If you’ve ever
been to Disney World, you would probably agree that it fulfills their motto of
being “the happiest place on earth.” From the amazing rides, to the colorful
shows, right down to the Mickey Mouse ears you can wear to emulate the famous
mouse. Now think about how true that would be if you had never heard of or seen
a place like this, and happened to visit on a whim. Well, that is how my ESL
couple landed at the happiest place on earth for their spring break vacation,
and their retelling of the experience made me feel happy even though I didn’t
get to go myself.
As I walked into
our normal meeting place in 1873, Mohammed and Alia both lit up and hurriedly
waved me over to their table. “Taylor! We just had the best vacation of our
lives! Please let us tell you about it.” They began describing their trip by
saying that their family friends told them to go visit Orlando for the beaches
that they had never seen. But upon driving around the city, they discovered
this fancy park that looked fun, so they took their 2 kids and went up to the
gate. “We had arrived at this magical place called ‘Disney World’, have you
heard of it?” I chuckled a little bit as I told them that this was a very
popular tourist attraction where many families decide to vacation with their
children. They then began to describe how their children squealed in delight at
each new site that they saw, and how they couldn’t imagine a better trip.
While listening to
them recount their trip in great detail, I realized that they were not having
as much trouble finding English words as they usually do. I eagerly sat up and
was again riveted by the fast-paced learning they had accomplished since moving
to the United States in January. When they began to wind down their story, I asked
them how their learning program was coming along. Alia smirked as she said that
both of them had moved up to the highest level verbally! This made me so proud
since they came in at the lowest level. She then began to explain her other
problem: writing.
She described that
they could easily catch on to English, but they had terrible struggles when it
came to learning to write it. “See, in Arabic, the letters make sense to me.
When you put them together, I can see a whole word. But when I get to English, I
cannot understand the symbols and they look like a mash of lines and dots.” I
guess I had never thought of that before, but it makes sense. In order to learn
to speak another language, you mostly have to listen and repeat back what you
hear. But in order to write it, you have to adopt a new way of seeing symbols,
and having them make full words and sentences. This isn’t even including the
weird grammar and spelling rules that may confuse someone more. I guess I never
thought about how complicated learning English really was!
As we said
good-bye for that meeting, I realized I am very impressed by that couple. They
have made such progress in their learning, and the effort they are putting in
is incredible. While I may not be able to learn another language like they can
(I swear that part of my brain has been turned off), I can try my best to
appreciate the efforts they are putting into learning our language. It’s the
best way I can make them feel like where they have come is the happiest place
on earth.
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