I met again with Marco today. Offering him a chance to practice and improve English is like putting steak and potatoes in front of a man who has been fasting for a week. Today, I served his steak like a picnic. We went outside and strolled around 80 percent of the campus, letting our eyes and our interests feed us content for conversation.
I first gave him a rationale for practicing outside rather than at a table in a CIES classroom. I explained that I wanted his language to come to him in real life - with all of the surrounding stimuli spurring on or interrupting his fluency. I told him the desk approach was isolated and dull, and that it gave him too much time to search for his words and too little extra stimulation to encourage him beyond classroom English.
The time we had together began with using complete sentences to practice new words and phrases that naturally came up (crosswalk, handle vs. knob, thorn, explaining the idiom "Every rose has its thorns," brick, blind (person) vs blinds, campus, messy, physicist, and more). We practiced giving someone directions (At the intersection, turn left. Go straight. Then take a right...). When we got to the other side of the campus and I was a bit lost, I made him direct me back to the CIES at the end of our time.
While Marco did have his little notebook out to write down new words and phrases, I sought to encourage him speak with fluency. I had him describe all we were doing and what was around us, using adjectives and complete sentences. This led into real life conversations about sadness he had been experiencing, how he lived his life "day by day" (a new phrase for him, now replacing "I live my life daily."), and how he is preparing for the GRE and TOEFL tests. I helped him fix his pronunciation of GRE from "jury" to G (small pause) R (small pause) E. I knew he would be using that term a lot, and his pronunciation was beyond recognition without a clear context.
Our cultural focus dealt with American housing values and soaring insurance and medical expenses. He brought the issues up. I tried my best to deal with these deeper issues, watching to see if his English comprehension was going to find the end of its road. He also shared with me about what he views as a healthier condition of these situations in his country. He did well. I did well biting my tongue, presenting a "fairly" balanced view of the the controversial condition of these two legs of our society, and why they have such a bad limp.
It was a great hour and a half. To top it off, Coke was out on campus giving free cans of Coke Zero. They knew Marco needed to wash down his steak and potatoes!
Conversation can be refreshing!
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