Burra Wrestling

This past Tuesday I ran into a brick wall…

            Class was proceeding as it normally does.  We were in our groups and working through our respective lessons from the workbooks.  I was once again asking my group of students if they had any questions about this particular exercise that we were working on.  While I was answering a student’s question, another student turned to her neighbor and began speaking in Spanish.  I finished answering the first question and then turned to the other student and asked what her question was.  She said it was nothing and after pressing her to no avail, we moved on.

            Later, the same student turned and asked her neighbor another question in Spanish.  I interrupted her and requested that she ask me her question in English.  She said something along the lines of “no, it’s okay.”  I told her to please go ahead and ask me her question and I would be happy to clarify or explain anything that she may not understand, but I wanted her to ask me in English.  She then replied, “no, I don’t need to practice speaking in English.” BOOM!

            It took me a second or two to recover from the crash.  I can’t believe this girlady (girl+lady), who has been coming to class very frequently for the entire school year told me that she didn’t need to practice speaking in English!  I think that most of the rest of the group was taken aback as well.  I asked her why she thinks that she does not need to practice, and she said that she gets enough practice at work (she is a hostess at a chain restaurant.)  My response was that you can never practice too much or too often, especially when it comes to learning a language, but she did not seem to agree.  Even some of the other students chimed in and told her that “practice makes perfect” and “of course you need to practice.”

            So that is pretty much where I left it.  What else can I say to convince her of the necessity of practicing speaking?

            Later that day, though, I had a strange thought (well, I always have strange thoughts, but this one was related to this problem.)  What if this is in some way like a “silent period” in which a learner is focused more on absorbing the information rather than trying to produce?  Is it really okay for me to let her just take notes and listen?