These little words have bitten me in the rear many times! For instance, the first time I went for dinner with Christina's parents, her mother had prepared a dinner fit for royalty, nothing but fabulous. There were several courses, and everything was prepared with great care. To top things off, the entire family was there, I am guessing that they wanted to meet this Cuban screwball dating Christina.
"So Jose, what do you think of the dinner? Do you like it?" -her mother asked me, and instantly I became the focus of attention of the entire table; everyone was looking at me.
"Oh yes, It's pretty good!"
Yikes! The expression in everyone's faces was like - "What?" - it was hard to miss, "What did I say?"
"Mom, what Jose means to say is, that the dinner is excellent, right Jose?" - Christina translated.
"Right, yes, it is excellent, I love it!"
"That did not go well, did it?" - one of her sisters said looking at me and smiling. Everyone laughed and I could breathe again.
Put yourself in my shoes, if I had said: "the dinner is good", heck, it means that I like it, but if I put "pretty" in front of "good", triple heck, I love it! But it does not work like that.
"Jose, pretty good means that you have seen better. It is not a compliment" - her mother clarified. Wow, was I embarrassed, but everyone's laughter cured the moment.
In 1990, before leaving Cuba, I wanted to improve my English. Someone recommended a retired American lady ex-pat who lived in Havana giving private English lessons. I went to see this lady, and she took me in as one of her students. Her lessons were once a week, in her apartment located in a beautiful place across from the Havana seawall, "El Malecon".
Our arrangement was simple: pay-as-you-go.
After a few weeks of classes, I felt I was making progress. The American teacher was a true educator, but I thought that I needed a more conversational and aggressive approach. The way I was training involved a long-term program. I'm sure at the end of this program I would have spoken like "Ronald Reagan" but I wasn't happy because my departure to Canada was on the horizon.
I explained my goals to my teacher and she understood immediately. Graciously she recommended an English lady, who was running a private school that would suit my needs "-Let me call her to see if she is taking more students" - and yes, she had space for one more.
The arrangement with my new English teacher was different. She did not accept monetary payment, and instead, we needed to bring to the class biscuits or cookies, tea or coffee, or fresh flowers. These items were part of her class and we would all enjoy these things during our time together. My new teacher made sure that I understood that that was the deal and if I was not able to meet those expectations I was out.
My new English lessons were a pleasing experience, however, when it came to the "payment" part, I would have preferred to pay money, because acquiring the required items in Cuba was extremely difficult. Counting me in, the class was made up of three students and the teacher. At the end of each class, we would assign to each other which trophy we were going to bring to the next session, and we would rotate these duties unless one of us had access to any of these items regularly.
The other students and I never talked about what we did for a living. I only knew that everyone was very motivated and we were all learning in big strides. I thought that it was peculiar that we did not talk about the things we were all experts in our jobs but left it at that assuming that our teacher wanted us to get outside of our comfort zones.
My new classes were planned as assignments. For example, from the TV guide, which was published in the newspaper, our teacher would select a film and assign it to one of the students. After watching the film, the student had to write a summary describing the story in English and present it to the class. The report would contain a vocabulary section with new words, their meaning, and at least an example describing how to use this new word. In the class, the student would present the summary, and our teacher would ask questions about the film and correct our grammar, pronunciation, intonation, and diction in general.
I learned so much! She was great!!!
After taking these lessons I develop confidence in my spoken English and started to develop a slight English accent. My English accent was not on purpose, I was copying the teacher accepting the precondition that what she was saying, and how she was saying it was the right way. I felt ready for the English-speaking world, but was I? I assume that confidence is a good thing to have
When I arrived in Canada in September of 1991 my English was sounding "pretty good", with an accent difficult to spot. People would assume, based on my spoken word, that I was completely fluent, but the reality was far from it.
No comments:
Post a Comment