December 3, 2013
The last class has shown itself! I really wasn’t
expecting a lot of people to show up since it was the last class but to my surprise
we had the largest class ever. A total of eleven people came to the
conversation hour. Since it was the final class we decided to use one subject
and center our activities on that. Last class one of our students expressed her
want of knowing more idioms and their meanings so we decided to just use that
as the lesson for our last class. First we talked about what idioms were and
how they are used. We had each one read one from the many handouts we gave them
and discussed the meaning behind them. In order for them to have a deeper
understanding we split them up into various groups so they could discuss new
ones and give their opinion on what they might think each one is to allow room
for intelligible input. Excited discussions broke out through the groups so I believe
they were enjoying themselves. Whenever a student had a question about a
particular word they didn’t understand they would ask for help from each other
which I thought was really good since they were doing this while speaking in English,
allowing for great conversation. Improvements have been made! Before when they
had questions they would ask each other in Spanish. After they spent time on
that activity we told them to now come up with situations in which you would
use those phrases and afterwards we would come back and share.
The overall class went really well, the environment was
nice and everyone was really interested in the lesson. Some things I noticed
from not only this class but from the others as well is that as a teacher
giving instructions or help to language learning students can be really tricky.
Personally, I am used to explaining some things in an ‘extravagant’ way so I noticed
that with the students I usually get I have to explain in a simpler form. This
is not to say that they aren’t advanced it’s just that they aren’t used to the way
Americans explain things or the way we ‘twist words’ to give meaning. I can definitely tell
as I observed my regular students that they have made some progress when
speaking English conversationally. One our students used to struggle to get
words out in the beginning but now they seem to come much easier. It does a
teachers heart good!
Shaunice Ivana Walters
It's great to hear that improvements among your students are noticeable ! I understand what you mean by having to explain things in a more simple way , it was difficult for us at first as well, but considering we had beginners, we had to learn how to express ourselves in simpler terms quickly. The fact that your students now ask each other questions in English is a good sign , great job !
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