Today I had a great surprise. I have a foundations level CP named A. A. is from Kuwait. Getting together the first time took several tries. Our time in the first meeting left me wondering if he was motivated and whether or not he would keep our second appointment. I reminded him whenever I saw him of our day and time. Today, when we met during their CIES photo, he seemed to be trying to change the time. Finally we had a green light and walked with one of his friends to a restaurant.
Walking there, I was able to drop the baggage I was carrying into our CP meeting (assumptions and conclusions I had drawn based on our rocky CP relationship). I began to enjoy A. and his friend as we practiced terms like sidewalk, crosswalk, curb, walking forward, etc. over and over and over again. A. learns by repetition on steroids. It's great. I was able to kick myself in the pants for confusing inability to communicate with lack of motivation to learn. A., on his own, kept bringing up many, many of the things we had learned the week before - and he repeated them in broken to complete sentences scores of times. When he saw my daughters' picture on my cell phone background, he volunteered what he remembered about them from a week ago - their ages and the states they live in. I was floored. He is learning. He is motivated.
Today's dialogue for repetition was, "No, no, no, let me pay. You are my guest. I am your host." We literally spent 15 minutes on this at his instigation. The repetition was important to him. He confused when to use "me" and "my," who was the guest and who was the host, and "pay" and "buy." The verb kept disappearing as well. But with repetition, he got it perfect a few times.
We had a brief, free from repetition and questions type of conversation about women and men in his culture. He completely went into fluency without accuracy, but it was unhindered fluency. Later in our time, I pointed out the difference between our drills and that free conversation, helping him to have the goal of more and more experiences of free conversation. He actually squirmed with excitement at the thought, saying "Yes, yes."
A.'s friend joined us at the end (he ate with other Arab friends across the restaurant from us), and we walked back together. A. began going over the words we learned on the way to the restaurant - sidewalk, crosswalk, curb, street light, etc. I got him off the drill by following up on our free conversation earlier. I asked how they found wives in their culture since the men and women stayed separate. They both talked about how their parents will choose for them, but that some "boys" choose their own wife. They also shared that they are often paired equally as far as finances and education go, but not always.
Next time I have trouble with getting things off the ground with a foundations level student, I hope I will remember to leave my baggage behind. It was a good lesson for me.
No comments:
Post a Comment