Adventures in Grammar

When John, Diana and Kathy warned us that our students would probably know more grammatical terminology than us, and call us out on it, they were completely right! I taught my first grammar lesson to my level 13 classes this past Sunday, and, to be honest, it was pretty uncomfortable. I thought I had prepared sufficiently--I looked up grammar terms, pronouns, definitions, special worksheets and anything else I could find! When I started teaching, however, I realized that I was confusing both myself and my students, and I had to work hard to clarify. Looking at English from an ESL perspective is challenging because my students don't "just know what sounds right" (even though I encouraged them to develop this skill during an awkward pause in my grammar lesson!) Despite my discomfort, I was amazed with my students' ability to ask specific clarifying questions and to challenge answers that they thought were wrong. Many of these students are really intelligent and driven, and I get more convinced of this each time I teach :)

Still, there are some not so driven students, as I found out when grading my first round of quizzes and homework compositions. Most of the results were excellent, and I could tell that most students studied for the quiz, mastering difficult words and concepts, and many handed in great compositions that impressed me with their level of grammar and vocabulary. However, one or two students suprised me by handing in work that they had clearly copied from each other, and mediocre quiz grades. Suprisingly, this work came from two of my OLDEST students (the ones I expected to be most driven to learn English). I was suprised at how angry I got when I saw my students cheating themselves in this way--it doesn't make sense that they would make the effort to come all the way to the center (some live more than an hour away) just to cheat and not work hard. Luckily this is the minority, and the effort made by other students more than makes up for the slacking few.

I'm looking forward to testing my students' listening skills tomorrow (and NOT with the 80s dialogues courtesy of the book) :)

KATE