I have eight classes of Junior 2 students, totaling about 200 students, for Oral English.\u00a0 You may ask why I don’t know the exact number.\u00a0 I haven’t wanted to count, and the number seems to fluctuate week by week.\u00a0 Each of the eight classes has 50 students, but they divide for Oral English class.\u00a0 So half leave the room, but then sometimes I have 31 instead of 25, so I truly don’t know.\u00a0\u00a0 We have a text book with CD’s, but we don’t have equipment to play the CD in the classroom.\u00a0 I think it is an excellent text, but neither age appropriate, nor geared for 40 minutes once a week.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 These students are about 14 years old and in USA would be in 7th or 8th grade.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 In most of the classes, the students are reluctant to speak at all, and do not seem to understand me when I speak.\u00a0\u00a0 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.\u00a0\u00a0 Purpose: loosen up, laugh, and make some sounds in English.<\/p>\n
In the first week I asked the classes, “What is your goal for this class?”\u00a0 Then as I looked at the blank faces, I had to ask “Do you know what a goal is?”\u00a0 and then I had to tell them.\u00a0 However, in one class, a boy answered, “There are two meanings for this word, goal.\u00a0 The first we can say is in a game such as soccer, we score a point by kicking the ball into the net.\u00a0 This is called a goal.\u00a0 The other meaning is something we want to do.”\u00a0\u00a0 I was astonished.\u00a0\u00a0 I learned that the boy spent six months in USA, attending school.\u00a0\u00a0 I have assigned him the task of giving “report” every week.\u00a0 He tells wonderful stories and is poised and excellent in his delivery.\u00a0 After a few weeks, other students asked, “Could I give a report?”\u00a0 And now, I have about four students regularly “giving report” in that class.\u00a0 Yesterday, a girl came and asked if she could give hers next week.\u00a0 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.\u00a0\u00a0 This is my best, most enjoyable oral class.<\/p>\n
I also have Senior 1 Class 13 for both writing in English, and literature.\u00a0 For the literature class, I was given McGuffey’s Eclectic Reader, book 4.\u00a0 This book was originally published in about 1836, but some selections refer to the Civil War, so I’m sure it was updated.\u00a0 The purpose of the selections seems to be to form the American Character.\u00a0 Although I am “doing the best I can with what I have” as mother always counseled, it is difficult.\u00a0 For writing, I find that these students working in their second language, aren’t aware of the basics of writing in English.\u00a0 So we are working very slowly, step by step, to construct sentences and working toward paragraphs and finally an essay.\u00a0\u00a0 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.<\/p>\n
And my last class is Senior 2 Class 13 for writing in English.\u00a0 These students hope to go abroad for college and are preparing to take exams for this purpose.\u00a0 They are far from fluent, and far from being able to write a paragraph in English, much less a whole essay.<\/p>\n
I use the same materials and plan for both writing classes, since they are at roughly the same level.\u00a0 The difference is that in Senior 1, I have used some of what we have read in literature to form the topic for writing.\u00a0\u00a0 This week, I have prepared a puzzle for the writing classes.\u00a0 I printed on cardstock a paragraph I wrote for my class in 2011, titled “I Love English.”\u00a0 I then cut it up into small pieces containing a word, a phrase, or a clause, and two sentences.\u00a0 Each group of three or four students has a bag of words, a roll of tape, and a big piece of paper.\u00a0 The directions say to find the TOPIC SENTENCE, the restatement sentence, the title, and then put the paragraph together.\u00a0 Everyone seems to be enjoying the task.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 The order in which the other sentences fall may vary.\u00a0 The Italian girl in another group selected all the pieces that said, “I love” and arranged them in lines on the paper.\u00a0 It is fun to see how the groups proceed to set up the puzzle.\u00a0 Everyone has found the title, easy since it is in bigger type.\u00a0 Most have found the topic sentence and put it first.\u00a0\u00a0 Some groups are putting together small segments before they arrange the sentences.\u00a0\u00a0 For example one sentence says, “It is strong and powerful, the language of kings and conquerors.” and the dividing point is after the comma. \u00a0\u00a0 I heard a boy explain to another boy, that kings and conquerors are powerful, so these two parts must go together.<\/p>\n
My dear husband has a similar schedule, except he has those same senior students for Oral English.\u00a0 We try to have some connection between what he is doing and what I am doing.\u00a0 I hope this gives you some feel for what we are doing here day by day.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I have eight classes of Junior 2 students, totaling about 200 students, for Oral English.\u00a0 You may ask why I don’t know the exact number.\u00a0 I haven’t wanted to count, and the number seems to fluctuate week by week.\u00a0 Each of the eight classes has 50 students, but they divide for Oral English class.\u00a0 So […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/talkingwithjulia.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/440"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/talkingwithjulia.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/talkingwithjulia.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/talkingwithjulia.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/talkingwithjulia.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=440"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/talkingwithjulia.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/440\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":441,"href":"https:\/\/talkingwithjulia.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/440\/revisions\/441"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/talkingwithjulia.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=440"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/talkingwithjulia.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=440"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/talkingwithjulia.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=440"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}