Due to my schedule I am unable to have a normal conversation partner so instead of just speaking with one person I get to attend an IEP class every Wednesday and speak with many different people. Each week I choose a different group to join. I help them with their assignment and talk with them about all sorts of things.
This week I was with two girls from China named Crystal and Meeko. We introduced ourselves and started working on the current assignment. They had to listen to a one minute clip of someone speaking and analyze it for any slang, colloquialisms, or speech slurs. They had chosen a scene from Twilight where Bella’s mother is talking to Bella about her relationship with Edward.
This assignment was especially interesting to me because I find that we, as humans, rarely take notice of how we butcher our own languages. Actually paying attention to all of the endings that were dropped, letters that were added, or words that were shoved together really made me think about how difficult it must be to learn a language in a classroom where you are only taught the language in its perfect form.
It was Meeko’s turn to type so Crystal and I talked about ourselves. She is from Guangzhou, which is crazy because by dad was just there on a business trip. The 2010 Expo is currently there so we talked about that for a while. She went before she left for America and I had been to the one in Hannover in 2000 and seen my dad’s pictures for this current one.
We also talked about what was the most difficult thing about learning English. She said that she found reading the most challenging and I completely agreed with her. I told her about my experience with reading in German and how it wasn’t until this past summer that reading became as fun for me in German as it was in English. I gave her some tips on how to try and enjoy reading more.
It’s awesome how you get to go to their class! I think it would be so interesting to see how a normal class goes for them. I always try to talk to my conversation partner about how her class is going or if she has any homework but she just says it is going fine and that she doesn’t have too much. It is pretty neat for you to get to see this side of their learning experience here.
ReplyDeleteI also have to agree on how insane it is how we change our language so much through slang and slurs and just other crazy mistakes. It’s definitely not just English that is butchered so badly, I think in some way it happens in every language. I think about this all the time when I’m learning Spanish. In the classroom I understand just about everything my teacher says but I can hardly understand one word that a Spanish-speaker outside of class says. These colloquialisms are a unique part of learning a new language. It’s interesting to see it from the perspective you’re seeing in their classroom because it is such a common thing to make these mistakes and we hardly ever realize we’re doing them!