English Class

I work with several sections of students, one of which is the bilingual section.  Most of these bilingual section students have had English class since primary school and now attend every class in English except for math and language.  In class, they speak English.  Occasionally during recess they speak English.  They still make mistakes, of course, but it's really quite impressive to watch these 12-year-olds in action.

Generally, my job is to go over the speaking and listening exercises in their textbooks, helping them with pronunciation and providing them with a native accent to emulate.  Occasionally I teach an actual grammar lesson, but the teacher is much better at it, so I usually defer to her so I can watch and learn.

Today, however, she was called out of class and asked me to teach Reported Speech.  What Speech, you say?  Yes, that's what I said last week.

Take a moment to note the differences between these two dialogues:
- "Are you happy?" she asked him.
- She asked him if he was happy.

The second is an example of reported speech.  It probably seems like a no-brainer to flip the two, doesn't it?  But I would like to point out that the verb tense of the question changes, as well as the word order... and it is no longer a question.  And you use a different order for a question such as, "Where are you going?"  Additionally, 'may' changes to 'might,' 'can' changes to 'could,' etc.  Complicated stuff.

Luckily, I had introduced the concept with an activity on Tuesday, so I was familiar with the nuances.  Taking a deep breath, I started in.  It actually went quite well, and the students quickly picked up on the differences between reporting statements and questions, etc.  By the time we got to reporting orders and commands, the teacher was back and I handed it over.  She is really fantastic about asking students to apply the information immediately with verbal question-and-response, and after teaching about reporting commands, she began to go around the room, practicing.

The results were comical.

She began with Raul, who was looking at the examples in the book.  "Raul," she said evenly.  "Don't look at me like that!"

Raul's head snapped up and he looked around in utter confusion.  "But I..."

"No, begin, 'Pilar told me....'" Pilar corrected.

Slowly, understanding began to brighten his face as he realized what was going on.  "Ah!  Pilar told me not to look at her like that!"

A murmur arose from the class, who had been equally confused.  They seemed relieved.

Pilar moved on to Javi, a round, sweet boy in the back who is enthusiastic to learn and content to be himself.

"Javi," she asked.  "Will you marry me?"

The class erupted, and Javi's face instantly changed colors.  It was clear he was trying to construct a diplomatic response and having enormous difficulty; meanwhile, the whole class was urging him to say yes.  "Dude, Javi, she wants to marry you!!"

Pilar, not anticipating this response, finally stopped laughing herself.  "Pilar asked..." she crowed.

Relief swept over Javi's face as he burst into giggles.  "Oh!  Pilar asked if I will marry her."

"Would marry, Javi.  Would marry, not will."

"Pilar asked if I would marry her," Javi repeated.

Several students repeated this under their breaths, trying it out.  Angel, a brilliant bundle of constant energy and disruption, rattled off a few jokes in Spanish at Javi's expense.  Pilar silenced him with a look and continued practicing the language with other students.  Despite seeing their classmates' repeated confusion, thinking Pilar was really asking them questions, most of the class mistook the exercise and tried to respond to her statements rather than reporting them, and then they bashfully corrected themselves.  And as it characteristic, Angel's silence didn't last long, and he was soon back to joking.

"Angel," Pilar cried severely. "Shut up!"

He paused in his conversation, thought for half a moment, and flashed a quick smile.  "Pilar said... no, Pilar told me that I must shut up!" he replied, triumphant.

Again caught off guard, Pilar recovered quickly and laughed in spite of herself.  "Pilar told me to shut up," she corrected.  "You must use the infinitive, remember. But this is real life.  Be quiet."

"Pilar said that this was real life," Angel reported dutifully.

Alberto was listening attentively.  "Angel said that Pilar said that this wss real life," he muttered, half to himself.

Jose heard it and grinned.  "Alberto said that Angel said that Pilar said that this was real life," he called out.

Rafa picked it up.  "Jose said that..."

And it was downhill from there.

Now then, after all this, I am happy to report that the 1D students can successfully report what happened today.

