Espeakin’ Eenglees

Although the first few weeks as a home-based (black market) English teacher were on the stressful side, as I hunted high and low for potential students; I soon got into the swing of my new life and found it to be joyfully liberating.

I had placed a couple of adverts in the local Spanish-language newspaper, stuck notices in a few shop windows and liberally littered the streets with cheery bits of paper tucked under windscreen wipers, and very soon my little English ‘school’ took on a life of its own as the message zipped, word of mouth, through a community in which private English teachers turned out to be something of a rarity.

Within a little over a month I had myself a faithful band of students, and was often teaching for well over forty hours a week.

Four years had passed since I had (in typically unenthusiastic fashion) completed my TESOL course, so I was surprised to unearth a real interest in the mechanics of language learning. It was no doubt due to my own enjoyment of the process of acquiring Spanish, and in my naivety I hoped to inspire the same enthusiasm for the English language in my pupils.

Sadly that was rarely the case, but I plugged away at it never the less and met a variety of interesting characters in the meantime.

My first student was – ironically, given that I had ceased working at the language school to get away from the judgemental little blighters – a child.

Jesús was seven when I began teaching him, and he lived in my apartment building with his father Jesús, his mother Carmen and his sister Carmen.

He was a nice boy, if a little mischievous and more than a little unimpressed by the English language. He was joined for a short while by two young school friends, sisters, but they bullied the poor boy so unmercifully I was forced to put a stop to the shared lessons.

I suspect Jesús took away a pitiful amount of English from our lessons; but his mother felt that having the undivided attention of an adult, any adult, for two hours a week did great things for his general confidence, so we stuck it out and I became very fond of the little tyke.

Virginia was another of my long-term child students and without doubt my favourite. She was nine when she joined me; a slim girl with delicate features, long brown hair and glasses, who although being similarly uninterested in the English language, was extremely interested in pleasing her father by obtaining good marks.

So rather than continuing with frustrating attempts to light a little flame of linguistic curiosity, I instead resorted to coaching her, parrot fashion, through entire sections of English grammar. Her delight when she would turn up to a lesson the following week, proudly waving her exam results, made it all worth while.

My next young pupil was Esperanza.

Espe most certainly did not live up to her hopeful name: a twelve-year old who dressed as if for evenings along the rue Pigal, she spent every lesson trying to shock me with stories of cigarettes, alcohol and terrifyingly adult encounters with members of the opposite sex, even her own cousin. Quite often she would turn up to the class only ten minutes before it was due to end, knowing that having walked from school, her parents would have no idea at what time she actually arrived.

I even rang them once or twice, feigning concern that their young daughter hadn’t arrived (whilst knowing full well she would almost certainly be using the stolen time to smoke in the park with her friends) in the hope that they would invest in a little discipline, but to no avail. Both very busy – her mother was a full-time cleaner and her father a builder – I imagine they only sent Espe to English lessons to keep her out of their hair for a couple of hours.

The last youngster was fifteen-year old Fouad; another handful but for entirely different reasons.

Born to a Spanish mother and Lebanese father, Fouad was the product of an incredibly wealthy, if broken, home. He had been brought up in the sort of luxury that Espe could never even have dreamed of: his was a house full of servants, he had travelled all over the world from a very young age, enjoyed private schooling at the best academies and was already fluent in three languages.

The problem with Fouad was the unbelievable arrogance that often goes hand in hand with such privilege, and which I took serious issue with him bringing into my classroom. The bemused young man, more accustomed to being treated like a prince among boys, was subject to lecture after lecture on why being wealthy does not automatically make you superior to everyone else, before he eventually dropped his supercilious affectations and settled down to being just another student…

On the other end of the scale from Jesús and Virginia et al was Juanita, who despite boasting the name of a Latin American telenovela maid, was actually a sixty-five year old who hailed from one of Madrid’s “better” families (her words).

Having married an American engineer many years previously, she ended up spending most of her married life in Texas, after brief stints in Hong Kong and Mexico, but for whatever reason had never really got to grips with the English language.

Interestingly enough, Juanita was unimpressed by the Spain that greeted her on her return from those years abroad, and she spoke longingly to me about the glory of the Franco years – inconceivable to those of us who equate dictatorship with a slow and stragulatory death, but then I imagine it rather depends on which side of the political divide you find yourself (as well as how much the mistreatment, torture and/or murder of your fellow citizens bothers you).

Much of our time together was taken up with lamentations for her US-based computer-geek son, who, although once having been a mover/shaker type at Microsoft, made the tactical error of jumping ship just before the going got seriously good, and who had been struggling with his personal, professional and financial life ever since.

Adding to the already rather chaotic nature of the weekly conversation classes was the presence of Juanita’s two squeaky pugs: plump little treats that Strauss was hellbent on devouring.

Juanita wasn’t the only one of my adult students to use lesson time as a sort of therapy session; in fact I don’t think I would be far off in estimating that my new job consisted of no more than around 30% English teaching: the rest of the time being taken up with people’s problems, worries and general need to natter.

In Spanish.

Enrico the lovable Roman immigrant wanted to discuss all things Italian, his inexplicable love of bull-fighting, his idyllic childhood and the love/fear he felt for his ferocious Spanish girlfriend.

There was Alberto, who was cheating on his long-term fiancée with another woman, but who couldn’t decide which one he wanted to end up with – his fiancée knew him soooooooo well (obviously not that well, I thought) but his bit-on-the-side was a lot more uninhibited in bed and really enjoyed a bit of oral.

Oh the dilemma. I secretly hoped they would both kick him in the nuts and leave him rolling in agony in a public place, but eventually oral won out over familiarity, and the heartbroken ex-fiancée was left to bemoan her fate (and presumably also her technique).

Then there was Raúl, a man in his early fifties who owned an export company working with the Middle East, notably Iraq. He was the one who set me on a path to translation by waving away my concerns about my status as a total novice (because no, Dear Reader, mastering another language does not a translator make…) and thrusting document after document at me to transform from Spanish into English, and occasionally, with much reluctance on my part, back the other way (another big no no in the world of translation…).

As a side note: translating an Iraqi shipping contract for him one day, I was fascinated to read that all goods leaving that country came with the stipulation that they would not be sold to Israel.

Raúl, despite being a very entertaining and pleasant man suffered from that awful and debilitating condition: mywifedoesn’tunderstandme, treatable only by the eager ministrations of a younger model.

He soon discovered that this particular younger model wasn’t up for ministrating, but luckily took the rejection in good humour and continued to pay me for English lessons and translations, as well as bringing back interesting knick-knacks from Iraq (until the illegal embargo preceding the illegal invasion froze his Iraqi assets and brought his business to its knees) as well as teaching a besotted Strauss to offer his paw in return for treats.

Daniela from Ecuador was keener on discussing her plans for her wealthy Dutch lover than she was on tackling the finer points of English grammar. Tall, slim-but-voluptuous and with a face that could stop traffic even without the mega bosoms below it, Daniela was very aware of where her fortunes lay and was forever on the look-out for beauty tips, fashion advice and keep-fit techniques.

She had come to entirely the wrong place.

I must have heard it all over that two-year period – marital strife, employment woes, weight issues, family struggles, heartbreak and health horrors. None of it in English, none of it pertinent to English-learning, none of it covered by my TESOL course and finally I just gave up fighting it. It was the students’ money to spend, and if they wished to spend it on an hour of nattering, who was I to object?

I did eventually managed to find a batch of students only too happy to yak away in English about their problems for an hour or two a week.

Was I thrilled? Not really – they were supposed to be there to learn Spanish.

Oh well.