Tutoring Response: The Other's Point of View

The Other’s Point of View

Every week for the past three weeks I have been meeting with a ninth grade English as a second language (ESL) student for two-hour tutoring sessions. Four months ago this student arrived in the United States without any knowledge of the English language and is slowly getting more and more confident in his speech. In working with this student I try to encourage him to be more confident in his speaking abilities and help him with pronunciation skills, especially with some difficult English language sounds that do not exist in the Spanish language. During one of our sessions, this student shyly made a huge confession. He explained to me that he is afraid to speak the English language because he does not pronounce it very well; he believes his peers and even teachers might make fun of him if he does not say a word correctly. Then, later, as we were working on pronunciation and vocabulary I was able to remember just how hard it is to be in a foreign country, trying to speak the language.

In the summer of 2009 I spent three months in Lima, Peru, an entirely Spanish speaking country. I had taken two semesters of Spanish language study before arriving in Peru, but still found my Spanish skills to be stunted, especially in comparison to native speakers. By the end of the three months I was more than conversational in Spanish and had no trouble speaking to those around me. I had discovered that the most important factor of my growth and development in the Spanish language was my confidence in speaking the language with others and not being afraid to make mistakes. I remember many conversations with my host parents where I sat there lost. I didn’t know the subject of the conversation and would often times feel myself tired of learning new words or focusing on studying pronunciation.

While sitting with my tutee the other day, I had a flash back to my time in Peru. I remembered the frustrations of intensive lessons. But more than anything, I remember wanting to speak English whenever I could. My tutee tries the same thing with Spanish. He knows I am semi-fluent in Spanish and will always try to answer my questions in Spanish instead of speaking English. I believe making this connection has allowed me to think more creatively and effectively about the best ways for my tutee to learn English. I try to remember the activities that I found exhausting and the ones that I found interesting. By remembering which activities were engaging, I am able to help engage my current tutee and encourage his growth and development of the English language. He knows that I understand the difficulty of what he is experiencing and he also knows that I am willing to make mistakes. These two key points allow him to be more confident in his speech which after enough time will lend itself to better pronunciation.

As I am looking into a masters program in teaching, I have been thinking about becoming an ESL teacher. Having my own intercultural experience, and coming away from it with a massive increase in my Spanish language abilities encourages me to help others to learn a new language and culture as well. However, I know that many students are forced to come to the United States when they would rather remain in their home countries. These are the students I want to help. I chose to go to Peru for three months and still struggled with the language and knew that at varying points during the trip I wanted to leave. There are many students in the United States who will get the same frustrations, but they are being forced to stay in this country for a longer time period than they want. My intercultural experience has encouraged me to help these students grow and develop in the many of the same ways I did, and even in ways that I would never be able to fathom.