Classroom Costa Rica

When we in America thought of home stays in a different country, we started thinking “Oh! This will really help me in my studies of this language. Well, maybe after spending enough time there I will be able to pick up some simple words.”
But really,  home stays aren’t helping just us. What if the people that you are taking up residence with know only a limited amount of English? We don’t think of that side of the story much do we? At least not here in the States. We automatically assume that everywhere we go people will know English. After all we’re always hearing that English is spreading widely and quickly. Why wouldn’t these people speak English? Maybe because they don’t know it. I made the mistake of assuming that at least one person in the household would speak some, if not fluent, English. There are schools in Costa Rica, like the Monteverde Friends School, that focus on English as a part of the curriculum. When we were there for the soccer game, we encountered this little eight-year-old named Francis and he was speaking almost fluent English to us! They must really do good work there. A little boy, nearing nine spoke English as his second language almost perfectly, compare this to us, who with several years of Spanish study, still don’t speak it as fluently as Francis spoke English.
Of course that experience only made me more sure that the kids at my home stay would know English. I was wrong. We arrived at the home stay to find that none of the family could speak English. Only one kid had studied English and it was only his first year so he wasn’t fluent at all. That kind of jolted me. So now communication was up to the Spanish that we knew and an everlasting game of charades.
I know that my home stay group had a little bit of trouble, but we found ways to communicate. For example, while we were waiting for dinner, we took out a deck of cards and started to play blackjack. Mandy, Robin, and I then realized that Eric and Jasmine, the kids at our home stay, might not know how to play. So we spent about ten minutes trying to explain that the closer to twenty-one your cards are then the better it is. We explained the value of each face card in  choppy Spanish. We hit a snag when I realized that I didn’t know how to say above and below. As I mentioned before, when you don’t know the word, its time for charades. So I held up my hand, pointed to it and said, “viente-uno” twenty-one. Then with my other hand I pointed under the “twenty-one” hand and said “bien”, good, and then above the hand and tried to show the word “out”. I made a fist with a thumbs up and then sent it back over my shoulder and kept saying “out” hoping they would understand. By the time we were ready to play I was crossing my fingers hoping they would get it,  and they did.  After a few rounds, with a little more explaining in between, we decided to play a universal game, Chutes and Ladders.
It surprised me that this kid who was in the ninth grade was only just starting English. I mean after seeing what it was like at the Friends School I was really surprised. We heard maybe five words of English from this family the whole time we were there. Language is one of the biggest barriers between people. After the home stays we brought up the question, what if everyone spoke the same language? It doesn’t have to be English or Spanish. It could be Indonesian or Russian, but everyone would speak it. What do you think? If we all spoke one language it would be easier for everyone in these sorts of situations. No charades and no struggling to find the right words and feeling the heat creep over your cheeks when you realize that what you just said might not really be what you mean. It’s an interesting thing language, it really connects us to others who speak the same one. If we only knew one language, lets say English so we can all relate, it might make traveling easier, and homestays. But for those of us who enjoy learning languages and get a certain thrill from learning them it wouldn’t be as enjoyable, no other languages to learn. As the discussion continued we realized a couple of things. First, that by using only one language we would lose all cultural differences, and secondly, it wouldn’t stay just English for long. And all English is different now anyway. What about accents? Southern, New Jersey, Brooklyn,you name it there’s an accent! It’s definitly better that we have many languages in the world and not just one. But it’s times like these that you wish there was only one language. There’s a lesson in this isn’t there?
Learn your languages so you don’t end up playing charades all night long!

-Starcie

Comments RSS