Mission accomplished.

Spanish

My kids can't decide if I speak Spanish or not, despite the fact that they occasionally hear me explaining things in Spanish to the students who need it.  It obviously doesn't have much of an effect on their working memories... Here's a typical conversation:

Student 1:  "Natalie, que ...... [insert roll of mostly-intelligible Spanish] .....?"

Me:  "Hmm?"

Student 1, realizing he just wasted a lot of breath:  "Pero, ¿hablas español, o no?"  But you don't speak Spanish?

Me:  "No."

Student 1:  "Pero, ¿me entiendes?"   But do you understand what I´m saying?

Me:  "No."

(Student 1 is understandably uncertain.)

Student 2:  "Que no habla español, coño."  Ya lo sabes!  Dude, she doesn't speak Spanish.  Duh!


Me:  "Exactly.  Gracias, Roberto. Ya lo ves."   Thanks.  That's about the size of it.


Oh, the life I live... :)
   

English Is a Tricky Language...

So... English is fraught with tricks and giggles, and the non-native learner has a tough job trying to sort all of them out.  Inevitably, something comes out just a little wrong.  Working with twelve-year-olds, it makes for some entertaining days.  I regret that I haven't written down the funniest moments, but I thought I'd share some classic yet highly representative student mistakes from others (I'll accumulate my own soon enough!):

Double letters:  Should I have a coma in the middle of this sentence?

Idioms:  We have hated each other for so long.  I want to borrow the hatchet.

Ambiguous consonants: The police were attacked by a large group of angry mops.

Similar words:  Me and my brother share a small womb in the basement.

Tough vowels:  My relationship with my ax girlfriend was so painful.

More vowels:  We live on the sex floor. Our apartment is small but we have a nice view.

Gerunds: Do you like this food?  I made it from scratching!

Participles:  Do you like your coffee cremated?

Syllables:  You eat soup in a bowel.

Phrasal verbs: You can’t sleep with me because it is too crowded. But you can probably sleep with my sister. That’s what most of my friends do when they visit.

False advertising: 

I want my face to have the buttocks treatment.  The what?  The buttocks treatment. It makes your wrinkles go away. It’s very famous in Hollywood.  Oh. It’s pronounced “bo tox”.  That’s it. The buttocks treatment. Maybe you need it too a little.

And oh, prepositions... Yesterday, I ate my friends.

Disclaimer / Disclosure: I publish these with a bit of a smirk as I myself am a language learner and have had my own moments of... modification.  It's a beautiful thing : )

Project of the Week

Art Class - Re-desining Les Sabines

See the resemblance??

I'm not sure such levels of chaos will be repeated soon... or ever...

The art teacher was a wonderful sport :)

The Job

IES Juana de Castilla

My job has two titles: English Teaching Assistant and Auxiliar de Conversacíon.

What do I do, you ask?

That, my friends, is an excellent question... I have no idea!

I'm a week in and have only a vague notion of what I'm supposed to be doing. There are several reasons for this, first being that no one has explicitly explained what an English Teaching Assistant does, except assist with teaching English. Perfectly clear, right? But that brings me to the second obstacle, which is the English classes themselves. I work with at least six different groups of kids, new each day, and with five different teachers. I was warned ahead of time that Spanish teachers pride themselves on improvising. How true that is!

Here's an honest-to-goodness conversation I had on Friday:
Me: "So, what are we doing today?"
Teacher: "Oh, I don't know. Book stuff. The students will know where we are."
Me: "Well, what can I do?"
Teacher: "Oh, just talk to them. You know. They have to pronounce things correctly."
Me: "Great!" (privately rolls eyes)
(PS This should be mildly horrifying to you.)

The teacher then proceeded to rule the rest of the class like a tyrant, leaving little room for me to interact and, you know, assist. And after class, I was informed I should do more! Go through their exercises with them! They need to hear my accent!

Hmmmmmmm....

