Miss Broiles
when I came back to this country, I "knew English". that is, I spoke English with my parents down in Brasil, and no one corrected me. when we studied English as a foreign language in school, I excelled. when I landed in Miami, no one could understand me. maybe because they had more important things to do. if I remember correctly, we landed and there was a flurry of activity, people identifying us and us collecting our baggage, and then my little sister and I were in the back seat of a car with two strangers in the front seats. we drove and drove and drove. the people in the front seats talked to each other, but I could barely hear them and they only every once in a while asked if we were all right. as I recall, a nod was the safest answer. eventually we arrived in St. Louis, and it turned out the strangers were an aunt and uncle, and they had kids I was supposed to know since we were cousins. I think we lasted there about five months, but we were more trouble than my aunt and uncle had bargained for, so we went to Perryton, Texas, where a different aunt and uncle took care of us for my first semester of the sixth grade, I think. (this morning I think that. catch me on another morning and I think we were with my aunt and uncle in Perryton for a full school year. it was a very confusing time. my parents came to get us, and the four of us went to collect my little brothers, and the six of us went to live in Clovis, New Mexico. that's where I discovered the Mexican kids could understand me. if I remember correctly, they helped me learn to speak something closer to American. (I believe I landed in Miami 'speaking English' by thinking what I wanted to say in Portuguese, then translating that to English, word by word, but pronouncing the English words as if they were Portuguese.) by luck or kindness, I was put in Miss Broiles' seventh grade English class and she almost immediately put me in her after-hours remedial English class. oh bless her, bless her, bless her, bless her, bless her! I entered her remedial class not knowing one part of speech, and left knowing eight. I entered not knowing how to conjugate a verb in English, and left knowing so many my head had swollen two sizes. I learned vocabulary and spelling and pronunciation. I learned to diagram a sentence, and still can. I learned to read in front of the class without her correcting my pronunciation or my inflection. in one short intense school year, I learned English - if English were spelling and grammar and pronunciation. that is, I left her remedial English class speaking written English as it shows up in text books. that is not a complaint. I bless her every time I think of her. She was a little (five feet tall, I think) old lady with a stiff leg who loved English, and did her best to make every child who came within her grasp leave knowing English, formal English. it wasn't her fault that there is a whole other language that we don't acknowledge - spoken English. or that there are actually at least two other languages, spoken English for males, and spoken English for females. spoken English, male or female, relies on idioms. I don't know if Miss Broiles would have fainted at the idea of peppering one's writing with phrases that meant nothing like what they appear to mean. I think I've never learned to use them, and always hear or read them with suspicion. but anyway, bless Miss Broiles! bless her remedial English class. It was just what a foreigner who was supposed to be a native needed.
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