I interviewed 60 year old Elida Cammer, a native of Sao Paulo, Brazil, at her home Sunday afternoon. She is someone who attends the English Cafe regularly on Wednesday evenings at WR for the past months. She has lived in the U.S. with her second husband (an American who lived in Brazil for 30 years) for 10 years. She is well-known and outspoken in the class. Ernesto, another of my interview participant, spoke highly of her English speaking ability.
She has been employed as a full-time customer service representative for Coventry Health Insurance for three years. She took the job with the intent of learning more English and to get away from any more physical labor which was affecting her injured shoulder.
Elida impresses me as someone who is definitely a lifelong learner. She has attempted several higher ed. programs in the S FL area, and none have worked out yet due to her lack of adequate fluency in English. She tried a master's program in psychology for Spanish-speakers at Nova (since she is a former psychologist in her native country of Brazil), but had to drop out b/c the program dropped their ESL classes that they had promised her. She also could not complete a physical therapy assistant program she started at Broward College a few years back (She was motivated to start this program b/c of her own experiences in physical therapy over her shoulder injury).
What motivates her to attend our class?
The small class size; the opp. for feedback with her pronunciation and accent. The comaraderie of her fellow ELLs (she mentioned David, a 25 year old Brazilian ELL in her class, and I also observed her interaction with him in class) as well as her caring and supportive teachers, the latter which is unstated but implied.
What does she like about the E.C. class?
The two teachers she has give her and the class lots of practice with conversation and they provide plenty of pronunciation feedback and correction.
What supports her learning?
Checking out audio biographies on Paul Newman and music by Natalie Cole. She listened to Natalie Cole over and over and learned the lyrics to most of her songs. Then she attended her concert at the Bank Atlantic Center and thoroughly enjoyed it. Her teachers are very good and she likes how they faciliate discussions on the history of regional dialects in this country for example. She referred to her teacher at McFatter who was excellent at bringing in brief histories on, say, pizza, the American Indian tribes, and other American cultural & historical phenomena.
What barriers to learning does she experience?
She says that her job has gotten in the way before. Her boss will not allow her to leave early from work in the evenings to attend more classes, or to teach Portuguese classes at the community night school.
Her student loans from her unactualized master's degree from Nova are preventing her from enrolling anywhere else for the moment.
Her English proficiency is coming along better than she acknowledges, but she is still not quite there in terms of readiness to acquire an American Master's degree.
She explains her difficulty understanding other American co-workers who speak in African American English and Haitian Creole dialects.
What would she like to change about the E.C?
Offer more night classes at the library (except that the library has cut back their evening hours).
Offer more interesting articles to read, e.g., NOT depressing newspaper articles.
What are some additional reasons she has for attending the library's E.C.?
She likes that there are no attendance requirements, unlike McFatter which only allows two absences (at least this was true when she attended) before dropping them from class. I did call the coordinator there and found that, in fact, now students cannot miss more than six consecutive classes.
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