My friend Sarah lives about three hours north of New York City, and is teaching English as a foreign language to four young women who work in a Chinese restaurant in the nearby town. They meet once a week, with the girls coming in to Sarah’s living room with the delicious odors of shrimp and fried rice trailing them. Sarah finds that audio books are very helpful in this process, for hearing the same words and phrases repeated over and over plants the words very firmly in their minds. The four young women are all smiles and giggles, and sometimes Sarah thinks that her teaching English as a foreign language class is more a game to them. But after she hears that the two audio books she gave them were fought over by the four girls, she realized how serious they were about their studies. When Sarah visited the restaurant and listened, she realized that most of the conversation in the restaurant was not in English, for both the staff and the customers. Sarah was one of the few Americans in the place. The importance of hearing English daily through those audio books was very important, almost as much as her teaching English as a foreign language to them.
One aspect that she truly liked about the audio book was its agreement with her methods of teaching English as a foreign language. Sarah liked to begin with daily conversations, and emphasize the “give and take” of simple conversations. The audio book’s structure had the same format, using simple conversations as a tool for correct word pronunciation. It pleased and astonished Sarah that the girls learned a true American sound very quickly, even before they realized the real meanings of the phrases. The first conversations that Sarah had taught were simple waitress phrases, but after the visit to the restaurant she decided that she preferred the audio book’s emphasis on simple daily conversations. In addition, the girls got great fun out of “conversing” with each other, and “conversing” with the audio book, and dissolving into fits of giggles. Maybe the humor was a bit obscure, but teaching English as a second language was turning out to be great fun.
There certainly was a more serious side to this too. Employees of small Chinese restaurants like this who do not learn English simply remain as restaurant workers, and can get moved to other states as the need for employees in those places increases. Having someone teach English as a foreign language allows them to choose to remain in the area if they wish, and increases the girls chances of eventually choosing another career. Whether or not the girls thought about all of this, they did cherish their audio books of English conversation and pronunciation as true treasures. Teaching English as a second language had become an important part of Sarah’s life and a very important foundation stone in the girls’ lives. Their audio books would probably be a treasured memento for years, long past the time they were needed.
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