In all fairness, that was, without a doubt, the most difficult teacher at the school (openly acknowledged among faculty), and the others at least try to give me a heads up a few minutes before class as to what I can be doing. I, too, can improvise when necessary, you see.

But, as near as I can figure it, I provide interactive learning time by talking with my wonderful American pronunciation, asking kids questions, listening to their replies, and making the necessary adjustments. At least, that's what I've been doing so far.

Now then, my favorite part of all of this is that this conversational style of learning means 100% personal attention. Believe it or not, this is a largely unknown phenomenon in the Spanish school system. Classrooms are largely teacher-centered, and students are expected to take care of their own learning. This is changing, though, and the teachers lament the change on a daily basis. One class, the lowest, is particularly rowdy and apathetic. (Does this sound familiar? Give it some thought and you'll realize why I felt right at home.)

So back to the personal attention aspect. This class, 1A, gives teachers fits. I had been warned about them ahead of time. But... kids are kids are kids, I figured. So I decided to experiment*. It took a few minutes for them to figure out what was going on, but after a bit of conversation about FIFA and videogames, I pretty much had the troublemakers in the palm of my hand in short work. Am I just that great of teacher? Pfft, no. Am I a celebrity at the moment? Definitely. But more than that, I gave them some attention. Some value. Some esteem. With a high gypsy population, this is a new sensation for some of them. The rest... suddenly, they're worth talking to, worth teaching.

It got their attention, at least.

All this takes place independently of lesson planning and last-minute preparations. Job description or no, it's the best job in the world.

... and it's only 16 hours a week. Just sayin' :)

*However, I only see each class one or two times a week... we'll see how well this experiment actually holds out. I have high hopes but realistic expectations.*

The Starting Gate

As soon as they hear about my upcoming sojourn to Spain, people inevitably ask me two questions:

1. When are you leaving?
2. Are you excited?

That would be January 4th, Pat, for $800 please.

And no, I am not excited... yet. But thank you for asking.

Normally, I would be rearing to go. It's Spain, after all! But after fishing about in my soul for several days now, I really don't think I can say that I'm excited. Rather, it's stressing me out. You see, there is a saying in my family, one that somehow became ingrained in my psyche in spite of all my efforts to repel any of their wisdom: "Whatever your hand finds to do, do it with all your might," they say. Problematic, to say the least.

What have my hands found to do?

I have 75 sophomore students depending on me to be their teacher. 75 sophomore students who just learned I was leaving. 75 sophomore students who need a kick in the pants and a reason to dream.

I can't give it to them; I suffer from no savior illusion.

But I can give them a run for their money; and share whatever I have left to give and hope that those 5 loaves and 3 fish multiply; and show them that quitters never win and winners never quit... and whatever other cliche that happens to prove true.

I can help them learn how to beat the test and help them see that even though they are facing an academic world that caters to white, middle-class students, they can play the game, too, for let us not deceive ourselves - it really is a game. You just have to know which two answers to eliminate.

I can squeeze one more essay out of them because they will work for me unlike they will work for the person who is going to take my place - at least for the first week or so. I have high hopes for him, bless his soul. My kids want to love someone, but they're stubborn buggers about it. He'll be okay.

I can support my co-workers and add some levity to an otherwise odious week. I can listen to their stories and learn from their experience. Referrals, it seems, are not all equal - or bad.

I can enjoy the days I have with the people I know and the opportunities I've been given.

School is what my hand found to do, and by golly, I'm going to do it. It's a fight to do it well, of course; no one likes knowing there are only four days... three days... two days... before infinite amounts of freedom.

Does that prevent me from being excited? No, not really.

But add to that planning classes, enjoying an unbelievable number of wonderful friends as well as a great family, and putting the finishing touches on travel preparations.

Actually, that's inaccurate. Aside from completing a mountain of paperwork and a Black Friday forage for luggage, I have made few travel preparations. January 4th looms ever closer. And I still don't have my visa.

Details, details, details!

My hands are full, to say the least. Thank God I'm not married! Although... hmm... yes.

Am I excited? No.

Ask me again in four days.