Conversation #1

Today I met with my conversation partner for the first time. She said she has been living in the United States for almost a year now, coming here from Venezuela. I asked her why she had moved, from her home country of Venezuela, and she said that her husband had been recruited for a job here in the United States and that had forced their entire family to move. The fact that her entire family had to move countries because her husband had found a better job in America surprised me.

I have never thought of moving and living anywhere outside the US. I am comfortable here. Everything is familiar to me, I know the way things work, and most importantly all of my relationships are here. I realized that moving to a different country, while exciting, must be a daunting task for any person. The closest thing I can compare it to is going away to college for the first time. Then again, even at a new college everyone knows your language. I asked her how her transition into American culture was and she gave me some surprising answers.

The first question I asked her, after we had talked about her background and mine, was how was the transition to English coming from a mostly Spanish speaking country. She promptly responded, “What transition? I only speaks English in the classroom.” I was surprised by this response and pried more into the subject. Apparently since she has lived in the US, everywhere she regularly goes restaurants, grocery stores, school, she can communicate by exclusively speaking Spanish. This struck me as strange because I do essentially the same things as her in the same region as her and, I have never had to use Spanish to communicate. This made me realize how segregated, even today, the communities of the area are. Was it just a language barrier that divided us?

I asked her how the Spanish speakers she interacted with on a daily basis go around without English. She said that almost everyone was able to get by without speaking any English because the community she lived in was mostly Hispanic. She also said almost no one was even trying to learn English. This seemed strange to me. Why would you move to a different country and not try to learn the language and interact with its citizens. She said that there was actually a big divide in the Hispanic community that she lived in. People that came to the US from countries in south and central America, panama, Guatemala, Venezuela, etc. actively tried to learn and engage in English upon arrival to the US. However, most people from Mexico feel they can get by without English and do not try to learn it. I had no idea that there was such a divide in the Hispanic community here in Fort Worth.

I asked her whether most people who moved here were successful in learning English, if they actively attempted to do so. She told me, while some people were willing, there was really no place in the community where they are forced to use English so, it is easy just to revert back to Spanish instead. That is why she started the program at TCU. She has been taking English classes for many years but, hasn’t had enough hands on practice in English to really develop a tongue for it. However, the TCU program, which emphasizes using conversation partner, forces her to engage in active, conversational English which she claims helps her language development immensely.