Helping a language partner with really bad English

[Dawei3]

I'm going to have a first call with someone whose English is notably bad.  That she has weak English skills is a plus to me because most of my languages partners have very good English skills.  Because of this, it's too easy in our calls to switch to English for clarifications.  With her, our conversation will need to be mostly in Chinese.    

 

(If you wondering how I know her English is bad despite that we've not had a phone conversation yet:  she wrote me that her English is 聋子英语 (deaf English), that her poor skills puzzled her prior language instructor,  and the few short verbal  English wechat messages she left were almost impossible to understand.   Both her pronunciation and grammar were off.)  

 

Has anybody had any experience with this?  I want to help her too. 

 

This group has an amazingly broad knowledge set, so some may have some thoughts on how to begin helping her.   (to be clear, she & I are talking just for fun - she's not paying me & I'm not paying her as an instructor).       

[mungouk]

Well, what does she want to learn/improve?

If you have the relevant vocabulary then maybe you could spend some time discussing her learning needs in Chinese before you switch to the English?

 

I guess there's a "danger" that you end up acting as a language teacher rather than a "partner" though.

 

I also think there's a lot to be said for helping someone to overcome their inhibitions and just try... it could turn out that she's nowhere near as bad as she thinks she is, once she has overcome the fear of making mistakes. 

 

 

 

 

[歐博思]

She's not resistant to your learning about her English interests and goals using Chinese as the communication medium, at least at first, is she? 

 

If not then you could converse in Chinese about some common interest and gradually add more English words? Oh, and drill her on pronunciation. A self-described 籠子英語's pronunciation might be holding them back.

[Lu]

Perhaps start from the basics. Pick a textbook, start from chapter one and see what can be improved. She probably knows Hello and My name is Ivy and such, in which case you can focus on pronunciation for those bits, and just move through as fast or as slow as reasonable.

[Flickserve]

11 hours ago, Dawei3 said:

With her, our conversation will need to be mostly in Chinese.    

 

(If you wondering how I know her English is bad despite that we've not had a phone conversation yet:  she wrote me that her English is 聋子英语 (deaf English), that her poor skills puzzled her prior language instructor,  and the few short verbal  English wechat messages she left were almost impossible to understand.   Both her pronunciation and grammar were off.)  

 

Her confidence and aspirations might be quite low. Consider building up some vocabulary by chinglish first. 

[roddy]

I don't like the using Chinglish and adding English words into Chinese conversation ideas. 

 

1) Get a massive injection of patience. Each. A one-to-one session at elementary language levels can be exhausting.

2) Right back to basics. My name is.... Where are you from... stuff.

3) Don't be scared to do things that might seem daft or old fashioned. Substitution drills, games. I used to get through elementary teaching by doing substitution drills where I would change the substitution bit at the last minute for "comedy"* value. Do basic dialogues in silly voices.

 

*It was a low bar in that school.

[Dawei3]

9 hours ago, Flickserve said:

Her confidence and aspirations might be quite low.

Very perceptive.  In our initial wechat exchange, she suggested we could help each other with language.  When I suggested a call, she suddenly backed off - but I thought she wanted to learn (and I like the challenge of talking with someone who has many years of school, but limited speaking skills).    

 

7 hours ago, roddy said:

My name is.... Where are you from... stuff.

Covering the basics with her makes sense.  I might try teaching her how to begin a conversation.  And how she can say whether she understands/doesn't understand.  I'm totally bereft of acting skills (in English & Chinese ?), so I'll just use my regular voice.  I also lack the language skills to explain to her why I'd use a different voice (I'm constantly surprised at regardless of how much I learn, I realize I have still have large gaps in my Chinese).  

 

Since many of the basic phrases in Chinese are somewhat similar to that in English, focusing on the things you mentioned should work "My name is...., I am from .... ,  My favorite hobby is ...."   (just typing this to you makes me think I could provide these in text to hear beforehand.  However, I don't want to scare her by making her worried she's not prepared).  

 

 

  

 

[Flickserve]

12 hours ago, Dawei3 said:

When I suggested a call, she suddenly backed off - but I thought she wanted to learn (and I like the challenge of talking with someone who has many years of school, but limited speaking skills).    

 

Yeah. Many people are like this. They basically have no confidence and getting them out of their comfort zone is really hard. Even if you try to get them to say a word, they won't try. Getting even a simple sentence of three syllables spoken out loud may be tough. Hence the suggestion of Chinglish.

 

An alternative would be to narrow the scope down even further and just concentrate on her listening to simple sentences to develop listening skills without the pressure of trying to speak English. Then she has to translate back into Chinese what the spoken English is. Just do five or ten sentences. Small steps to building confidence. It's easy to keep looking at text which distracts from listening so perhaps you do a mainly audio lesson and keep in mind to use English text as minimal as possible. 

 

You would have to be a bit wary of the "OMG, this 外国人 speaks Chinese so much better than my English. I feel ashamed" mentality. You might in the end feel that there's too many psychological barriers to overcome - after all, you are not trained to be a therapist