sv evi

As a language teacher, we evaluate our students on the ACTFL Scale of Proficiency which goes from Novice to Distinguished. As a high school teacher, my students were generally in the range of Novice-Advanced Low. Proficiency means what tasks the student can perform, or what the student can do in the language.

Since we have been here, I’ve been impressed by Riki’s Spanish skills—he has definitely navigated some Advanced Level Tasks. Advanced Level speakers can handle a transaction with a complication, like lost luggage, or needing to return merchandise.

One morning we went to the this big Target like store, Coral, in order to buy a king size mattress and a bike for me (Riki, Luz, and I). The bikes were partway assembled—brakes not attached, tires flat, etc. But you had to just buy them as is, and take them to a bike mechanic to get them tuned up, but hope nothing major was broken.

The mattresses were up high, and the employee told me she would only take it down if I was going to buy it. I said, well we have to lie on it before we are going to buy it. She relented.

We paid for our things and when they wheeled the purple bike out to us, Riki noticed the derailed was broken. It was almost time to go pick up the kids, so Luz and I took the mattress home in a small pickup truck, and we left Riki to deal with returning the bike and choosing a different one. He was successful! A little bit bumpy as they explained that the new bike was 15 dollars cheaper, but they couldn’t credit his credit card, instead he had to go choose $15 of merchandise, now.

He has also inquired at banks about opening an account, dropped off Jade’s stool sample at the lab, and got antibiotics for Jade at the pharmacy without a prescription.

Kudos to Riki for being willing to raise his kids in Spanish, although he has never formally studied Spanish! He lived on Guava Jelly in Mexico for 18 months and had a Mexican girlfriend…that helps. The best things about Riki’s Spanish are that he is completely unafraid to speak and he rocks at circumlocution (talking around a word you don’t know).