On Tuesday March 8th, I met with Adil Adolsari for the second time. This meeting, though, was much different than the last. To start, I was much less nervous. In fact, I was excited, even anxious to meet him. I knew the awkward small talk part of these meetings would be gone, allowing us to get to know each other better. From the very start of the meeting, we started to get to know each other on a personal level, talking about our struggles, our past achievements, and our future goals.
After arriving a few minutes late, I could tell Adil was disheveled and worried about something. I was hesitant, at first, to ask him what was wrong, but he shortly informed me why he was anxious and tense. He had the TOEFL test the next day. TOEFL stands for Test of English as a Foreign Language. For Adil, the test is very hard, especially the section testing reading comprehension. In this section, students must read a passage and then answer questions about the passage. Adil said that he often times doesn’t even understand the passages, making it nearly impossible for him to answer the questions. He admitted the English language is very challenging for him. However, the challenging part is not the writing, but, rather, it is listening and understanding different words and phrases. For an example, he cited the confusion over can and can’t. He simply can’t understand people when they say can or can’t because the “t” is not pronounced. He, then, talked about phrases that made no sense to him, such “sick as a dog” or “is there a frog in your throat?” He, also, asked me what different words meant and how to use words in a sentence.
Listening to him talk about his struggles made me think about how hard the English language really is and how being tested is very challenging. From my experience taking French, I understand how reading a passage in another language is difficult. I remember reading passages and having no idea what was being said or what the message was. However, I didn’t have great control over the French language. Adil, though, seems like he understands the language fairly well. The English language has very tricky parts for someone who speaks it as a second language. Adil noted a variety of words that have different meanings, even though they sound the same. Because of this, I understand how hard these passages are and how deciphering what people are saying is difficult. As a person who speaks Englsih as a first language, I even have a hard time understanding passages and what people are saying. I can why he wishes that people would use pronunciation correctly and be more clear when they are talking.
The next part of our conversation consisted of Adil showing me what he did in his past job in Saudi Arabia. His work was fascinating. He made designs, consisting of very small pieces of what could be described as tile, seen in hotels and offices. His work was intricate and creative. He was most proud of his work in the house of a person of nobility. I never understand who this person was because of the language barrier and the structure of the Saudi Arabia society, even though he tried to explain it to me multiple times. He showed me many pictures of his work and explained the difficulties that came with the job. He was very proud and loved what he did.
I asked him why he quit and left for America, and he responded by telling me his dream for the future. He left Saudi Arabia and his job because he wanted to expand on what he has done. His dad and the other 80 workers employed at his former company are still running his business, but the line of work was no longer fit for him. He wanted to expand on his marketing skills and produce goods in America. He wants to society to no longer rely on the cheap labor in countries such as Saudi Arabia, believing that goods made there are low quality. Adil thinks that if more goods are produced in America that people from all over the world will buy them because of the higher quality. He isn’t sure what goods he wants to produce. He, though, believes that with effective marketing that these products will be bought around the world because it has America written on it.
Because of the language barrier, I wasn’t able to completely understand his plan or his beliefs, but the description just stated was my best effort to describe what he was saying. Although his dream is very broad when he told it to me, Adil seemed very passionate. I could tell that he knew exactly what he wanted to do and how he wanted to do it. His excitement about his dream was overwhelming at times. I look forward to meet with him next time to better understand his dream and how he did on the TOEFL exame.
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