A haphazard chronicle of my inevitable misadventures during a year in Vietnam and points east.

p.s. I'll be pitifully grateful if you send me email during my exile: TravelerKaty@hotmail.com

October 2002 November 2002 December 2002 January 2003 February 2003 March 2003 April 2003 May 2003 June 2003 July 2003 August 2003 September 2003 October 2003 November 2003 February 2006 March 2006 May 2006

 
My Wednesday morning class is going to be a real struggle. The students are adults in the "elementary" program, meaning that regardless of how much English they have had (and many have taken it for years), they tested low and have had just a couple of 8 week terms at my school. The upshot of this is that I have a class full of adults with very little English, who seem to have rarely heard English spoken, and who are very unenthusiastic about speaking. Very very quiet, with somewhat confused and/or disinterested looks on their faces every once in a while. This is in sharp contrast to my other classes, by the way, who are perfectly willing to chatter in English when prodded, regardless of their level of expertise.

I teach 2-hour classes with a 10-15 minute break in the middle. After the break, two students in this class had disappeared. This is a bad sign, right? So I discussed this with a couple people in the Teacher Room later. A British teacher laughed and said she always loses students, and a Vietnamese teacher assured me that many students will quit when the teacher requires them to actually speak. Excuse me? Isn't that the whole point they are taking the class? Anyway, I've decided not to worry about it, since all the other classes are going well. It's not like I can stop making them speak English in English conversation class.

© 2002 Katy Warren
posted by Katy at 3:05 AM