Today, I met with Nok in the CIES Lounge and I have to say, it's definitely nice talking with her. She's a little hard on herself when it comes to speaking, focusing more on her shortcomings but I think she does just fine. She speaks accurately enough, I understand her quite well. She did express that she feels as if she's plateau'd and I assured her that we can get past that.
When I first met her, she introduced herself as Nok (which means bird or possibly dove) but her real name is Butsawan (I... probably should have asked what this meant, too). She's only been in the United States for less than a month and she's just getting the hang of things still like setting up her health insurance, driver's license, phone plans. I told her I'd help her with figuring out some of those things. She came over with her husband, Ton (which means stem or branch) and their son, Geo (named after Nok's field of study). I thought their names together was kind of cute considering the image I had in my mind which was a bird on a perch.
Nok's goal is to fulfill the requirements for her doctorate degree within the 2 year contract/scholarship she attained. I'm not sure I understood this entirely bot she said her focus in research in geology was the sedimentation process in a river or estuary and its effects on climate change. She has to do a presentation soon regarding it to her professors and I think it's the cause of her stress in speaking.
She did have a little trouble saying some words, but nothing that couldn't be surmised in context. I think she wants to focus on speaking English without an accent which I have an article that might interest her greatly (as well as everyone else here! More later)
She said her 6 year old son, Geo, has been feeling homesick and I can imagine how he feels. He doesn't speak any English yet so I figured I could introduce him to my good friend, Gan, who is also Thai and maybe make him feel a little at ease, talk to someone other than his parents. She also wants her husband to practice speaking English more since they don't at home. I offered to take her and her family out sometime, which would provide good practice in English speaking and make then feel a little more welcome in the US.
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I don't know if I should be doing this on hurr'... but here we go! (I'll take it down if need be) If anyone is interested in learning another language or is in the middle of learning, this guy, Benny Lewis, has made a blog about language hacking tips. He typically learns other languages in 3 months. He's got some pretty good tips. Here's some links if anyone's interested.
here's an article on Getting rid of accents: http://www.fluentin3months.com/getting-rid-of-your-english-accent/
Main Site: http://www.fluentin3months.com/
It sounds like Nok has clear goals in regards to learning English. You may be a Godsend in connecting your friend Gan with Geo. Being in a strange place and not knowing the language must be that much harder for a child.
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