Gameday Magazine August

ly skill that some looking to improve

She says there is often a misconcep- tion that she needs to know all of the languages that her students do. “You don’t have to speak another language to teach English,” she said. “I just need to know enough about the language to anticipate what problems students are going to have in speaking English.” Examples of these hurdles are speech patterns which differ from one lan- guage to another. Wade also is quick to point out that the players she works with are in a unique setting. “They are really in a sub-culture, which is their team culture,” she said. “The ways that they are engaging is often not in English. Many of them live with non-English speakers, so they may be speaking Spanish on the field and at home.” “It’s hard, but I try to speak English when I’m around the team because when I go home I’m not speaking Eng- lish,” Tapia said. In addition to the videos that Wade provides her students, Chu has found another way to help himself work on his English when he is away from the field: Netflix. “I’m so excited to speak English and learn English that I downloaded Netflix to watch movies in English,” he said. “Then, if I don’t know what they’re saying I can always turn on the subtitles which helps me understand much faster.” Wade says that the players she works with are very motivated to learn Eng- lish, in part because there is evidence that proficiency in English is correlated to success at the Major League level.

She also has been especially impressed with the lengths that the Indians organization has gone to provide their players with English education. “I so appreciate the organization,” she said. “Every encounter that I have had with a member of the organization has been positive, has been professional, and I sincerely believe that they want to help the guys in multiple ways; not just succeed in the big leagues but succeed in life, and that’s encouraging to be a part of an organization that is really serving people well.”