That Moment When Surprise! Info I’ve Long Forgotten is Now Necessary

So it turns out that high school Spanish was a good thing to take, all those years ago, even though most of it has gone out of my head by now.

The Brazillian student that entered my class a few months ago is not at all a “shy” person, but I count it. At first, it was especially hard for him to communicate with anyone else other than the 1st grade Brazillian that has been in Chrissy’s class (the 1st grade and 6th grade boys are now good friends, especially since they have that language connection. It must be very hard to be in a school where neither language taught is your own…). Since those first few weeks, he’s a much more confident English speaker. He is an absolute hoot to be around, and jokes around with the other students more easily, but there’s still that small language barrier between us that is a bit difficult to breach.  I count every day communication with him as a victory, because my limited knowledge of Spanish from high school (much of what I’ve learned is how lost) at least somewhat is able to get through to him, since Portuguese and Spanish have a similar grammar structure and even some similar vocabulary. He’s obsessed with soccer and Michael Jackson, and can dance like you wouldn’t believe. His Mom is incredibly happy that I can somewhat communicate too, finding someone she can communicate with and talk to about his schooling without having to search through a dictionary for every other word, and even the little brother started yammering on once he thought I understood what he was saying (but the kid’s mouth went off like a rocket, and there’s not much I remember from high school, so I just kept saying “cool!” and nodded). Google Translate has become a good friend for the longer conversations, but for the most part my student can push information out of his brain in English, or we can communicate in his broken English and my broken Spanish to get the ideas across.

In any case, class is able to run a lot more smoothly.  I’m going to place the victory back towards my high school Spanish teachers. I never thought it would actually be this useful in my line of work as an English teacher, though, especially in a country that speaks Chinese. Who would’ve thought…