Wife of Guatemalan Spanish speaker in Michigan

[Emmasma]

Hi
I am aproud mother and the wife of a proud Guatemalan man. We live in Michigan and have a decent life. I have one small problem. He speaks very little English and I cant get him to take classes. If I bother him about it he is insulted. It would improve our family life, his job, and he would be able to talk to my family if he would only put in some effort. I am really looking for ideas on how to encourage my proud, stubborn husband to learn English. He agrees that he should, just has other priorities (working overtime).

This is where I need help. He does not use the internet, but he loves getting paper mail. Are there any ESL mailing lists That I can put his name on? Free catalogs of English learning schools, courses, cheap monthly mailings, exc. preferably things in spanish, but English OK too.

[Yankee]

Welcome to the forum, emmasma

You could start by putting your husband on the mailing list for Alan's e-mail newsletter and printing it out when it arrives:
http://www.english-test.net/newsletter/#2007

[Emmasma]

Yes, but he gets stubborn when I suggest stuff to him. If it comes in the mailbox, and I have nothing to do with it, thats what I'm looking for.

[Jamie (K)]

Emmasma, I've had students who are like your husband. He will probably not learn English until he is more embarrassed by the consequences of not knowing English than he is by learning the language. As an example, I can cite one student of mine who never cooperated in the English lessons his company paid for. For more than two years he wasted my time, because he was too embarrassed to work on exercises and do other activities with me. Then his bosses started remarking on his bad English, and when he realized it was affecting his career, he started to learn. His embarrassment outside the lessons became worse than the embarrassment inside the lessons, and he started to cooperate.

If you feel your husband's English is hurting the family in some concrete way, such as financially or in the lives of your children somehow, you need to let him know that. Whatever you can do to make the embarrassment of having bad English worse than the embarrassment of learning English will help him get started. This is an ugly solution, but I have seen it work.

Also, if he's that proud and worried about his dignity, he's going to have a lot of trouble learning English well, because he'll be afraid to give up enough control to learn new language habits. This is another thing I've seen again and again, but it's for a different post.

[Gq5974]

I know that, Acutally, most people is very difficult to teach their famliy.;;

For example, I have teached my brother for two years, because he did not have "conception of all about math"
So, I'm sad but I teached and teached.. also I was eager to all studying of my brother.
But very very difficult. I tired and so was my brother.
sometimes we had fighted//

Althogh my brother's result of University admission, I thnk that this experiences were sad.
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VERITAS LUXMEA !!