In the library, students cluster,
On a mission from their teacher.
Get an encyclopedia!
Copy that print media!
Not an oz. of comprehension can they muster.
Monday, February 28, 2011
Sunday, February 27, 2011
Trials, Trials, Trials. Asa akong tribulation?
Before Christmas, my time in San Remigio passed smoothly. After Christmas, I made a slight error of hubris: I volunteered to teach the remedial reading classes for struggling first year students. Being easily successful in the classrooms of average and above third and fourth years (and only struggling a little in bottom section 3rd year classes,) I thought I could pull off the 1st year classes without a problem.
Wrong.
I am used to high schoolers. Freshman are familiar. But 1st year students here are 12 years old, and I have 55 of them. Their English skills are very close to nil. This hampers the teaching process a great deal.
For example, it is exceedingly difficult to provide reading materials to my students. The entire first year textbook is so far outside their zones of proximal development, I might as well be assigning them Edgar Allen Poe. There are no resources outside those books. (Hopefully, some book donations I am looking into can solve that.)
So after various failures working with local resources, I began writing my own stories. This is rather expensive, as if I wish to disseminate them to my entire class, it will cost over 50 pesos a day, and if I let the students share, half the class won't even look at the sheet. But I decided to try it, and I gained new sympathy for textbook creators. I tried to write in our vocabulary words into them, so after two weeks of daily reinforcement, ten of my students in each class learned the meaning of abrupt. The other 40 copied from their papers. Why was this not working?
I decided to do some role plays, and I wrote this ridiculous story about a magical king of squids. In the process of designing their presentations, multiple students came up to me and asked, "What is the meaning of "happened"?" My mind suffered a sort of earthquake as it tried to facilitate that question.
How indeed? Happened. Happen. Happening. How DO you describe that to someone who knows very little English?
"It means that something is going on."
No. No, that answer is constructed entirely of vague-ness. They won't understand that, either.
"It means you saw an event."
No, they either don't know "event", or only know the definition that means parties or parades and stuff. That would just confuse them more.
In desperation, I just said "It means an action is taking place. It's happening." Blank stares. "I'm sorry, I really don't know how to explain it. If you ate a banana, then it happened. If you did not eat a banana, it did not happen."
No wonder two weeks had passed with almost nothing to show for it. If students didn't know "happen," then how many other times have my students not comprehended a single word I said? How can I teach that abrupt means "suddenly," when they don't understand sudden. And when I act out suddenly by screaming abruptly and making all the little girls scream, the next three days are filled with students saying sudden means "to scream." My words are forgotten in favor of my acting.
How exactly do you find the zone of proximal development when learning a foreign language? As I recall from my failed attempts at learning other languages, the average class consisted of pushing you into the deep end and waiting till you can swim, and then pushing you into deeper water after that. And so on. My students have been drowning for years now.
I tried my Cebuano dictionary, thinking that I could try basic translation to put understandable meanings behind the word. This also did not work. Each word can potentially have 2-5 different equivalents in Cebuano. Often I would pick a word to share with the class, and no one in the room would understand it. Even my generations of teachers do not know this word. Finally, one of the elder teachers would recognize it and say they hadn't heard that word used in a long time.
Cebuano is dying. Students grow up learning Tagalog and English. Academics do not study the language. Authors do not write in the language. Business uses Tagalog, and politics uses English. It has become purely a conversational dialect in the boonies, only surviving because 60% of children do not attend school.
Then, if despite the odds, the students do recognize the word, I can't be sure if the translation is accurate. There might be other connotations I do not understand, meaning I could be teaching the wrong word altogether. And then on tests, I receive answers in Cebuano, and I don't know if its actually correct or not. I can only look at the dictionary and wonder if "maayo kaayo" (very good) is really an accurate definition of "amazing."
Then, to top off the challenges, my students finally figured out that they don't actually need to attend my class. It is an extra class, and I am not a liscenced teacher, so I cannot give grades. All I can do is record attendence. But my reports of absesnces are ignored by the actual teachers of the students, so there is not accountability. I spend have the classtime chasing students down, or I don't have enough students to complete my lesson plans. The class takes place during the student's break time, so naturally they do not want to be there in the first place.
