Greg - CP #1

Today I ad-libbed.  A miss-communication had me ready to start with one of my CP's today during lunch.  I saw him towards the end of the lunch hour, and he said he understood we were to start next week.

Anyway, my time is short, so I asked three guys talking on the couches at CIES if they would like to have conversation for an hour during lunch.  As I told them why, that my CP did not show up, I discovered their levels of English were low 1 to possibly low 2.  One was from Honduras, another from South Korea, and the third was from Denmark.  I cannot remember all of their names, so I will refer to them by their countries.

The Korean understood what I said about my CP to mean I was trying to get a CP.  He tried to explain, along with the other two, who to see to get a CP.  My efforts to correct their understanding took some effort, but the struggle was our bonding as a group and an establishment of a level of English communication from which I could start with them.

Now I was settled on the couches with them, all lunch traffic gone, and we began talking about where everyone was from and why they had come to Florida.  Korea and Denmark came for hot weather.  "Because Florida is hot," the student from Denmark said.  The Korean, at first, disagreed that Florida was a hot place, but only because his primary functional definition for the word was "lively, happening, and an alive type of culture."  He named some of the cities in California that were much more "hot" than cities in Florida.  I helped them see the difference in the two uses of the word.

We enlarged our conversation to discuss our countries, their foods, and, in the case of Honduras, the level of corruption.  All four of us were very motivated to converse due to the direct experiences and interests we all had in our own and (in some cases) each other's  countries' cultures, educational systems, and foods.  My two years living in Korea gave a lot of fuel to our conversation.  The open talk of pros and cons of our own countries added more positive motivation to keep gathering and sharing info.  We discussed acclimating to the foods in each other's (or other) countries, and what we missed from our diets when away from home.  We also talked about corruption in Honduras, corruption that even violently claimed the life of that student's sister (which also led into teaching words like "half-sister" and "close to" (relationship-wise). Denmark shared about how he had been to boarding school during his teen years of school.

During the conversation,  I made corrections only when the wrong word-choice or sentence structure blocked communication or if I could see them searching for a word or phrase that I could predict (such as the word "status" when the Korean was trying to explain why Koreans are third in the world for buying BMW's).  Teaching  the phrase "low level of education" also helped the Korean as he explained why his mother, who only had a middle school education, wanted him to get a good education.  I consciously chose to limit my corrections to those communication-blocking or hindering problems because 1) the situation had no contract - it was not a formalized, agreed upon language improving situation, and 2) I wanted them to continue to express and practice speaking without it becoming choppy by stopping constantly for corrections.  Some corrections were noted on their smart-phones.

As I think back, I was probably the one asking the most questions to stimulate their practice.  Next time I meet with a CP, I will try and conscientiously observe how many question are coming towards me, and will encourage question asking so the CP can develop that conversational skill of directing the conversation. 

This was a very encouraging experience for all of us.  We started with a small struggle as strangers, and we parted with a ton of information about each other - that they were able to gather by practicing English in a meaningful way.

For me, it wasn't an assignment.  It was fulfilling.

Greg