First Day of Class - Parte Dos

Please skip down to the post Dorothy just made before you read mine as her description of the morning will help set the scene for my experience. During breakfast we didn't end up sitting next to one another, but turns out I was sitting next to an American guy from D.C. named Christian and a girl from London. Both were very nice (and of course we spoke in English to each other). Next to us was a girl from Turkey, a very young looking boy from Holland, and another girl from Brazil. Those three outside of saying where they were from, didn't say a word. 

I will add a little something about my oral test, my professor wasn't as patient as Dorothy's. He was a bit brusque and shamed me (maybe jokingly) about having a Spanish surname but having to take a Spanish class. Maybe it was his brusque nature that made me whip out my Spanish accent and  language a little more than I should have as I am not sure I have been placed in the right class! :)  He did take a lot of notes when I was speaking and was really contemplating what I think may have been the rubric they use when placing students.

 

Fast forward to being placed into my class...

I ended up in a class of six other students...three of which have been in the class for at least the past week together. One of our teachers is the one Dorothy mentioned as giving us the tour of park and brushing his hair with a fork...we will call him by his real name which is Sergio. Everyone was very nice including the three veteran students. I was able to follow about 80% of the conversation, however, when Sergio and Diego (one of the new students like me) began talking about the corrupt government of Brazil and the fact that Brazil beat Spain last night in soccer, I had a harder time following. Sergio does his best to explain why we use certain words and not others, but when you get into the technical grammatical elements it is a little harder to follow along. I was given a worksheet in which I was asked to use el preterito imperfecto. I could only do about 50% of it and it was mostly due to my verbal and auditory knowledge of Spanish...the actual grammatical rules have escaped me. 

As I was sitting in class, I really began to think about the students that enter a class mid-year whether they are ELL learners or not. My situation was not as intimidating as a brand new student joining a new class of 20+ but throwing in the different language made me less comfortable with doing the whole introductions thing. We so often ask students to introduce themselves, say where they are from, and something they like to do; well this is extremely intimidating when you are not sure if the words you are using are the right ones. Again, I am in a class where we are all struggling (except for Sergio) so I can only imagine how a young ELL student must feel when mainstreamed into a regular classroom. No one wants to sound ignorant or unsure of themselves. I felt that way the entire class period...second guessing my choice of words, whether or not I was conjugating my verbs correctly, or if I was even understanding what was being said. I know tomorrow will be better, and I will begin to loosen up with the language, but I have a new appreciation for our ELL students and their families. 

I ran into two of the guys that have been in the class already, and they were very complementary with my ability and confidence when speaking Spanish. So maybe I didn't sound as bad as I thought. My plan is to work on the other 50% of the worksheet that I couldn't finish and brush up on the imperfecto tense. 

I will add a few of the new words/phrases I learned today: 

pedir un deseo - make a wish

tio - I know this word means uncle in Spanish, but here it is also used as slang. A group of boys may refer to each other as tio kind of similar to our use of "dude"

el espejismo - mirage

fracasar - loser, as in a person

Bueno, hasta manana (fyi...I haven't figured out how to include the accents and tilde on this blog...maybe tomorrow)