyle growing participation is when we are participating in host life with host people and not doing anything special to speed up our growth.
lived story
Each person experiences life as an ongoing story. You have your personal lived story. It has a past and a present, and you will experience your future as a continuation of that story. You also sense that your own lived story is part of the big lived story of your whole people.
participation, Participator
If a group of people is doing an activity, or just carrying on their life (their lived story) together and you join them and attempt to follow many of their practices with them, you are “participating” in that activity or you are participating in that group. One who participates is usually called a participant, although we like to say the person is a participator. We participate in the life of our host people group, and we also say that we engage in their life (and their lived story) with them.
practices
Things I do many times in a similar way are my practices. Individuals have practices and so do groups. For example, families often share many practices, such as eating together at regular times. It is their shared practices that make a group a group!
nurturers
The first host people who help us to start participating in their languacultural world we call nurturers. We are so weak, and they are lovingly helping us to grow stronger.
Special-Growth Participation
The times when we are doing special things in order to grow with the help of a nurturer or mentor.
wall of noise
When people are speaking using a language that is not our native language, and we can understand little or nothing, then their speech isn’t speech for us at all. It is “meaningless noise” and it is like a wall that separates us from those people, sometimes called “a language barrier”.
When they hear a wall of noise, outsiders understand nothing they hear, and misunderstand much of what they see (since behind the wall is a different languacultural world).