ESL Blogs

The great adventure happened one warm  evening in the central square of Budapest called Blaha Lujza Square. I was standing at the bus stop when a foreigner turned to me and asked one of the most frequent questions, 'Excuse me, do you speak English?'

I wasn't a beginner that time. First I had learnt English by myself for a year by the help of a self-teaching book and the CDs belonging to it. I had a pretty good vocabulary and a basic grammar kowledge. Finishing my one-year-program I admitted a course to get the speaking skills because earlier I hadn't had a partner to speak to.

It was a really good course with 6 young people who had a lot in common and who wanted to speak about a lot of topics that we were really interested in. Our teacher had the sense of teaching. She didn't let us speak in Hungarian, we were forced to express ourselves in English only. So at first we suffered a lot with expressing our thoughts. We were excited and often irritated but after some weeks our talks and discussions started to be more fluent and we spoke English without being embarrassed.

I believed that I was already able to speak English when a handsome young man, who seemed mainly African, asked me a simple question, 'Excuse me, do you speak English?' It was the first time for me to be asked by a foreigner and there was no interpreter nearby. The only answer I could give him was shaking my head. I didn't say a word.

I had a prick of coscience because I hadn't helped a poor foreigner in my native city although he might have wanted to ask the direction or the number of the right bus. I suffered also from my failiure.

The bus arrived at the stop and both me and the young man got on. He sat next to me and tried again. This time I was prepared to utter some English words and at last I told him where to get off to find his way. Then he told me that he had come to Budapest from Benin to study engineering and started a conversation. I understood everything and I chatted with him 'like a linguist' for a quarter of an hour.

That was the breakthrough for me during my English studies. Since that day I have really been able to speak English. It was much more difficult than taking an intermediate level exam. But with some struggle I succeeded. The Benin boy was a good teacher.