Building a Foundation

Two new classes opened for me today. By the end of next week, I shall have begun to teach every class I am supposed to be teaching for now (there...I knew if I waited long enough, I would have the opportunity to use the future perfect for something!).

When I contemplated the two classes I would be teaching today, I thought one would be a joy to teach, and the other would be an absolute slog. I was right...but wrong about which one was which.

The class I thought would be a joy is CEI02, the second level in our program of children's courses. I thought this would be a joy because I would be dealing with students who knew their alphabet, and I could begin doing more complex work with phonics. I was expecting two students to show up, but we ended up with five, since a couple of parents came wanting their child to try out the class.

I suppose that disaster isn't the right way to describe today's lesson. A true disaster lesson would be one in which the children were never under control for a moment and nothing was imparted to anyone in attendance. But this came pretty close. In addition to the four young charges I had been led to expect, one student brought a friend who did absolutely nothing all class and, to boot, seems to have a pretty heavy speech impediment, a problem in exercises that are heavily pronunciation-based.

You can imagine my joy, then, when I learned, at the end of the period, that this friend would not be taking the class with us. I can only imagine how horrible it would be to have to deal with this child for possibly up to a year or longer.

The class I was dreading was an adult class at what we call "foundation" level. In our program of adult classes, the very beginner classes (usually conducted by a Chinese teacher) are called "beginner". This is for adults who need to learn things like the English alphabet, and so on. "Foundation" courses assume the student knows the alphabet, and are the first course conducted by an Anglophone teacher.

I was dreading this course mainly because I expected teaching total beginners at this level would be a chore. My "elementary" students (the level above Foundation) can at least ask basic questions: "How do you spell that?" "What's it called?" "Could you repeat that, please?" At the Foundation level, you can't even depend on that.

Tonight's lesson, I thought, would be particularly hard. The very first lesson in many adult English classes, this one included, is basic introduction and greeting.: "My name's"..."Nice to meet you," and the like. This can be a real slog to teach, as I know from having watched it be taught in my CELTA training. Most of the class ends up being pointing.

But somehow, things went well tonight. One of my students is Ruby's son, who goes by the English name "John". He seems to grasp onto things pretty quickly. I managed at one point to put a chart on the board illustrating the concept of grammatical person, and he got it almost instantly.

On the other hand, this lesson has taught me how difficult pronunication can be at the beginner levels. At point, I got my students to practice, "What's his name" by putting various names on the board next to stickmen (my name for stick-figure people). You'd be amazed how hard it is for a Chinese speaker to pronounce "Henry Jones." It was probably a mistake, after Henry Jones, to put up the names of various famous people. Angelina Jolie was a particular challenge, as was Alan Greenspan.

But somehow, despite having little ability to answer direct questions, I was able to get my students to understand and use basic introduction language, and to be able to ask how names are spelled. It was a challenge, but I challenge I somehow managed to meet.