Now that most of the bank statements and paid bills have gone to recycling heaven, I am moving on to the next collection of paper that MUST LEAVE MY HOME.
The next new pile is from five+ years of teaching ESL to a very diverse group of adults. Korean, Brazilian, Romanian, Ukrainian, Chinese – all extremely bright, funny people desperate most of all to fit in. I did not work on grammar, or rules of speech, but concentrated instead on learning colloquialisms and slang, and often just how to pronounce simple things like the names of towns. One woman lived in Waltham, but could not make her mouth cooperate when you asked her where she lived. She could not do the “TH” because it didn’t exist in her native language.
One of the funniest exercises we did involved a list of currently popular children’s names. Since one Spanish-speaking student was interviewing for nannying jobs, this was of particular interest to her. When we came to the boy’s name Cameron, she pounded her hand down on the table and asked incredulously, “Cameron?” That’s a SHRIMP! How can you name your child Shrimp?”
