Teaching English
Part of my job at UC College is to teach classes in communicative English. But it's not like i have a class of my own-- the way it works is that teachers will request for me to come teach communicative English in their class once a week for an unspecified number of weeks. For the last two weeks, I've been doing about 3 classes per week, and have really been struggling and doubting myself.
Modesty aside for the moment, I'm a pretty good teacher-- in front of a class I'm charismatic, entertaining, engaging, and yes, I even manage to get students to learn. But these classes have really been a challenge for me, and the challenge is specifically this: Indian students WILL NOT speak in English in front of other Indians. They all know it; English is mandatory in schools from fourth standard (fourth grade) onward, and many schools are strictly English-language. But the students here are so shy and so afraid of being judged by their peers, that they simply do not speak English in class. When they come up and talk to me on an informal basis outside the classroom (see previous post), they speak in perfectly articulate English and manage to express themselves quite clearly. But getting them to speak in class is like pulling teeth-- harder, in fact. If you pull on a tooth hard enough for long enough, it will eventually budge; not so with these students! And when my plan for teaching them communicative English was to propose a topic of discussion, let the students talk on that topic for a while, and take the last quarter of the class to go over any recurring mistakes in English usage, their staunch refusal to talk proves to be a real hinderance to the learning process.
But I've accepted this as something that's not going to change overnight. So I'm re-evaluating my strategy and am now working on just making the students comfortable enough to talk; or on finding creative and subtle ways of forcing them to talk.
Regardless, my apparent failures in my first few classes really had me down and doubting myself. But I got a nice confidence boost today when the student government body on campus called a strike in the middle of an economics class i was teaching in. Unsure of what to do, I told the students that since I wasn't really sure what was going on or where I stood with regard to the reasons for the strike, I wasn't going to participate; but I also wouldn't stand in the way of anyone who wanted to join the strike and leave class. At this point the actual teacher came in and said that whenever a strike is called (this is apparently a fairly frequent thing) that's it for the day. Classes are cancelled and students either join the march or go home. But the students in this class all said "No, no, no, no. We really want to stay and finish this class!" The teacher was blown away and so was I. Maybe I haven't been doing such a bad job after all.
Incidentally, the strike was called to protest the prohibitively high fees for the self-financing courses the college offers. Most programs at UC College are heavily subsidised by the government so that students enrolled in these programs have to pay virtually nothing for their education. However, this is only true of the general liberal arts and sciences (and those of us with BA's in English know how far that will take you...). The more technical fields that guarantee a job and decent pay (computers, medical, engineering, etc) are all self-financing and are so unbelievably expensive that only the richest of the rich students can afford to take these classes. All of which amounts to making upward mobility for the poor students virtually, if not literally, impossible.
Part of my job at UC College is to teach classes in communicative English. But it's not like i have a class of my own-- the way it works is that teachers will request for me to come teach communicative English in their class once a week for an unspecified number of weeks. For the last two weeks, I've been doing about 3 classes per week, and have really been struggling and doubting myself.
Modesty aside for the moment, I'm a pretty good teacher-- in front of a class I'm charismatic, entertaining, engaging, and yes, I even manage to get students to learn. But these classes have really been a challenge for me, and the challenge is specifically this: Indian students WILL NOT speak in English in front of other Indians. They all know it; English is mandatory in schools from fourth standard (fourth grade) onward, and many schools are strictly English-language. But the students here are so shy and so afraid of being judged by their peers, that they simply do not speak English in class. When they come up and talk to me on an informal basis outside the classroom (see previous post), they speak in perfectly articulate English and manage to express themselves quite clearly. But getting them to speak in class is like pulling teeth-- harder, in fact. If you pull on a tooth hard enough for long enough, it will eventually budge; not so with these students! And when my plan for teaching them communicative English was to propose a topic of discussion, let the students talk on that topic for a while, and take the last quarter of the class to go over any recurring mistakes in English usage, their staunch refusal to talk proves to be a real hinderance to the learning process.
But I've accepted this as something that's not going to change overnight. So I'm re-evaluating my strategy and am now working on just making the students comfortable enough to talk; or on finding creative and subtle ways of forcing them to talk.
Regardless, my apparent failures in my first few classes really had me down and doubting myself. But I got a nice confidence boost today when the student government body on campus called a strike in the middle of an economics class i was teaching in. Unsure of what to do, I told the students that since I wasn't really sure what was going on or where I stood with regard to the reasons for the strike, I wasn't going to participate; but I also wouldn't stand in the way of anyone who wanted to join the strike and leave class. At this point the actual teacher came in and said that whenever a strike is called (this is apparently a fairly frequent thing) that's it for the day. Classes are cancelled and students either join the march or go home. But the students in this class all said "No, no, no, no. We really want to stay and finish this class!" The teacher was blown away and so was I. Maybe I haven't been doing such a bad job after all.
Incidentally, the strike was called to protest the prohibitively high fees for the self-financing courses the college offers. Most programs at UC College are heavily subsidised by the government so that students enrolled in these programs have to pay virtually nothing for their education. However, this is only true of the general liberal arts and sciences (and those of us with BA's in English know how far that will take you...). The more technical fields that guarantee a job and decent pay (computers, medical, engineering, etc) are all self-financing and are so unbelievably expensive that only the richest of the rich students can afford to take these classes. All of which amounts to making upward mobility for the poor students virtually, if not literally, impossible.
posted by Andy at 2:52 PM
2 Comments:
So how will you get them to speak in class? They are obviously learning from you, but with no feedback, I can feel your frustration. The students (what age range are we talking about?)are obviously intelligent and motivated. Perhaps if you appeal to their intelligence and explain the need for class participation, they will talk. You will be better able to tailor your presentation if they tell you what they need to learn. Good luck.
Thank you both for your comments! My new approach in classes I'm teaching for the first time is to use that first class period to have the students introduce themselves in front of the class so that a) i can get to know a little bit about them, and b) they get the experience of speaking English in front of eachother and learn that it's not the end of the world, and c) i get to hear their English and can start finding issues to address and suggestions i can make. today, i meet with a class i've already had so my plan is to first go over what we did last time, and then have them speak to eachother in English in front of the class (ie. have two students at a time come up front and go over a fairly simple dialogue: "Good Morning." "Good Morning." "How are you?" "I am fine. How are you?", etc...). it won't be teaching them anything they don't already know. but my hope is that by allowing/forcing them to use the basic English they already know, they'll become more comfortable talking to and in front of eachother , and we can eventually move on to the more interesting things that i want to talk about!
Post a Comment
<< Home