Tuesday evening as I was leaving
class I happened to ask Minseo how her conversation partner meetings
were working out, and I mentioned that I was having to request a new
set of people since the first three that I had been assigned just
hadn't turned out. She said that her meetings were going well, and
that I was welcome to join her for some of them. I asked Ms. Kim if
that was acceptable, and it was, so Wednesday afternoon (the 17th) I
joined Minseo and Bayasaa at Starbucks. Bayasaa is a radiologist from
Mongolia, who is here to study English before going to Japan to
further his medical training (if I understand correctly his training
will be in English). Not very long into our meeting I discovered that
Bayasaa is actually one of my newly assigned conversation partners,
and we had already exchanged emails and set up a time to meet the following day.
Bayasaa is at a beginner level in
his English, so a good bit of time is spent deciphering what he is
trying to say and then modeling the correct way to say it for him.
This of course requires very slow and distinct speech, and often
requires stopping at words containing sounds he has trouble
pronouncing and giving him just the sound by itself until he learns
to make it, and then giving the sound in the whole word until he
successfully pronounces it. Much of the conversation centered around
his life in Mongolia and various comparisons/contrasts to life here
in the US and South Korea. One of the difficulties he mentioned about
the English language is the verb tenses. It seems that in the
Mongolian language verbs are not conjugated.
I think it was beneficial having
two English speakers working with him; there were various times that
one of us was unable to understand what he was saying, while the
other one did understand. Our meeting lasted somewhere right around
two hours, and it seemed to be enjoyable for everyone involved.
Bayasaa is at a level where I can easily see him getting bogged down
with lots of 'academic' 'book learning' English, so I think it is
very beneficial for him to exercise the English he already has in
more of a social setting where the stated focus is not language
learning, yet he is continuously bumping against the communicational
limits of his English, in a setting where those around him can help
to expand those limits.
I didn't know that verbs aren't conjugated in Mongolian (or really anything about that language)! That's interesting. I'd like to know more about Mongolia in general.
ReplyDeleteHe is my tutee and I occasionally have difficulty explaining how to conjugate verbs to him. He told me that English was difficult for him because Mongolian is a much simpler language. That said, I am very glad that Zeb is helping Bayasgalan with day to day English conversation.
DeleteI'll try to include various interesting facts that stood out to me in all my future posts about my meetings with Bayasaa.
ReplyDelete