3rd ESL Class

             Today Hank and I worked with "Noah." He's originally from Guatemala and he has been in the U.S. for roughly 6 years. He knows enough English to get his away around, but he does not know how to hold a formal conversation, like introducing himself to someone. Hank and I went over some of the textbook today. One of the topics was describing the activities surrounding a wedding ceremony. That in itself was a conversation topic. When we talked about "la boda," Noah didn't understand what part of it.. the church ceremony versus the reception afterwards. So I said "primero, hay es un ceremonio a la inglesia por cureinta minutos, despues hay un recepcion a la casa cuando la familia y los amigos celebran juntos." Then he understood. 

             After there was an exercise about the activities surrounding a birthday celebration and what each member of the family was doing at the partty. "Para celebrar una fiesta de cumpleanos, a veces hay una fiesta y un pastel especial. En E.E.U.U., hay es un pastel especial por todas fiestas." Noah thought that was funny. 

            Hank and I then went over a family tree and over family words like "grandparents, husband, wife, children, grandchildren," etc. We would point to a person in "el arbol de familia" and say "who are kevin's cousins?" 

            When we came across the word "wish," Noah could not seem to pronounce the "w" and he would pronounce the "w" as a "g." Hank would then try to compare "wish" to other 'w' words like "world" or "watch." When he heard "watch" the 'w' sound seemed to have clicked for some reason because he was then able to pronounce the word correctly. 

            Contractions were also a big topic of the day. In order to get across the point that two words can become one word, we demonstrated the point of a + el = al and de + el= del. I also mentioned the fact that in Spanish, when a verb is conjugated, the subject or pronoun is often dropped, and the conjugated verb infers the pronoun. He seemed to understand the concept of a contraction better after that.

            At some point, Noah wanted to know how to say something very specific in English. He had met a girl at work and wanted to ask her to go church with him on sunday. Unfortunately, he had forgotten her name and didn't know how to properly address her. So I first asked him what he wanted to say in Spanish... "Te gustaria vener conmigo a la inglesia este domingo."  And he nodded. I explained that "would you like" is the same as "te gustaria" in Spanish. After he learned what to say, he seemed very excited at the prospect of being able to say it. 

            One more thought I had about cultural differences.. I've noticed that when meeting people in the U.S., people will first ask me if I'm married, in school, or what my major is, but hispanohablantes will consistently ask me if I have kids. Kids must be a popular topic among Spanish speakers. Hmm.