ESL Basics

Back in 2004, a good friend and I set off for Panama to attend Spanish-language school and then live among the Kuna Indians on the San Blas Islands. I had been out of college a couple years, and was ready for adventure. While we were in language school, I had a blast stumbling my way through the Spanish language. I truly believe that for any ESL teacher to truly identify with her students, she must trudge through the process of learning a second language. If nothing else, it promotes humility, which is a language learner's best friend.

In that school, our fellow students were mostly American college coeds. They somehow had cashed in their normal English dialogue, and decided to only speak Spanish. It didn’t matter that I wanted to ask Lizzy from South Carolina about her family during our break. She was only going to answer me in Spanish. It was then that I remembered what it was like to be in college, and excited about everything. These American students were all Spanish majors from really good schools, so they could converse with the best of them. My clearest memory from that school was sitting in my little classroom slaving over a simple assignment about prepositions, and looking up at one of the American guys telling jokes in Spanish to all the kitchen staff. They were all laughing hysterically at what he had said. I looked up at my pure-blooded American friend in disbelief that I couldn’t understand a word he just said. Meanwhile, all the teachers and workers were punching Jim in the arm telling him how funny he was. That experience has shaped how I treat the students with the lowest proficiency in my classroom, praying that their understanding and sense of humor grows as fast as their English.