Conversational #4

After another long struggle to meet with my conversation partner, we finally found time to meet. Hussain has steadily seemed more stressed and busy lately, and I took a moment to think about why. I ran through a little checklist in my head and realized that out of all our meetings, I still haven’t asked him about classes, at least beyond the superficial conversation starter “how are classes going?” I figured it would be worth a shot to at least ask him. Turns out I hit the nail on the head.

Hussain’s been under a lot of pressure lately to keep his scholarship, something that I couldn’t’ believe considering he seemed like a studying machine. He explained that he received a scholarship from his government to study here in the states and with that comes extremely strict guidelines. To remain eligible for his scholarship, he has some sort of academic measurement (I asked if it was GPA but I couldn’t explain it to him well enough) that dictates whether the government will reissue his funding. Unfortunately, he is taking really advanced mathematic courses that require word problem solving skills. That means that even if he knows how to do a problem, he often has trouble understanding what the problem is asking for.

I asked if he had talked to his teacher and he said he had, but I couldn’t help but feel sorry for the guy. It almost felt unfair that he was given less of a chance to succeed simply because of his native language. I figured that mathematics would be an easier major to step into since a lot of it is working with numbers, but I hadn’t thought about how vocabulary and word skills are important too.

 He then proceeded to show me his vocabulary book that he uses in his language course. I took one glance at it and couldn’t believe that they were making them learn these kinds of words. Many of them were words only an experienced reader would know (this means that very few Americans would know them) and a scant few would be useful in his math problems. I resisted the urge to say that so bluntly however, as I didn’t want to devalue his hard work. He had clearly thumbed through the book multiple times and had marked it up in some kind study system.

We then spent the next few minutes discussing our respective languages. I went over a brief history of England with him in order to explain why English was so difficult and confusing. For the most part I think he understood what I was saying (although I may have lost him when I mentioned social classes and the Saxons). He then went on to explain a little of his language. He explained that there are an amazing amount of variations in Arabic dialects (He explained it as the difference between American and British language). These variations can make it complicated at times to communicate since these dialects are based on geography and since Saudi Arabia is so large.