Having a conversation partner takes great concentration for me. I am used to hearing children speak and not correcting them constantly. I often hear adults speaking in different languages or with distinctive accents and idioms, but I am not asked to correct what they say. My CP wants me to correct whatever she says that is not correctly pronounced or stated in proper English, so I have to listen carefully and remember to correct her even after she makes the same mistake several times. She thoughtfully and quietly repeats the correction to herself.
My CP is preparing to take parts of the GRE and brought a book from her last English course. She wanted to read it to me and have me help her practice answering the questions in the book as she will on the GRE. She needs help with pronunciation and understanding English terms. So much I take for granted she does not understand as there is not a reference in her language, such as “dating.” Her husband comes to the sessions and he discussed with us. They did not “date” as their marriage was arranged. So much we have to learn.
It does get difficult sometimes in trying to explain terminology like: "hey, how's it going", "what are you up too", "geez", "let's play it by ear" ect. To start, I took these phrases from my speech, but I've realized that challenging my partner with new terms and fairly normal conversation skills will only help him improve. Something that helps us get through conversations without reducing my speech too much is using a translation website. We have the computer open and often sit side by side and look up words as we need them. I will say, it can start to be problematic if your CP begins to rely heavily on the technology rather than going through the mental processes of searching their mind for the word. I try to eliminate the problem pro-actively, by requiring that my CP at least try and use some other words to describe the word he is looking for, especially if I know the term is simple, commonly used or something we have used before already.
ReplyDeleteBJ, you can write down the common "beautiful mistakes" your CP makes and have her study them for a short quiz or review. This way you can keep a log that you can both look at and work on.
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