I met with my conversation
partner for the final time today. As this was the last time we were going to
meet I wanted to discuss what her plans were going to be for the summer. Was
she going to continue working? Was she going to try and take any summer school
classes? Or was she simply going to back to Venezuela for the summer? However
once I started to ask her these questions I realized that she was not
proficient at speaking English in future tense.
When
I asked her where she was going, she would respond something like, “I go to…” I
found this lack of knowledge of the future tense interesting for several
reasons. First it was strange how I had never noticed it before. Perhaps we had
talked so little about the future in our conversations that talking in the
future tense was never required. It is also possible that I had just never
noticed it before over her heavy accent. Also, the lack of experience with the
future tense interested me because I always believed that the past tense of English
was always harder for foreign language speakers to learn. When speaking in the
past tense it usually involves changing the verb significantly whereas, in the
future tense you generally just add -ing to the end of the verb. Regardless of
the reason for her struggles with the future tense, it only bothered me for the
first several minutes or so before I got used to it.
When
we finally got around to talking about our plans for the summer, she told me
she wanted to know what I was going to do over summer first. I told her that I was
going back home to California for the summer to stay with my family there.
While I was back home, I said I was going to work the whole summer to make some
money for another year of school here at TCU. She then told me that she was
going to try and work this summer as well and, that she was going to stay in
the Dallas-Fort Worth area the entire summer. I was curious where she planned
to work, due to her lack of English experience, so I asked her “what types of
jobs can you get with limited English skills?”
Apparently
most of the jobs she was looking at applying for in the DFW area did not
require her to know any English. She told me, in almost all of the Spanish
speaking areas of the city, the jobs did not require she know any English because
all of the customers and employees she would be working with would be native Spanish
speakers as well. She even said that her limited English skills were much
greater than many of the workers in those areas. This surprised me. I had no
idea there was such a big job market in the area for individuals who did not
speak any English.
I
asked her how so many jobs, in the local area, could not require you to know English.
She informed me that there are essentially two sides to Fort Worth. There is
the side I am familiar with where everyone speaks and does things in English.
However, she told me that many areas around Fort Worth function almost entirely
in Spanish. She told me that in the grocery store she shops in and in many of
the restaurants she goes to she hardly ever hears a word of English. This
shocked me. It made me realize how oblivious I was to a whole other culture
living right next to me that I had never even thought about. It also made me a
little sad thinking how even now in the 21st century we are so
segregated, in the US.
Reflecting
back on all my conversations with Peggy, over the semester, I was struck by the
fact that she had probably taught me just as much as I had taught her. I may
have given her a chance to learn and experience conversational English but, she
taught me so much more about the Hispanic community in the Fort Worth area.
Thinking back to our first conversation, I had gone into it viewing it as a
form of community service. I was helping someone out who needed my help.
However, reflecting back upon it now I can see that having a conversational
partner is a group learning experience that teaches both parties equally.
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