Will Stone - CP 7

 

I was waiting in the lounge reading Time magazine waiting for Yasmina to finish her classes. She came in with a crowd of other students and came over to sit by me. Immediately I could tell she was frustrated ad when I asked how her day was she let it all out. Yasmina told me that she felt like she hadn’t learned anything so far in this session and complained that the teacher of the class she had just gotten out of was ill prepared to teach grammar. Apparently in the last class the teacher made several egregious grammatical errors in her lesson that Yasmina had pointed out and corrected. Being an upper level student, Yasmina was already familiar with most of the material being taught and was having trouble advancing in her studies. She said that the lack of challenging material had completely lost her interest and motivation for trying. I offered that a lot of newer English teachers probably have trouble recalling the distinctions and finer points of grammar, having learned it at such a young age and having it internalized over time to the point where it becomes difficult to discern why certain rules are employed. She seemed unconvinced and suggested that it did not require much time to re-familiarize ones self with fundamental grammatical rules. It was hard to argue with that logic. She continued to vent, taking aim at the shortcomings of her classmates. Yasmina said that many of the newer, younger students didn’t take their lessons as seriously as she thought they should, speaking in their native languages when they were not in class and at home as well as treating the CIES as more of a hang out locale than an institution of learning. I appreciated her desire to continue advancing her skills and told her that I thought she spoke quite well. She told me she was flattered and that most of her skills had stemmed from intensely studying the language, starting by going through short stories in the New Yorker and looking each individual word until she could discern the plot of the story. by this time we had been talking for about forty-five minutes or so and I had to wrap up our conversation so that I could get to class. I told her that when we met next Tuesday I would bring her  some reading material that contained some short stories.