Meeting Ibrahim

 My first meeting with my conversation partner was eye-opening because I hadn’t done anything like it before. My partner’s name is Ibrahim and he is from Saudi Arabia. We met at Yo by campus for our first meeting because, as Ibrahim put it, “it too hot.” I was immediately surprised to find out that he was not yet a college student but was trying to learn English fluently before moving off in the spring of 2012 to go to college. Also to my surprise, although he would not agree with me I’m sure, he spoke English well for the little amount of time he had spent in the United States. With fairly little difficulty, though I admit I have practice with understanding accents, I was able to understand most of what he told me and only had to ask him to repeat himself a few times.

Ibrahim lives near campus with his sister who is attending graduate school part-time at University of North Texas’s Dallas campus. He moved to the U.S. last year to live with his sister in Tennessee and only recently moved to Texas over the summer. He said that it was much easier to understand Texans because they spoke much slower and he had learned more in the little time since he had moved to Texas than he ever had in Tennessee. After the initial introductions, one of the first things he said to me was, “My mom tried to teach me English when I was little, but I told her ‘what will I ever need to know it for’ and refused to learn. Now I wish I would have learned when I was young.”

Although we had talked a little about it in class, I was still slightly caught off guard that he spoke so little English outside of his English classes. He told me that he never spoke English at home or with his parents, but only as a way to communicate with his classmates who spoke other languages as well. He also described to me his frustration as he tried to learn English while speaking to people on the phone or to anyone with a heavy accent. 

Ibrahim talked to me a little about school and his career track to be an accountant. He told me that he would really love to get into TCU but didn’t think he could do it because his English was still not good enough to do well on our standardized tests. He also expressed to me that although his parents expected him to go to school for accounting, he really wished to be a pilot and wanted to pursue that career plan instead. As he told me of the different schools he had applied to in the U.S., the conversation turned to travel and he was amazed that I had not been to many places in America. I had never been to the east coast and the shock was plain on his face as he realized that he had traveled more in the U.S. than I had. We spoke of sports and although I don’t play any, he shared with me his love of soccer and his new passion of taking up tennis. 

Speaking with Ibrahim was like talking on a whole new level. I found myself using my hands much more often to explain myself than I would have in normal conversation and I could see him processing what I was saying before he chose his words to respond. It was interesting to see what was important in our culture versus what is more important in his even after the first meeting. Because he is unsure of his English, Ibrahim does speak very softly and I can see this as a possible predicament in future meetings but I am excited to meet with him and get to know him more. I thoroughly enjoyed talking to him and I think that it will be interesting to see what he brings up to discuss in the future.