People and Places - Derek 1 - Laveen, Arizona
February 19th, 2007
Download audio file (laveen.mp3)
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Aaron: Where are you from?
Derek: I’m from Laveen, Arizona.
Aaron: Where is Laveen?
Derek: Laveen is Southwest of Phoenix.
Aaron: Southwest of Phoenix.
Derek: Phoenix is the capital of Arizona.
Aaron: Yeah? And so how would you describe the place where you grew up?
Derek: It’s a small farm town. It’s been around since probably like the 1850s. It was a trading place a long time ago; early settlers used to go there. And now it’s a farming town. Now it’s changing a lot though, but I don’t live there anymore. But when I was there it was still a farming town.
Aaron: Wow! And so you grew up on a farm?
Derek: We…I don’t think it was a farm; it was actually a ranch. We didn’t grow vegetables or any kind of produce or anything like that. We had cows, we had sheep, we had horses, some chickens.
Aaron: Um-hm.
Derek: We didn’t…we never had a pig, but we had a lot of animals.
Aaron: Wow! And I know that in the Southwest it’s - especially Arizona - it’s famous for the Native American populations there, and I’m wondering if you had much contact with Native Americans living in Arizona?
Derek: That’s right. Actually Laveen, Arizona is in the Southwest corner, as I mentioned before, and it’s very near the Indian reservation. So when I went to school, we had a lot of Indian students who went to our school. We did call them ‘Indian’ students and a lot of them still refer to themselves as ‘Indians’.
Aaron: As ‘Indians’.
Derek: But now the term a lot of times people use is ‘Native American‘, but even on the bus - it was an Indian bus - and yes, there were a lot of….a lot of them.
Aaron: Oh, how about that. And also, Arizona is close to the Mexican border. Is there a significant population of Mexicans living in Arizona?
Derek: There are a lot of Mexicans in Arizona. In fact, my mother is Mexican-American, but she’s from Texas, actually. Um, but I grew up around a lot of Mexicans and a lot of times I wasn’t accepted by them because I was also white, because my father was German and uh….yeah.
Here are some questions about the text.
1. Where is Derek from?
2. Where is Laveen?
3. Where is Arizona?
4. Is Derek from a big city?
5. Does he still live in his hometown?
6. What is Arizona famous for?
7. What term do a lot of people use for “Indian” now?
8. Which national border is Arizona close to?
9. Is there a significant population of Mexicans in Arizona?
10. Are there a lot of Mexicans in Texas?
11. Is Derek’s mother German?
12. Is his father Mexican?
All of those questions were in present simple tense. Here are the answers.
1. Derek is from Laveen, Arizona.
2. Laveen is in Arizona.
3. The text does not say, but Arizona is in the U.S.
4. No, he is not. He is from a ranch outside a farming town.
5. No, he doesn’t. He doesn’t live there any more.
6. Arizona is famous for its native populations.
7. Nowadays a lot of people use the term, “Native American”.
8. Arizona is close to the Mexican border.
9. Yes, there is. There are a lot of Mexicans in that State.
10. The text does not say, but there are. It is next to Mexico.
11. No, she is not. She is Mexican-American.
12. No, he is not. He is German.