The Sound of Success

The man whose office is off the conference room where we have ESOL class is very, very patient and tolerant. We are not generally a quiet group.

This week, I kept my half of our class working on the alphabet. I brought in a set of “tactile” letters from Project Learn, cards of single capital letters that are made of various materials, like fuzzy pipe cleaners or velvet or thick foam. I also brought in a canister of small plastic letter tiles, so the students could search for letters and match what I wrote on the board, then return the letters to the pile and start again. These were fun and got everybody out of their seats for a while. The side discussions in Nepali were overwhelming at times.

Three new volunteers came to class this week: Joyce, a white woman just a little older than myself; Carmesha, a tall, twenty-something black woman with lots of eye make-up; and Rayshawna, a sixteen-year-old who goes to a year-round high school and volunteers for class credit. They have all been much less reticent, and therefore much more successful, than John was a few weeks ago. I overheard Joyce use the words conjugate and pronoun, which was promising, but I also heard Carmesha employ Ebonics while explaining present tense conjugation (“That’s right; he be lifting, so it’s ‘he lifts.’”). I’ll call it a wash.

These newcomers make it possible for our two groups to continue after Rebecca leaves at 11:00 to teach a class at the university. I don’t think I could handle both groups on my own for an hour. While Joyce and Carmesha worked on verbs with the more advanced group, Rayshawna and I worked on a little phonics with the other half.

I wrote the entire alphabet on the white board again, and we all recited it together. (The students still don’t acknowledge the word alphabet, but I’m letting that slide.)

“So, these are all the letters,” I said, circling the whole group with a finger. “But some letters are different from others.”

I erased all the vowels, leaving the blank spots where they had been, and wrote a-e-i-o-u in a line underneath the other letters. I then drew a square around them and wrote vowels under them.

“These are called vowels, and they are different,” I said. “So let’s work on these, the consonants.”

I drew another square, around the consonants, and simply plowed forth, despite the confused looks on some faces.

“B,” here I underlined B and wrote it big on the blank half of the board, “makes that buh, buh sound. What words begin with b?”

Brows furrowed and lips moved silently; great mental effort was going on. Finally, Rayshawna silently held up a book.

“Book,” Mali said quietly, almost as if she were talking to herself.

“Yes! Book!” I exclaimed, startling everyone a bit. I wrote it on the board. “B-o-o-k. Book. What other words begin with buh-buh b?”

We did this with each consonant through g, then took our break. I knew I’d have some difficulty coming up with concrete vocabulary for J and K, so I wrote some notes during the break. Job and jar were good, as all of these students either had a job or were seeking one, and there was a jar of pens on the table. What else? I came up with joke. I knew it would be a stretch, but I decided to give it a try.

 “What starts with this juh-juh J sound?”

They had become comfortable offering vocab they knew, like cap, dog, and good, but the letter j was kind of new. Job and jar were easy, as anticipated.

“J-o-k-e. Joke. What is joke?” I asked, palms and shoulders raised. The Bhutanese love to laugh; there was always a lot of laughter in both classes I volunteered in—kind, inclusive laughter that helped me feel like part of the group. Whenever I acted out a new word or had trouble remembering someone’s name, we laughed together. And I often wrote the day of the week or the date incorrectly on the board, so they could find and fix the error, and then we all laughed at my mistake together. So I knew they could get this concept, if only I could communicate it to them.

“What is a joke?” I asked again. Earlier, when demonstrating the sounds of b and hard c, I had taken a piece of paper with the word cabinet printed on it off the cabinet and taped it to my chest so I could show them the word while pronouncing it and underlining the letters. Now, I took that piece of paper and taped it to my chest again.

“I am a cabinet,” I said, and just let my arms fall to my sides with a blank expression on my face. Two beats. “Am I a cabinet?”

Bhim and Saraswati looked at each other, grinning a little but uncertain. Le had his hand over his mouth again; Bhuda’s face was blank, but he was leaning forward and studying me intensely.

“I’m a cabinet,” I repeated, pointing to my chest. “Am I a cabinet?” I raised my palms and shoulders. “Nooo, it’s a joke!”

I tossed both hands forward, palms down, in the motion of get-outta-here, shook my head and made an exaggerated laugh.

“It’s a joke! I’m not a cabinet! It’s a joke; see?”

They all laughed and commiserated in Nepali for several minutes, with much head-nodding and the unmistakable sounds of humoring my corny humor. I laughed at myself and turned a little red. Rayshawna shook her head at me over a little grin.

“That was bad,” she whispered.

Yes. Yes it was. But I think they got it.

The kn combo was a bit perplexing, phonetically speaking, but we made a lot of progress with the word knock. I wrote it on the board under the word knee, and pronounced it several times.

“What is knock?” I asked, palms up.

Nothing.

I ducked into the office just off our conference room and said quietly, “I’m going to close your door and knock on it; okay?” The kind-looking Asian man smiled and nodded. I closed the door and turned to my students.

“What is this?”

“Door!” they responded in unison.

“Good! Now what do you do when you go to someone’s house?” I rapped on the door with my knuckles. “Helloo! Anyone home?”

Saraswati knocked her own knuckles on the table.

“Yes,” I said. “That’s knocking! You knock on a door!”

Everyone tapped their knuckles on the table. Le and Dhan got up to knock on the walls. I gently knocked on Bhim’s head and repeated, “knock-knock, knock-knock!” He laughed heartily. I saw that he had written knock in his notebook next to the word door, with what looked like a translation to Nepali next to it.

Later, when I reviewed all our new vocabulary words for the day, knock was the one they all knew without hesitation. And the one they demonstrated freely, on the table, the wall, the door.

I’m not sure how anyone gets work done in this place while we’re in there causing a ruckus on Tuesday and Thursday mornings. I often see different people go into the little kitchen at the far end of our room to get coffee, then stand in the doorway stirring and watching us, bemused grins stuck on their faces. Who knew language acquisition was so loud?