I have eight classes of Junior 2 students, totaling about 200 students, for Oral English.  You may ask why I don’t know the exact number.  I haven’t wanted to count, and the number seems to fluctuate week by week.  Each of the eight classes has 50 students, but they divide for Oral English class.  So half leave the room, but then sometimes I have 31 instead of 25, so I truly don’t know.   We have a text book with CD’s, but we don’t have equipment to play the CD in the classroom.  I think it is an excellent text, but neither age appropriate, nor geared for 40 minutes once a week.  So, I use the topics as a guide and do my best to get the kids to talk in English for a few minutes per week.  These students are about 14 years old and in USA would be in 7th or 8th grade.    In most of the classes, the students are reluctant to speak at all, and do not seem to understand me when I speak.   I’ve used a lot of songs, such as B-I-N-G-O, and Little Cabin in the Wood, which they seem to enjoy.   Purpose: loosen up, laugh, and make some sounds in English.

In the first week I asked the classes, “What is your goal for this class?”  Then as I looked at the blank faces, I had to ask “Do you know what a goal is?”  and then I had to tell them.  However, in one class, a boy answered, “There are two meanings for this word, goal.  The first we can say is in a game such as soccer, we score a point by kicking the ball into the net.  This is called a goal.  The other meaning is something we want to do.”   I was astonished.   I learned that the boy spent six months in USA, attending school.   I have assigned him the task of giving “report” every week.  He tells wonderful stories and is poised and excellent in his delivery.  After a few weeks, other students asked, “Could I give a report?”  And now, I have about four students regularly “giving report” in that class.  Yesterday, a girl came and asked if she could give hers next week.  I have asked the first boy to pretend to be a tv interviewer and to interview other students, giving them questions he knows they can answer to build confidence.   This is my best, most enjoyable oral class.

I also have Senior 1 Class 13 for both writing in English, and literature.  For the literature class, I was given McGuffey’s Eclectic Reader, book 4.  This book was originally published in about 1836, but some selections refer to the Civil War, so I’m sure it was updated.  The purpose of the selections seems to be to form the American Character.  Although I am “doing the best I can with what I have” as mother always counseled, it is difficult.  For writing, I find that these students working in their second language, aren’t aware of the basics of writing in English.  So we are working very slowly, step by step, to construct sentences and working toward paragraphs and finally an essay.   One of the delights of this class is that two foreign students, one from Italy and the other from Sweden, attend as auditors, solely because they enjoy it.

And my last class is Senior 2 Class 13 for writing in English.  These students hope to go abroad for college and are preparing to take exams for this purpose.  They are far from fluent, and far from being able to write a paragraph in English, much less a whole essay.

I use the same materials and plan for both writing classes, since they are at roughly the same level.  The difference is that in Senior 1, I have used some of what we have read in literature to form the topic for writing.   This week, I have prepared a puzzle for the writing classes.  I printed on cardstock a paragraph I wrote for my class in 2011, titled “I Love English.”  I then cut it up into small pieces containing a word, a phrase, or a clause, and two sentences.  Each group of three or four students has a bag of words, a roll of tape, and a big piece of paper.  The directions say to find the TOPIC SENTENCE, the restatement sentence, the title, and then put the paragraph together.  Everyone seems to be enjoying the task.  The Swedish girl said almost right away, “So this could have many possible outcomes?” and I agreed, except that there is only one topic sentence.  The order in which the other sentences fall may vary.  The Italian girl in another group selected all the pieces that said, “I love” and arranged them in lines on the paper.  It is fun to see how the groups proceed to set up the puzzle.  Everyone has found the title, easy since it is in bigger type.  Most have found the topic sentence and put it first.   Some groups are putting together small segments before they arrange the sentences.   For example one sentence says, “It is strong and powerful, the language of kings and conquerors.” and the dividing point is after the comma.    I heard a boy explain to another boy, that kings and conquerors are powerful, so these two parts must go together.

My dear husband has a similar schedule, except he has those same senior students for Oral English.  We try to have some connection between what he is doing and what I am doing.  I hope this gives you some feel for what we are doing here day by day.