Wrong.
I am used to high schoolers. Freshman are familiar. But 1st year students here are 12 years old, and I have 55 of them. Their English skills are very close to nil. This hampers the teaching process a great deal.
For example, it is exceedingly difficult to provide reading materials to my students. The entire first year textbook is so far outside their zones of proximal development, I might as well be assigning them Edgar Allen Poe. There are no resources outside those books. (Hopefully, some book donations I am looking into can solve that.)
So after various failures working with local resources, I began writing my own stories. This is rather expensive, as if I wish to disseminate them to my entire class, it will cost over 50 pesos a day, and if I let the students share, half the class won't even look at the sheet. But I decided to try it, and I gained new sympathy for textbook creators. I tried to write in our vocabulary words into them, so after two weeks of daily reinforcement, ten of my students in each class learned the meaning of abrupt. The other 40 copied from their papers. Why was this not working?
I decided to do some role plays, and I wrote this ridiculous story about a magical king of squids. In the process of designing their presentations, multiple students came up to me and asked, "What is the meaning of "happened"?" My mind suffered a sort of earthquake as it tried to facilitate that question.
How indeed? Happened. Happen. Happening. How DO you describe that to someone who knows very little English?
"It means that something is going on."
No. No, that answer is constructed entirely of vague-ness. They won't understand that, either.
"It means you saw an event."
No, they either don't know "event", or only know the definition that means parties or parades and stuff. That would just confuse them more.
In desperation, I just said "It means an action is taking place. It's happening." Blank stares. "I'm sorry, I really don't know how to explain it. If you ate a banana, then it happened. If you did not eat a banana, it did not happen."
No wonder two weeks had passed with almost nothing to show for it. If students didn't know "happen," then how many other times have my students not comprehended a single word I said? How can I teach that abrupt means "suddenly," when they don't understand sudden. And when I act out suddenly by screaming abruptly and making all the little girls scream, the next three days are filled with students saying sudden means "to scream." My words are forgotten in favor of my acting.
How exactly do you find the zone of proximal development when learning a foreign language? As I recall from my failed attempts at learning other languages, the average class consisted of pushing you into the deep end and waiting till you can swim, and then pushing you into deeper water after that. And so on. My students have been drowning for years now.
I tried my Cebuano dictionary, thinking that I could try basic translation to put understandable meanings behind the word. This also did not work. Each word can potentially have 2-5 different equivalents in Cebuano. Often I would pick a word to share with the class, and no one in the room would understand it. Even my generations of teachers do not know this word. Finally, one of the elder teachers would recognize it and say they hadn't heard that word used in a long time.
Cebuano is dying. Students grow up learning Tagalog and English. Academics do not study the language. Authors do not write in the language. Business uses Tagalog, and politics uses English. It has become purely a conversational dialect in the boonies, only surviving because 60% of children do not attend school.
Then, if despite the odds, the students do recognize the word, I can't be sure if the translation is accurate. There might be other connotations I do not understand, meaning I could be teaching the wrong word altogether. And then on tests, I receive answers in Cebuano, and I don't know if its actually correct or not. I can only look at the dictionary and wonder if "maayo kaayo" (very good) is really an accurate definition of "amazing."
Then, to top off the challenges, my students finally figured out that they don't actually need to attend my class. It is an extra class, and I am not a liscenced teacher, so I cannot give grades. All I can do is record attendence. But my reports of absesnces are ignored by the actual teachers of the students, so there is not accountability. I spend have the classtime chasing students down, or I don't have enough students to complete my lesson plans. The class takes place during the student's break time, so naturally they do not want to be there in the first place.
Tuesday, February 15, 2011
A Limerick
Practicing for the Junior-Senior Prom
The students are lined up for dance,
Nothing is left to chance,
"Here's your timing!"
"No improvising!"
And they all move about in a trance.
The students are lined up for dance,
Nothing is left to chance,
"Here's your timing!"
"No improvising!"
And they all move about in a trance.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)