Guest Speaker at English School

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Ruta writing…. I was honored to be asked to be a guest speaker at a friend’s school that teaches English to adults. The class is taught by a private for-profit institution, catering to university students and young adults seeking to improve their conversational English skills. It was an eye-opening, amusing, fun experience.

During the first half of the class, the Ethiopian teacher taught the 5 classes of nouns (sorry - I can’t even name the 5 classes myself) and taught via a tongue twister. The class perfectly repeated faster and faster, “Mr Kantta can tie his tie. Why don’t untie an’ tie my tie like Mr Kantta tie.” Yes, it didn’t quite make sense to me either, but that seemed beside the point. The tongue twister was used to illustrate that Americans don’t say “and”; they say “an’”. The British say “and”. I totally confused people because they thought I was British because I pronounced my “and”. “Crystal!!” exclaimed the teacher. I learned in class that if you say “Crystal” in English that means that you understand. It is short for “crystal clear.”

The beauty of travel is to venture outside of your paradigm - the second half of the class was free format questions for me. In addition to standard questions, such as “What do you do? Where do you live? What did you study in school? How do you find Ethiopia?” I was amused by the refreshingly honest and open questions that you would not typically expect from an American audience. Examples,
- How old are you?
- What is your religion?
- Are you a big shot?
- Why are you here?
- Are you HIV positive?
- Do you think that you are beautiful?
- Do you have a lover (although, in fairness, I think she meant to say husband)?

Admittedly I became a bit flustered answering these questions appropriately, but I tried to be as honest and complete as possible. I enjoyed the students’ enthusiasm and curiosity. I look forward to another guest appearance!

Apologies - I forgot to bring my camera to class and thus have no pictures directly from the class.

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