Atef 2010:4

Atef is 22 years old and comes from a village from outside of Minya – one of the cities along the Nile in Upper Egypt. Atef is among the hardest working and most eager to learn English students I’ve taught in my four years. He’s in Level 1, which means that his English skills are pretty minimal. But Atef wants to learn, he wants to understand and he’s not afraid to try even though what comes out of his mouth doesn’t always make sense. One night last week I sat with Atef and another student from Level 1 at dinner. Rather than making small talk, they spent most of the meal asking me to explain possessive pronouns and help them learn correct usage. When I came to class on Saturday, Atef said he’d been up until 1 am. I was preparing to scold him for staying up so late with his friends when he told me he had been in his room studying English vocabulary.

Atef’s gift for learning English is that he’s gregarious and his desire to connect and communicate with people is greater than his desire to be correct. So he’s never intimidated by a quizzical look from a teacher or discouraged by a sentence that is corrected. On Friday he was responsible for prayer at the meals. Rather than some of his classmates who will stumble to come up with brief prayers on the spot, Atef arrived at every meal with a prayer that he had written, reviewed with a teacher and practiced out loud. On Friday he will serve as a deacon in the daily mass. At dinner on Sunday night he asked me to help him practice his pronunciation.

I’m not sure I’ve ever worked as hard to learn anything in my life as Atef is working to learn English. He may never be the best English speaker in the seminary, but I doubt I’ll ever find a student more hard working or eager to learn.