The first week of conversation groups at the Globe, there was a very low turnout, and only one young man from Taiwan showed up. Mario, my partner for these sessions and I worked very hard to make the situation less threatening for this young man, especially since he was the only one there and not quite yet fluent.I think Mario and myself were also trying to figure out exactly what our roles n this process would be. Later, I expressed my concern about the low turnout to some people at the CIES in prder to recruit others, and fortunately, the next week we had three individuals, Shayan, my conversation partner, Dong Soek, my tutee, and another young man from Libya.
Dong Soek and Shayan are capable conversation partners, but the man from Libya was clearly just a beginner, but fortunately seemed quite at ease with putting forth his best effort. It was really great to see these three people with completely different fluidity levels and ways of approaching English learning navigate conversations on their own. It also proved quite a challenge (but a very enjoyable one nonetheless) to try and moderate the conversation, trying to inconspicuously pass the baton so as to give each person enough time to talk, especially the Libyan gentleman who needed the most time to articulate his ideas.
I don’t remember what the original nucleus of conversation was, but eventually we settled into nearly an hour long discussion of their respective countries’ military defense strategies, compulsory military enrollment (or not), and the debate over gun control in various countries and their opinions on this. This session proved quite informative to me as well since I learned a lot from my conversation partners about these subjects.
There have been a couple of other group conversation sessions at the globe since then, but the most recent one was attended by the now regular, Dong Soek, and a new lady, approximately in her mid-fifties, from Colombia named Luz. Luz is very sympathetic, and very gentle in her communication. Give our common latin backgrounds, I felt very comfortable in her presence and tried to prevent her and my conversation from dominating the session. In this session we talked about each countries’ respective recycling strategies, given that Luz’s husband is here working on a PhD in waste management. Luz struggles with a lack of vocabulary, but has a good sense of how to use words once they are supplied to her. She does use a lot of filler and often relies on hand motions to link ideas, but once she settles in, she becomes a bit more natural in her speech.
It was interesting to see Dong Soek and Luz try and negotiate the meanings of particular words, especially since they come from such disparate cultures and are at fairly different stages in their English development. I really enjoy the conversation groups. For me honestly, the toughest part is gauging people’s interest in a subject and shifting it if necessary so as to keep everyone engaged and involved. I also have a hard time finding ideal seating so that everyone can see each other comfortably as they talk.
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