I met with Marco for conversation. Marco is from Peru.
He studied physics in
college in Peru and received a master’s degree in Physics from Puerto Rico as
well. He is 29 and is very eager
to learn. He seemed a little
reserved in his willingness to speak, but I think that it was because this is
his first session with me.
He shared with me about his studies, both in Peru and in
Puerto Rico. He described his
country’s landscape. Some of the
words he used sounded like he was using similar sounding words from Portuguese
in his English. I picked up on a
few of these because the words were similar to French words I have studied. For example, when he meant to say
“mountain”, it sounded like “montagne” in French. I told him the correct word, but he had a difficult time
pronouncing the sound “oun” in “mountain”. He tried very hard by repeating it over and over. He had difficulty also with words that
contain “th”. When combined with
other words, it made successful communication even more difficult. He needed
help with using the correct prepositions in his sentences, such as “on” and
“in”.
I believe Marco will improve a great deal because he is very
determined to overcome the problems he is having. He said the he would like to practice his English with me whenever
I am available. It is a joy to
help him.
I agree that Marco will improve. I like spending conversation time with him as well. According to the chapter on speech in our book, research says that students don't really improve much from oral corrections to grammar, so I would suggest not correcting him for grammar too much when conversing unless you just can't get what he is saying or unless it is a constant mistake. I would even do the same with pronunciation unless, again, the communication is blocked.
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