Being able to participate with SWAP has allowed me to remember how difficult it is to learn English as a second language at an older age. Unlike my SWAP person, I was able to learn English in school and that has made all the difference in my life.
Learning English at a much older age becomes very difficult. Not only are the English vowels difficult to pronounce, but the alphabet of the native tongue may also be very different. For example, when going through the English alphabet with my SWAP person, I noticed how the Spanish alphabet has more letters in the alphabet and how confusing the 'e' and 'i' differentiation (into English from Spanish) is. When certain letters are also put together, the pronunciation of many letters differ: something that was very difficult to explain without confusing my person even more.
Aside from the difficult process of shaping one's mouth into the English form, I more importantly realized the linguistic insecurities that are more common in older people who are non-native English speakers. As a non-native English speaker myself, but having learned English at an earlier stage, I have had certain insecurities with my language control, but the one that my person showed was higher than my own. My SWAP person, who is a female, showed me how linguistic insecurities may prevent many people from fully learning English. Although she knew a lot of English, her linguistic insecurity seemed to prevent her from speaking English to others or offering her answers, in English, too quickly. She showed 'shyness' in using English. She did not volunteer to speak in it, she had to be asked to. This of course did not mean that she was unwilling to have a conversation in English, but that she felt very uncomfortable having a conversation in English.
What I do regret from the program, was not being able to find a way to show my student that she should not be ashamed of her English and that if she continues to practice she will become more comfortable in the language. I attempted to show her that she knew a great amount of English, but there was always that insecurity with her language that many times prevented her from celebrating her capabilities in English.
