Although this is a teacher-research blog, there hasn’t been all that much research to report on so far. But as the time to do my critical study is approaching, my awareness is moving in that direction. My new course is a prime candidate for research, and today’s first class was a little breath of serendipitous grace.
This semester I am scheduled to teach 11 hours of Reading and Writing to the only three students in our college who failed their first semester in the Foundation Programme. Thanks to discussions with my wonderful colleagues, allies and friends, some very exciting ideas have emerged. I am also considering compiling the activities that are effective in getting these students motivated and helping them learn as part of my critical study. Maybe…
The students, however, have been pursuing me all over campus for days to persuade me to raise their marks so that they can stay with their group- with the use of an interpreter, since they can’t even express this idea in English. Clearly, raising their marks will not help them, but a healthy mix of empathy, discipline and creativity just might. I have arranged that they can attend any classes they wish with their former classmates, while their classmates can attend certain of their sessions, which will be dedicated specifically to language learning strategies.
The miracle happened today, when only one student, Ayman, showed up long after I had given up on seeing any students. Ayman’s lone and late arrival shook me completely out of “teaching mode”, and into genuine interaction, which involved uncovering the language for choosing and requesting a fruit juice to drink using the bilingual labels on three bottles of juice. Although like all Omani students, Ayman has studied English for over a decade, some interesting features of his language showed up:
1. His vocabulary and collocation repertoire is extremely limited.
2. He does not understand the connection between sounds and symbols (letters), and has no grasp of the short vowel sounds. This has drastic implications for his spelling.
3. He writes letters using the movements he would in Arabic, starting from the lower left.
I handed Ayman the student “lucky dip”: a folder containing a pen, pencil, post-it booklet, notebook and portfolio. Some time after he worked out and wrote the words on the whiteboard and we practiced the pronunciation and request collocations, he wrote these down in the notebook, which students will also keep as language learning scrapbook journals. The first thing written in the book was the semester, week, day, and date with a basic entry starting “Today I feel…”. Although I modelled this exercise, he could not find the basic words happy, sad, angry, scared to complete his sentence or put together the reason why. After some cajoling he gradually built up and wrote down the full sentence, which he then read back to me. He also asked the words for certain meanings, like “a little” and “a lot”.
We also set up contact groups on our mobile phones and sent a text message to the absent students. One of them even replied!
Towards the end of the lesson, two senior female students dropped in to see what was going on in the classroom. Ayman had a chance to offer them some juice, practicing his new knowledge in a practical way. I was stunned to see that the lesson time was over, which is how the expressions “Time flies” and “Time flies when you’re having fun” landed on the whiteboard.
Where a day ago Ayman was refusing this course, this non-lesson may have been one of the first chances he has had to use English for an actual purpose. All that because a “lesson” was out of the question.
There will obviously be considerable ground to cover beyond today’s practical nuts-and-bolts, and it won’t always be this effortless. But a glimmer of hope is a precious, precious thing and deserves to be cherished.
The photo is of the whiteboard at the end of the session. Vocabulary is on the left, writing practice in the middle and collocations on the right.
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