From my parents' neighborhood.
I saw three students, today. The first (a French minor) seemed bored and nervous; I don't think that I was of any help to her at all. The second (a level-one ESL student) is advancing so rapidly that I'm afraid she was placed into the wrong level. She is so quick and open with me; she speaks English with better pronunciation than does her husband, a level-four ESL student who during our first meeting said, "My wife can't speak English. She must be a difficult student." A maintenance fellow came to the door during our lesson and her English fell into pieces. She said,
"Yes, my husband speak ask me to you floor broke fix it?"
When she came away from the door she seemed so ready to cry; her shoulders hung to her elbows and her lower lip fell even lower than that. She didn't want to look at me -- she looked at everything but me. She said, "I do not speak English. My husband -- he translates for me. I don't know how to speak it." And she so correctly pronounced the thrid-person "s" on the verb, "to translate." And she knows almost instinctively when to use "it" in a sentence structure.
I wanted to hug her but company policy wouldn't allow it. I scheduled a five-minute break instead. I said, "You speak better English than you realize. You have learned so much already and you really are quite good at it."
"Thank you," she said, and seemed more herself.
She is excited for Thrusday's lesson. We will be discussing fashion ("This is a suit. This is not a suit. This is a suit by Giorgio Armani."), color ("Blue. This is the color blue."), body parts ("Head, shoulders, knees and toes! Knees and toes!") and body descriptions ("This is Jan. Jan lives in Amsterdam. Jan has blue eyes and blond hair.")
My third student (the husband) came home late; he arrived after I had. We discussed grammar, concentrating on simple conditional sentence constructions (if+present+future) and habitual conditional sentence constructions (if+present+present). To practice, I had him complete sentences that I started. For example,
"If I am late for my wedding--"
"--the bride will go crazy?" he said.
"Very good! If I do not attend the meeting--"
"--I will not have the information that I need?"
"Very good! If I am swallowed by a whale--"
"--I will -- what? Swallowed? I will die?"
Afterwards, he was too tired to pay much attention to grammar. As we had half an hour left, I told him to pick an article and to read it with me sentence by sentence so that he could practice his pronuciation. He chose an article from Times concerning the recent population growth of the giant panda. It was all well and good until he said,
"I have a question of vocabulary?"
"You have a vocabulary question? All right. What is it?"
"Intercourse."
"Pardon?"
"This sentence." He read, "'[...]they have tried to increase the numbers of pandas in captivity by cloning them or by encouraging the pandas to have intercourse.' Intercourse? It is what?"
"Panda sex."
"What?"
"It's panda sex. They encourage the pandas to mate and to have baby pandas."
The lesson didn't go much further after that. Well, I wasn't prepared for it.
"Yes, my husband speak ask me to you floor broke fix it?"
When she came away from the door she seemed so ready to cry; her shoulders hung to her elbows and her lower lip fell even lower than that. She didn't want to look at me -- she looked at everything but me. She said, "I do not speak English. My husband -- he translates for me. I don't know how to speak it." And she so correctly pronounced the thrid-person "s" on the verb, "to translate." And she knows almost instinctively when to use "it" in a sentence structure.
I wanted to hug her but company policy wouldn't allow it. I scheduled a five-minute break instead. I said, "You speak better English than you realize. You have learned so much already and you really are quite good at it."
"Thank you," she said, and seemed more herself.
She is excited for Thrusday's lesson. We will be discussing fashion ("This is a suit. This is not a suit. This is a suit by Giorgio Armani."), color ("Blue. This is the color blue."), body parts ("Head, shoulders, knees and toes! Knees and toes!") and body descriptions ("This is Jan. Jan lives in Amsterdam. Jan has blue eyes and blond hair.")
My third student (the husband) came home late; he arrived after I had. We discussed grammar, concentrating on simple conditional sentence constructions (if+present+future) and habitual conditional sentence constructions (if+present+present). To practice, I had him complete sentences that I started. For example,
"If I am late for my wedding--"
"--the bride will go crazy?" he said.
"Very good! If I do not attend the meeting--"
"--I will not have the information that I need?"
"Very good! If I am swallowed by a whale--"
"--I will -- what? Swallowed? I will die?"
Afterwards, he was too tired to pay much attention to grammar. As we had half an hour left, I told him to pick an article and to read it with me sentence by sentence so that he could practice his pronuciation. He chose an article from Times concerning the recent population growth of the giant panda. It was all well and good until he said,
"I have a question of vocabulary?"
"You have a vocabulary question? All right. What is it?"
"Intercourse."
"Pardon?"
"This sentence." He read, "'[...]they have tried to increase the numbers of pandas in captivity by cloning them or by encouraging the pandas to have intercourse.' Intercourse? It is what?"
"Panda sex."
"What?"
"It's panda sex. They encourage the pandas to mate and to have baby pandas."
The lesson didn't go much further after that. Well, I wasn't prepared for it.