Teaching English

I bought some new flashcards today from a book store. They have pictures and such on them. I went to have a look through the fruit cards and found something that didn't belong. My first reaction to seeing the card? "Oh look, firefighter, my favourite fruit."

English Class

So usually (This class is pretty advanced) I just let my Friday class talk if I feel the conversation is engaging or that everyone (Or most everyone) is interested in the topic. They enjoy just chatting about daily things and such, but because of this one of the previous lessons that I have done is unfinished. And one of the students is unhappy about that. He asked two weeks ago if we could get back to the unfinished lesson and I said (since it was the end of class when he asked) that we'd get to it next week. This week rolls around and he also didn't mention it until the end of class again.

These people, mind you, are not young students. The youngest is probably 35-40 and the oldest is maybe 60-75. And they all understand that they are free to speak their mind and voice any questions/concerns that they have.

So while I did say that we'd get to finish the lesson this week, the conversation took off and so I didn't want to stop it in order to get back to the lesson. (Which was just reading and discussing a short story written by and for native English speakers) And, like I mentioned above, the student didn't ask about the lesson until the end, which really is just bad timing on his part. It's not like I can say "Oh yeah sure. Everyone has an extra hour or two to discuss the lesson?"

When I answered him he did a silent fit. It reminded me of when any muppet would get angry and the lips/mouth area would curl inward. It made me feel a little bit bad, but in the end he was the only one who was concerned with the lesson while everyone else enjoyed what we had been discussing.

Actually the week before he also participated in the discussion. (He likes talking about political and educational things, not every day things like we had been discussing this week) And he enjoyed himself and seemingly only asked the question out of curiosity while this time it was out of growing concern or possibly anger.

After class I was invited out to a coffee shop with some of the other students. We talked about many things but one of them was the student above. Everyone believes that he seems more concerned about the grammar of English and the side of it that is more academic based. (Writing, much dictionary use, the correct way to use x and the many meanings of x) Which is fine, however I would say that when learning a language nothing should be put above another. No area should be given more attention because when you build it up and turn around to look at the other areas you'll fall into one or both of these categories:

The annoying one, where you'll be constantly asking why everything is what it is and refuse the answer of You'll just have to remember it like this for now.

The deaf ears, where even though we have studied or talked about it, you'll refuse to acknowledge it until much later and by that time we will have moved onto a new topic and having to go back and discuss it again causes everyone to become bored as they all understand and have learned the subject matter.

I stressed my concern about this to the other students and they agreed that it was a problem. So my solution was to give everyone a weekly email. A preview of what will be going on in the class and a review of what happened for those who did not show that week.

That was my best, and to be honest only, idea I had. Hopefully it'll work out.

English Class

I have an English class that I teach every Friday and one that I teach every Saturday. To be honest, I really have no idea what I am doing. Although everyone seems to enjoy it, sometimes I panic when I do not know the answer to a question. (Is this an Adverb? An Adjective? Why is it "does" and not "Is"? Etc) My class on Friday is of a much higher level than the class on Saturday. I thought that maybe if I went really slow and explained all the sentences and the structure as best that I could that I could start them off on something easy (Like a small news article) but relatively intermediate in terms of level.

I was wrong.

It is difficult because the range of levels in Saturday's class is so great that if I did something at the beginner level, some of the students would find it too easy. But as I explained above, if I did something of a higher level it will end up being too difficult.

The class has 18 students. There are 4 men and of those four I would peg three of them as intermediate. The rest of the class is in early beginner. Also female.

The old English teacher (Who I have never met and do not know anything about besides that his name was Joshua) gave them crossword puzzles and word searches as homework. But I have been told by a few that they disliked having to do that very much. ... But 1/4 of them really enjoyed it.

It would be nice to work with a company that had a book with set lessons and such. As it is, finding and making my own is proving to be difficult and moreso as time goes on.

So what I have been thinking and researching is if I couldn't buy some English teaching books online that have set lessons in them. That would make things easier for me but now the question is... which books would be the best to buy?

English Advice?

I teach English every Friday and Saturday to adults, with an English-Japanese exchange every Tuesday and a monthly visit every first monday to a day care to sings some English songs. The day care is a bit of confusion especially when the teachers do not understand a single word of my native tongue and I only a few of theirs. But we manage together, which is very helpful. If they had left me alone with 30-something children under the age of 6 I... would probably not do so well, haha. (Actually, I'm not so bad with kids and when we can both communicate effectively I am fine supervising kids. It's that darn language barrier -shakes fist- )

There are some times, though, in the adult class when they ask me a question and it stumps me. I can easily look up a word in my handy English-Japanese dictionary that I pirate away from my husband on the weekends because it has an English dictionary for English people in it as well. But when they ask me the why questions, that's where I have trouble. One of my students even told me that he could understand every individual words meaning but he couldn't understand the sentence meaning. Sometimes in English news or books I will have to read it over again because I do not understand the point they are trying to make in the sentence, but 80% of the times it is due to the fact that I will have skipped an important word. The sentences I use in my classes aren't terribly hard to understand - At least from my point of view- But sometimes I forget that they are learning the language, and just as I have a billion questions every time I study Japanese so do they.

Although is it too much to ask for a vocal response from them when I ask Does everyone understand? Does anyone have any questions? Because when they sit there re-reading what I have explained I cannot tell if they do or they don't and my instinct says Well if they aren't asking questions, they must understand.