Round Two: Teach!

Betty Azar Changed my Life

This week I made copies of my custom books, put on my wristwatch, and combed my hair to the side for the real start of my second semester teaching English. After abysmal turn-outs the day we were supposed to start teaching at SECAP, we delayed the start of the semester two weeks and now I actually have a respectable number of students. I have eleven in both of my classes, which is about half of what I had last semester but a great number for a language class where face-time with the teacher is much more important than in other subjects.

In an attempt to remedy the worst part of teaching at SECAP (not having a book or curriculum), I prepared a workbook for my class by pulling from a number of different ESL books I had lying around so that I have something to guide me, the students have something to study from, and I am not spending an hour every day before class making 200+ copies of random worksheets I found on the internet. I have only taught with the book for one week, but I can already confess that Betty Azar has changed my life.

First step to teaching English like a boss: Azar-up

After an extended break, it feels good to be working again and to see my students who have been absent from my life for the past month and a half. It had been so long since I taught that I was actually pretty nervous the first day of classes like I was when I first started. It is a lot easier this time though, because my students already know me and what I expect of them.

Search Words

Blogger (the website I'm using to write this blog) has a really cool stat feature that records things like how many people visit my blog and what country they are viewing it from. For instance, this month I got views from the United States, Ecuador, Spain, Russia, Sweden, Bangladesh, Canada, Germany, the UK, and Hungary. Most of the time when it is a country other than the U.S. it is only one pageview, so it is not like I have fans who read my blog regularly around the world. Still, it is really cool to think how easy the internet makes it to connect with people around the globe for free.

Outside of the location of viewers, one of the most interesting stats Blogger records is what words people type into search engines to arrive at my blog. Most of the time it is something like "Krishna Surasi's blog" or "e is for ecuador", but other times they are pretty unusual and it makes me laugh to see how people are directed to my blog.

For instance, one of the recent searches that led to my blog was "zipline jargon." Some dude was looking to learn zipline lingo so he wouldn't sound like an amateur when he hit the canopy, but instead he was lead to a story about how I feared I would soil myself while doing a massive bungee-swing.

Another one was "ecuador birthday traditions." Someone was probably preparing to visit Ecuador for her birthday and wanted to see what kind of fun celebrations she would be in for. What she learned when she read my blog was that she will get a sinus infection from having her face shoved into a cake and she will probably be whipped with a belt for every year old she is.

One of the searches that actually was appropriate was "leísmo en ecuador." I'm glad to see that someone who was interested in learning about leísmo in Ecuador was directed to my site, and I hope that they learned something from my reflections on the Spanish in Ecuador since it is a pretty specific topic that I don't think many people write about.

Culture of Travel

An aspect of Ecuadorian culture that I have gleaned by talking to people here is how the culture affects people's perspective on travel. I noticed from the beginning when talking to people about where to go in Ecuador that most Ecuadorians haven't seen a lot of places in their homeland. This is surprising because the country is so small and to get from one end of the country to the other is about a twelve-dollar, twelve-hour bus ride. As an American, it is absurd to think that Ecuadorians—who always tell me that I haven't experienced Ecuador until I have visited so-and-so city—have never been there themselves.

Part of the reason why Ecuadorians don't tend to travel much, even within their own country, is because of the culture. Ecuadorians are much more family-centric than we are in the States, and that fact is most obviously demonstrated by the large number of Ecuadorians I know who continue to live at home well into adulthood. My host brother, for example, is over thirty years old, married with a child, and he still lives with his parents. If people depend so much on living with their family, I understand a little better why it would be unappealing to travel far away from home.


Ecuadorians are always shocked to hear that in the States some parents kick their kids out of the house when they turn eighteen or finish college and they need to find their own places. I told this to an Ecuadorian last night and she asked me how an eighteen year old is able to pay for an apartment alone. When I told her that my mother continued living at home but had to pay her father rent she could not believe it. My parents should probably be concerned that too much Ecuadorian doesn't rub off on me, otherwise they might have me living in their basements for another ten years.


DELE


I have decided that while I am in Ecuador, I will take the test of Spanish language proficiency called DELE. The test is fairly comprehensive and even includes a one-on-one conversation with a tester. To prepare, I have signed up for classes at a local language institute inexplicably named Mega World.


When I told one of my friends that I would be taking Spanish classes to prepare for the test, he made a good point by asking me why I didn't just talk to people. I'm in Ecuador and everyone here speaks Spanish, so why can't I just walk around talking to people to practice?


While I agree that there is a great deal to be learned just by shooting the breeze with Ecuas around town, I know that my Spanish is not improving as much as it could if I was taking classes. At this point in my Spanish education, I can pretty much always convey the meaning I want and the person listening will almost always understand what I am trying to say. Just because I am understood, however, does not mean that I am speaking at the level that a college educated Spanish speaker should be at.


When I talk to people in Spanish, they see that I have studied it for a while and can communicate well. They therefore frequently let my mistakes slide uncorrected because they don't want to insult me or break up the flow of the conversation. The same thing happens in English when someone, like a professor from another country, always makes the same mistake but never fixes it because he is still perfectly understandable and no one has the nerve to tell a PhD that he doesn't know how to use the third-person singular "s".


Another reason why just talking to my Ecuadorian friends hasn't always been helping me learn Spanish is because when I ask questions about the correctness of various grammatical constructions, they rarely agree on what the right answer is. The other day after class as my students were filing out, I wrote two sentences on the board and asked them which one was correct. The responses ranged from both perfectly correct, to one very correct and one less correct, to one correct and one completely incorrect. 

People are not very good at analyzing their own language, so I am happy that I found a good language school here in Ambato to take classes and get my Spanish in top-form for the test.


Pronunciashun


I used to tutor Spanish in college, and I remember one time there was a guy who brought in a paper with a very bizarre spelling mistake he kept making throughout the entire thing. In present perfect constructions, he was writing "a" instead of "ha" for the third-person singular conjugation of the verb haber. I was further puzzled by the fact that when I asked him to read his paper out loud, he spoke with an excellent accent as if Spanish was his first language.


As I continued talking to him I found out that Spanish was the language he spoke at home growing up, so he was essentially a native speaker. Since he went to school in the States, however, he never learned to read or write in Spanish and he was rarely exposed to materials that would teach him correct spelling. Since Spanish reads exactly as it is written, he went the opposite direction and wrote it exactly as it sounds, which is a problem because some different letters have the same sound (in Spanish, the "h" in words starting with "h" is silent, so "ha" is pronounced just like "a").


The mistake made perfect sense after I took into account his background with Spanish, but at the moment it was incredibly confusing. Language classes in the States are so focused on objective measurements, so reading and writing are stressed more that oral examinations and exercises. Anyone who studies past basic Spanish would be exposed to the conjugations of the verb haber, so I couldn't comprehend how this student could possibly speak the language very well but commit such a grave spelling error.

This one student isn't the only person who makes spelling mistakes because of Spanish's homophonous letters. The other day I saw this sign on the streets of Montañita:

Translation: "Don't vote garbage"

The error in this sign arises from the fact that in Ecuador (and probably other places too, I'm not sure) "v" and "b" are pronounced the same (the English "b" sound). When people are spelling something to another person, they often have to clarify by sayin "b de burro/b grande" or "v de vaca/v pequeña" so that the person listening knows which letter they are referring to.


So while this sign could be encouraging the citizens of Montañita to not vote "garbage" politicians into office, it is likely a misspelled attempt at getting people to not botar garbage into the streets.