Why I love being an English language partner

[jesse_the_k]

Every week for most of the last 30 years, I have volunteered as an English language partner. Since 2024, I’ve treasured my time with two people who’ve learned English as a foreign language. I get to spend time with people who have weirdly requested that I correct their pronunciation and grammar. It’s a pleasantly zen task: listening carefully then offering precise feedback about a language I love. In return, I’ve enjoyed learning their stories from Chile and Taiwan/Germany/hiking world-wide.

I needed no formal TEFL qualifications since many orgs here are eager to connect me to learners wanting to practice their conversational and reading skills. I’ve worked with four:

• UW-Madison enrolls many international graduate students; their families want to learn.
• Our local technical college
• Private school serving young adults from wealthy families world wide
• Local non-profit providing free education for immigrants and under-resourced citizens

I am so lucky to be a native speaker of this Farkakt language, which is becoming (thanks colonialism) the global lingua franca while hellish to learn. The horrors of spelling! The 20 (or more) vowel sounds! The vocabulary stolen from hundreds of languages (note 1) resulting in multiple ways to express the same idea. The only constant is that no rules always apply.

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Note 1: james_david_nicoll’s 15 minutes of fame:

“The problem with defending the purity of the English language is that English is about as pure as a cribhouse whore. We don’t just borrow words; on occasion, English has pursued other languages down alleyways to beat them unconscious and rifle their pockets for new vocabulary.”

James D Nicoll 15 May 1990 in rec.arts.sf.written on USENET

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Going on disability gave me more time to volunteer, and I’ve learned so much and met so many intriguing people. If you have time to volunteer, tell me about it.

Comments

[otter]

Fun thing to me about about the way Farkakt sounds and means - kak is like kaka is like shit. and it means originally to shit upon or shat upon.

I enjoy languages. Put me in an immersive environment, for example with the cousins and aunties in a kitchen in Northern Norway, and within a few weeks I pick up enough to understand and be understood about basic things. Haven't tried it with languages that aren't closely related to English/German/French that I studied in school.

Yes!

[jesse_the_k]

Thanks for the "kak" insight — I knew there was something gratifying about the word. (My first second language was Greek, where I lived age 4. Sadly it's all gone.)

What a good ear you must have to pick up on Norwegian! We've recently enjoyed two Norwegian TV series — Pørni aka Pernille and Hjem til jul aka Home for Christmas — which feature family life, the infelicities of romance, and much beautiful scenery.

[sonia]

Your volunteering is so cool! And I love that James Nicoll quote.

I recently heard a coworker pronounce subsequent in a meeting as sub-SEE-kwent, and I'm still pondering whether it would be a kindness to mention it. It's a hard word to work into a sentence as a positive example, and she wouldn't necessarily realize it's the same word. Like me pronouncing anxious as an-ksi-os when I read to myself and not realizing ang-shus was the same word when I heard it.

Also relevant, conuly's recent post about "there ARE rules for English, so there" while linking to a list of so many rules that it doesn't actually support the point.

[thistleingrey]

I've learned over time that Indian English, Singaporean English, etc. have their own internal logic of pronunciation and syntax (plus, each is not unitary, but that's less relevant here). When I understand at a workplace what someone has said, I don't comment unless they ask for feedback.

I did give my mother a tough time when I was young until she learned eleMENtary, but it was on long car rides. And I used to be a reader-vocab person myself ("vehement" seems to be a classic obstacle for many, including me). Even so--I think workplaces are different.

Thanks!

[jesse_the_k]

I've learned so much from the 20-plus folks I've worked with. When possible, we meet to stroll on the bike paths, so we also get to talk about urban nature.

I bet there's a term for folks like me and you (and most likely everyone reading here) who learned more vocabulary from reading than hearing. I mispronounced so many words until 6th-7th grade, when general American phonology finally stuck. The last one I remember was matériel, which I confused with matter and material, providing my father with ample chances to correct me. (I'm at least a 2nd-gen serial pronunciation correcter.)

No helpful ideas for handling your coworker's situation, sadly.

Thanks for point out that great conuly post. Zompist (which DYAC wants to fix to 'compost') even admits The point is, what follows are the default rules that work 85% of the time. Gee whiz, Bob, mutual comprehension is severely compromised by a 15% error rate. (Reminds me of how severely a sub 10% error rate can render automatic captioning useless.)

OTOH, Bob reviews Latin American comics, an enthusiasm I share with my Chilean partner, so that's helpful!

[sheafrotherdon]

I have been thinking about finding places to volunteer to do this. It seems like a good way to help people in my community!

Besides the intrinsic

[jesse_the_k]

satisfaction for word-lovers like you and me, I appreciate the chance to widen my worldview.

I'm very grateful that my partners are willing to respect my no-politics boundaries.

[merrileemakes]

How lovely you can look back on something you enjoy and see all the lives you've helped.

I would love to go on disability and volunteer more, but alas I can physically work 2.5 hours a week more than the maximum allowed for disability. Plus I'm ridiculously overpaid, so there's that.

My main volunteering is with my local spinners and weavers group. I'm a spinner, weaver and knitter myself and find the group so inspiring and affirming to be around. I manage their memberships, website and social media presence, provide ICT support, demonstrate at and promote them at fibre festivals and local events, and help run a weekly drop in weaving group.

I really enjoy helping people get into weaving. We've had people turn up with their looms still flat packed in boxes and I've built it, taught them how to get started, what to borrow from our library to take them further and watched them develop into fully fledged, passionate weavers. I love it.

[yourlibrarian]

Sounds like a great thing to volunteer for!

I'll bet there are similar programs in my town as we get a lot of international students and even our apartment complex has a mix of nationalities.

[seascribble]

I have benefited from this in French! There is a program called ShareAmi (a pun on cher ami) that pairs young (and youngish) people with seniors in France to practice French and support the seniors to not feel lonely. Mine was a funny old guy named Thierry who would give me writing and reading exercises as homework and needle me to debate about politics. 😂 I was sad when I moved to Canada and didn't have the time to keep phoning, although we texted a few times.