How do you teach a second language to people who don't really know their first language? This is what I've been struggling with for 6 months, and it's really starting to make me want to pull my hair out. I'm teaching probably the most educated population of Cusco. Therefore, I've come up with two words to describe the Peruvian education system: pretty crappy. (By the way, you should try explaining to a an ESL learner that "pretty" is used as emphasis and that the term "pretty ugly" makes perfect sense in English. That's a treat.)
My advanced class focuses on writing. The problem is, they can't write in Spanish, so they really don't have a prayer in English. To give you an idea of what I have to correct every week, I'm going to write the rest of this blog in the style of my students. They don't like to use punctuation which makes it very hard to read and where on earth am i supposed to know where to take a break when i'm reading it's all one long run on sentence and if there's anything i hate its a run on sentence have you every noticed how hard they are to read? really hard let me tell you and no matter how many times i tell this guy in my advanced class not to write with words like "gonna" and "wanna" he still insists and also insists on replacing the word "the" with "da" and "and" with "'n" and i finally had to tell him that i wouldn't correct his writing anymore if he was going to write like that and that he wouldn't pass his exam and he couldn't understand what the problem was and gave me some crap about saving time but it doesn't take you anymore time to write "the" than it does to write "da." He also wore a Mets jacket to class today so that certainly didn't endear him anymore to me. And how many times do i have to tell them to indent? Indent, indent, INDENT, it's not that hard, and if you're wondering why I don't indent on my blog posts it's because blogger doesn't allow the use of the tab button, which I find really annoying and I certainly don't want to have uneven margains and maybe we should all petition blogger to change this if for no other reason than to better the writing skills of Peruvians and so that I'm not such a hypocrite.
Whew. I can't write like that anymore, it's exhausting. And exhausting to read. My red pen is quickly running out of ink. (And I didn't even get started on the subject/verb agreement problems, but those will never go away.)
In other teaching news, my basic class is setting a record for stupidity every day. When I tell them no, they repeat the same answer, sometimes 3 or 4 times in a row. I guess they subscribe to the theory that if at first you don't succeed, try, try again. A lot of the problems I have with teaching them isn't always the English though. The other day, they asked what "sing" meant. So, like any good ESL teacher, I didn't tell, I did, and I sang for them. One of the students said "bailar?" For those of you who don't know Spanish, "bailar" means "to dance." Now, I may not be Celine Dion, but bad singing does not equal dancing. I wasn't moving. Plus, I had already demonstrated what dancing was. This isn't a problem with English, this is a problem with her head. I was relieved when the other students started laughing. At least it got through to somebody. Oh, vacation. How I need you.
My advanced class focuses on writing. The problem is, they can't write in Spanish, so they really don't have a prayer in English. To give you an idea of what I have to correct every week, I'm going to write the rest of this blog in the style of my students. They don't like to use punctuation which makes it very hard to read and where on earth am i supposed to know where to take a break when i'm reading it's all one long run on sentence and if there's anything i hate its a run on sentence have you every noticed how hard they are to read? really hard let me tell you and no matter how many times i tell this guy in my advanced class not to write with words like "gonna" and "wanna" he still insists and also insists on replacing the word "the" with "da" and "and" with "'n" and i finally had to tell him that i wouldn't correct his writing anymore if he was going to write like that and that he wouldn't pass his exam and he couldn't understand what the problem was and gave me some crap about saving time but it doesn't take you anymore time to write "the" than it does to write "da." He also wore a Mets jacket to class today so that certainly didn't endear him anymore to me. And how many times do i have to tell them to indent? Indent, indent, INDENT, it's not that hard, and if you're wondering why I don't indent on my blog posts it's because blogger doesn't allow the use of the tab button, which I find really annoying and I certainly don't want to have uneven margains and maybe we should all petition blogger to change this if for no other reason than to better the writing skills of Peruvians and so that I'm not such a hypocrite.
Whew. I can't write like that anymore, it's exhausting. And exhausting to read. My red pen is quickly running out of ink. (And I didn't even get started on the subject/verb agreement problems, but those will never go away.)
In other teaching news, my basic class is setting a record for stupidity every day. When I tell them no, they repeat the same answer, sometimes 3 or 4 times in a row. I guess they subscribe to the theory that if at first you don't succeed, try, try again. A lot of the problems I have with teaching them isn't always the English though. The other day, they asked what "sing" meant. So, like any good ESL teacher, I didn't tell, I did, and I sang for them. One of the students said "bailar?" For those of you who don't know Spanish, "bailar" means "to dance." Now, I may not be Celine Dion, but bad singing does not equal dancing. I wasn't moving. Plus, I had already demonstrated what dancing was. This isn't a problem with English, this is a problem with her head. I was relieved when the other students started laughing. At least it got through to somebody. Oh, vacation. How I need you.
1 comment:
I think writing is a fairly common weakness for some Spanish speakers. I remember in my middle and high school Spanish classes the native speakers blew us away with their speaking (although their grammar often left something to be desired), but the native English speakers generally fared better on writing assignments than the Spanish speakers.
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