Hello. My name is Laura and I now live in Austin, Texas, United States. I was born in Germany and lived there as a little girl but my parents were American so I became fluent in speaking both languages. However, I moved with my parents to several countries and learned other languages as well. Unfortunately for me, I have resided in the U.S. for most of my adult life so have not retained fluency in any languages, with the exception of Spanish which I am still improving.
Originally, I found this site when I was looking at ESL sites trying to find additional material for classes that I was teaching. However, the school at which I was teaching is now closed. Most of the programs in this city that hire people to teach ESL require a teacher to have a graduate degree in ESL in addition to experience. I received certification as a volunteer English teacher from an agency and have taught on a volunteer basis for three years.
My favorite English teaching situation happened in Massachusetts. I was tutoring several young women who wanted to improve their English skills so that they could take the TOEFL and enter college. I was working under the supervision of a paid teacher. So I went to classes with the students and then tutored them twice weekly for two hours. They wanted more practice with conversational skills and with reviewing material learned in class. We had our sessions in a back room in a Chinese restaurant owned by the family of one of the students. After the tutoring session, we would all eat lunch. It was a wonderful side benefit of the teaching experience and I was able to eat food cooked in the Cantonese Chinese style but some of the dishes did not appear on the printed menu. Why? It was because many Americans there did not like all of the food prepared by certain methods or containing certain ingredients that native Chinese speakers and immigrants from China preferred. Since I had lived in the Philippines as a child, I was used to many Filipino dishes which were prepared in a similar manner as Cantonese style food is prepared.
I would have gladly continued in that job but I met my husband, an Austin, Texas native, and since he owned his home and I was living in a rented apartment (flat, for all of you U.K. English speakers) I packed up and moved here to Texas, after a beautiful wedding ceremony amidst the brilliantly colored Autumn leaves, for which the region is famous, and then a honeymoon on a two-week Mediterranean cruise where we visited Dobrovnik, Croatia, Venice, Naples, Rome, and Pisa Italy, Paris (before the cruise) France, Monte Carlo, Monaco, Athens, Greece, and Santorini Island, Greece. It was a whirlwind cruise and we had many adventures which would take too much time to tell and would fill up considerably more space than you’d like on this forum. I really do love to travel and wish I could do more.
My best friend from childhood school days now lives in the U.K. She and her British husband are planning to sell their home and move to northern England, near Scotland. We had lost touch for awhile and neither one of us knew that we had both gotten married. Now she is trying to find a way for my husband and me to move to the U.K. I confess I would love that, though I do not think my husband would enjoy the weather. In Texas, it is hot most of the time. In the summer, temperatures can reach over 100 degrees Fahrenheit. Austin is not on the coast but the weather is still humid much of the time. I had lived in the northeast, in Massachusetts, for many years and had gotten used to four distinct seasons and a winter with real snow. We have never had snow here in the three years that I have lived here.
I still would like to become an English teacher. I still teach music, mostly piano and guitar lessons, and I do research and write articles for an organization that produces materials written for people who help those who have mental illnesses and for the people who have those illnesses. I enjoy writing and am always trying to improve my writing skills so that I can more clearly and coherently communicate with people from all cultures and places who wish to communicate in English. I would still enjoy teaching English and perhaps someday I will have the time and financial resources to return to school for a graduate degree in that field.
I would be happy to be corrected when I make grammatical or syntax errors or even spelling mistakes. It would probably surprise many of you non-native speakers, but many Americans are mediocre or poor spellers and, I fear, have little motivation to improve if they depend upon their spell checkers on their computers. Spell checkers, while sometimes helpful, do not consider the context in which the words are written. Therefore, if someone writes the word “too” but means to write the word “to”, the spell checking program will not recognize the mistake. This can make it terribly confusing for a new English learner who reads something containing such mistakes. So, I have learned to beware and while I may at times use a spell checker, I know I must proofread the words myself if I am to ensure the greatest possible accuracy if, of course, I can spell the words correctly!
In closing, I thank all of you for reading this post. It has become longer than I planned. I am not a very competent computer user and I found myself getting frustrated every time I tried to register and log into these forums. I am still not sure what was wrong but obviously I finally managed to succeed.
I hope to exchange posts with many people. I love to learn about people everywhere, particularly those in other countries. I am also curious to know if there are any other blind people on these forums. I am totally blind and have been since birth. I was a premature baby, born three-and-a-half months before my mother’s due date and I weighed only a pound and a half, not even one kilogram! My parents were told that I would never grow up, that if I did not die I would never be able to walk or talk or learn. My eyes did not develop so I have never been able to see. For me then, language has become even more important.
I am sorry too that I am not able to reproduce the graphical emoticons which are so popular with computer users today. For me, I depend a great deal on tone of voice and other verbal cues to enhance my communication with someone in person or over the telephone. In one of the volunteer jobs I do, I am an interviewer and I do the interviewing using the telephone. I rarely if ever tell the person talking with me that I am blind because it does not make a difference and does not affect the performance of that job. But, since I can not use the graphics and will not understand them if someone uses them in a message to me, I felt that I needed to provide the explanation.
When blind people communicate using the computer, we often use special software which converts printed words into synthesized speech. That means that I can “hear” what I am typing and what I “read” on the screen. But I am used to communicating with all kinds of people, those who can see, those who see only a little and those who see nothing, in the physical sense. So it is not necessary to censor what you write. For instance, I might say, “I saw a really good movie the other day.” when talking to a friend. I don’t say, “I heard a good movie the other day”. Technically, that sentence would be true. But every blind or visually impaired person I know uses visual words in expressions like “I watched the Olympics.” and similar expressions. So don’t worry about changing what you say because I am blind. I may not see a smile, but I hear it in the tone of voice. I hear it when someone is gritting there teeth and speaking in controlled anger. I know when to begin singing in a choir because I hear those around me breathing. When I teach children or teenagers in a class, as I sometimes do in music classes, I can tell by the voices who is whispering to a friend and, if I have students sitting in the same seats, I know who is moving around, fidgeting, sometimes even who is passing notes or kicking each other under the table.
I do not currently have a Skype account, though I may get one soon. If I do, I can chat with others who use Skype. Then I could help with speaking English to those who are learning. As it is, I will be happy to respond to any messages written to me here on the forum.