Tuesday, September 23, 2008

Smart Alecs

Today I had my smaller class, it turns out it was only 5 people, there may be a 6th person who just was absent today. I was hoping that there English would be good enough that I could just talk with them instead of trying to do a series of games and such. But I learned pretty quickly that that wasn't the case. One of the girls, and all 5 are girls, spoke pretty good English but the others were not nearly on her level. 2 Of the others could speak OK when they wanted to but they didn't really want to much. The final 2 just basically kept talking in Chinese the whole time and getting them to say anything in English, even when they could, was like pulling teeth. One girls would keep getting the girl who spoke the best English to translate for her and didn't want to really try to talk in English. They were also a bit of smart alecs. We were playing hangman a little, which my other classes enjoyed, and they just at one point said that they were bored and want to move on. I was trying to explain 20 questions to them when one simply said that they didn't want to play. My options are kind of limited though since I can't really just chat with them and they don't want to do a lot of my activities. The class is also really long at 3 hours instead of the usual 2. They are supposed to go to England to study Business in like 8 months and one said that they were worried about it. Well I'm worried to there English is no where near good enough to take courses in English only. One of them can speak pretty well but I had to stop and rephrase and define words way to much with her also to think she could do well in a University level class taught only in English. I asked if there were any other students who had done this before they could ask for advice and they said that they were the first ones. Right now I feel like it's going to be a disaster. I'm also dreading having these students for 6 hours a week, but that's a whole othet story. I just don't know what to do with them. I can teach them some things about England and get them to talk in English but they're just not going to be able to do anything like what it seems is expected of them.

2 comments:

Mom said...

This might be where you have to really crack down. What about having them memorize some easy poetry?

Anonymous said...

Not that I'm comparing your students to seven year-olds, but I can completely relate to the feeling of "pulling teeth" from teaching Hebrew school last year! Good work on the saran wrap ball! I would love to sit in on a class

-Joanna