Week #4 - Talking (Finally)

Yesterday went really well. At least, as far as I can tell it did.

I had been feeling somewhat discouraged, just that I wasn't helping them as well as I could, you know? All their homework is reading and writing, which--while good--doesn't help at all with pronunciation or daily language use. Especially since they do their homework the way I did mine: skim for keywords to fill in the right answer as quickly as possible, without necessary bothering to read and figure out every word.

But I was at a loss as to how I could get them to practice talking more. Talking is intimidating. Even if you have the language in your head, getting it to come out of your mouth can be a huge struggle. I know from personal experience how frustrating it can be to have that war within yourself: recognizing and wanting that advantage of native-speaker help that comes only when you actually talk and take language risks with them, yet fearing to be misunderstood or offensive or look stupid by using the language "wrong" ("wrongly"?). Even with non-scary native speakers, the intimidation is there.

The only time I've had that intimidation lessen was during my own Karen-learning in school, actually, where it was just my friend and I hanging out with two native speakers and talking and playing simple games and trying language experiments and goofing off. We had structure, but it was organic and relaxed. And relationship-oriented. And fun.

So, anyway, with the help of my brilliant-at-planning flatmate, I went in yesterday with some simple maybe-this-will-start-us-talking supplies: storybooks, a stack of cards with simple pictures on them, and a mini whiteboard. Success!

We read the storybooks. Great pronunciation and reading practice, even if they didn't necessarily know what they were saying. But the best was the picture cards. I pulled out two at random--"tree" and "flowers"--and said "The flowers grow near the tree." They immediately started trying their own: "The flowers are in the forest with the tree." "The flowers are under the tree." The next pair: "book" and "television." "The book is on the television." "The book watches television" (tee hee hee). The more ridiculous the pairs, the more relaxed and fun we had making sentences. "Fish" and "chair": "The fish sits on the chair." "The fish sits on the chair and watches TV!" Lots of laughing and making jokes. And lots of talking. Yay! (And man, do they know more English than they let on before.)

Then they suggested another game: one person pulls a card, then has to describe it to the other people while they guess. Great language use. Even Karen Dad jumped in and guessed some, and Karen Mom would laugh at the jokes and practice saying the words she heard. We used the white-board to double-check spelling, and write new words to describe and guess. The neighbors came over--six of them at one point--and watched and laughed and joined in a bit. One of the neighbor boys in Junior-High-Son's class plans to come every Thursday he can: "To practice talking. It is very good." Aw. Good times.