Miguel Derett - CP #5

November 20th, 2018. 

            For this conversation meeting I met with Randy and a few of his friends. This conversation partner meeting was different as there were others participating in the conversation. Also, our meeting took place entirely outside. For whatever reason, these two aspects made the conversation feel much more relaxed and casual. One final thing that made the conversation unique was that we decided to play a board game. We decided to play the game: “taboo.” In this game one person draws a card with a word on it. The cardholder must give keywords and phrases for the other plays to accurately guess what the original word was. The trick, however, is that the cardholder also has a list of words that he/she cannot say. I found this game fun to play, however, the true boon was that Randy and his friends were able to practice and also learn new vocabulary words while playing a fun game. One moment that stood out in particular was when one card read, "The Statue of Liberty.” The other players were certain that they knew the answer yet they kept repeating, “liberty statue.” This was interesting as most Spanish speakers use the format of (noun) of (noun). Meanwhile, English speakers more commonly use the format (noun) (noun). For example, Liberty Bell. It was peculiar that when speaking English, Randy and his other Spanish speaking friends were determined to use the “English format,” even if this time it seemed to be an exception. 

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