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I study languages.

Monday, May 23, 2011

Presentation.

I am frustrated and on the brink of tears. Why can't an oral presentation ever go well?

This morning I had to give a speech in my best fusHa Arabic about volunteering in a Palestinian hospital. Worse yet, I had to be filmed by the National Middle East Language Resource Center. It wasn't pretty. I forgot words from my script and paused for inordinate periods of time, trying desperately to make myself recall any coherent sentence. I panicked and couldn't keep my syntax straight. And when I finally got back to my seat I slumped down and had to keep myself from running out of the room or bursting into tears.

DEAR WORLD, PLEASE DO NOT MAKE ME DO THINGS LIKE THIS.
Grading me on the way I speak--in any language--only hurts my feelings. Don't kick me when I'm already down. It has taken me twenty years of conscious, difficult work to be able to control my speech in English, and I have already had to realize that in Arabic I will have to be patient for such skills. I'm grateful for the practice. But evaluating the mistakes of which I am already so painfully conscious in a way that could potentially injure my GPA just makes me sad.

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