Date/Time: 2/10 @ 12pm
Location: Starbucks Tennessee
Topic discussed: I took the two former topics we had (CP's broken phone and recounting a recent trip to NYC), and juxtaposed these with my own, to show him alternate ways of saying what he had wanted to say. This wasn't a hand-on lesson or anything of the type, I just did it slyly to show how Americans would discuss the topics. We also talked about our future plans, and I did the same thing here, letting him go first and then giving my own account at a level that he could understand and incorporate.
Cultural and/or linguistic topics you and your partner learned: It was interesting for me to see how he was translating from Arabic in his head before speaking. Although his English is very rough, certain aspects (mostly word order, preposition choice, and verb conjugations) are pretty easy for me to understand, I think due in part to my own understanding of Arabic. This is kind of hard to explain...it's almost like we each spoke the same interlanguage (I thinks that's the psycho linguistics term). I would like to explore if it is possible to use a mutual "half language" to teach beginner English, as this might ease new learners into the aspects noted above, by way of constructing (correct) English sentences in a manner that seems less alien and more parallel to their own language, then gradually Americanizing their sentences.
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