by I gave my first English lesson last night. The guy picked me from the hotel and we had the lesson in some kind of hall. His wife told me on the phone that he needs to know the rules. Rules? Wow, where do I start? Because I’m a native speaker, I don’t even know half the rules, and every rule seems to have just as many exceptions. I found a really good web page that gave a comprehensive guide to the different present tenses in English (I watch, I am watching, I have been watching, and so on) and figured that would be a good start. But it wasn’t. When I went through various examples of the present continuous tense in use, he was presently continuously bored. At the half-way point of the lesson I wisely ditched grammar rules and spent the next 45 minutes having a chat. He had a good handle on grammar, but as he said, he lacked the confidence (and experience) to apply the rules in conversation. That’s a pretty familiar feeling to me. His English wasn’t bad – I’d put him at a 5 on a 0-to-10 scale – but he made classic mistakes that a lot of second-language speakers make, such as overusing “many” in place of “a lot of”, or mispronouncing certain words. He also came out with a fair bit of Romanglish such as “there exists a company…”. The “highlight” was when he talked about a “dessert” in Serbia. I asked him what it was made out of. Chocolate? Cream? Strawberries? I might have to try it if and when I venture over the border. “Sand,” he said. “Many sand.” Overall the lesson, or at least the second half of it, was encouraging. Next time he wants me to go over hard-to-pronounce words like “thieves” and “south”.
Later today I’m helping a younger guy prepare for an IELTS exam, assuming he agrees to the price. Just from our phone conversation I’d put him at an 8 (at least) on my scale, so this is a bit daunting for me. What can I actually do to help him? In a year’s time, sure, but I’m totally green right now. He said that five years ago he scored 108 in a TOEFL exam (he pronounced it “one-oh-eight”, a good indication in itself that he can do the English thing). I said, wow, that’s impressive, without having the foggiest clue what the score meant. It’s out of 120, and you need 110 to get into Oxford, so 108 is actually pretty good after all. Since the exam he’s lived and worked in the US, so it’s a fair bet that he’s improved since then. Again, I wonder just what I can help him with.
Last night somebody else texted in reply to one of my ads. His or her English was better than perfect. It was quite possibly the first time in fifteen years that I received a text with a semicolon in it, and what’s more, he or she used it correctly. This person says he or she doesn’t require any further training in English, but would like to meet me and show me around the city. Cool.
I’m loving this! It is a bit frightening at times, but completely overhauling my life, which is pretty much what I’m doing here, is bound to be scary. It’s totally mad that I’m doing this, but totally awesome, and I wouldn’t change it for the world. When I walk around Timișoara I now feel much more comfortable, as if I’m part of the city, as if I’m just another of the thousands of small business owners here trying to scratch out a living. And like them, I now have my own homemade signs. As well as the Big Ben ads, I’ve made (but haven’t yet put up) ones with the word Timișoara spelt out in colour with landmarks and symbols from the UK and America: the McDonalds logo for the M, the London Eye for the O, Big Ben (again) and the Empire State Building for the two I’s, and so on. I’ve also got Donald Trump ads and Simpsons ones (where I’ll ensure that even the tear-off bits are in Simpsons-style writing) in the pipeline. That’s all appropriate now that as a species we might as well be living in an episode of the Simpsons after everything that’s happened in 2016 (more about that in my next post). But even the effort of putting up ads around the city, and trying to find the end of the sellotape in the dark, has been kind of fun, because there’s a purpose to it all.
I just hope I don’t have to leave. That would be terrible.
