Saturday 9-19-09

So I am fully recovered from my sickness, thanks for all of your well wishing, or however the hell you say that. Nothing really happens on Saturdays, we dont usually hold class because only a few officers show up, and theyre not really in any mood to sit through three hours of class as it is the end of their week. So today Luke and I are going to sit down and make up the test that will cover all of the material he has taught since being down here. Every two months the police officers get a certificate for participating in an ESL program through an outside program, which I dont think makes much sense because were not teaching them any kind of pre apporved curiculum, but whatever. So this test allows us to gauge how much they have learned, which again doesnt really matter to anyone but us and the police officers (who i dont think particularly care how they fair on the test), but teaching is all about how well students do on their exams right?

So after we get the test written today we will basically be locked into our curriculum for the next two weeks. We plan on just doing review activities of everything that will be on the test, because like most students the officers learn what they need to for the week, apply the knowledge, and then forget it the next week when we move on to something new. So it will not be a walk in the park to just go over the old stuff, but it should be interesting for me to see what all he taught them with Kirstin before I got down here. This week in class we tried some new activities that I am planning on using from now on specifically dictation and presentations. So in the first we read sentences to the officers and they have to write what they hear, because we are teaching them so that they can interact with people in english we thought it was important for them to start trying to decipher what people are saying. Its pretty entertaining to see what they think we are saying. The other activity is that we assign them a task like: make a cup of coffee, and they then have to write a set of instructions for how to do their task and then read those instructions to the class. They HATE both of these things, but who really ever liked foreign langauge in school?

After seeing how they interacted with our two new activities luke and I decided that when I start the next two month section I am going to focus on improving their ability to communicate. I mean thats the main reason we are here, were not trying to get them to the space to read shakespeare or watch harry potter in english (although both of those would be great results) our job is to give them the skills to interact with and respond to tourists. SO I think I will be introducing a one on one speaking portion with me everyweek, because they are great at memorizing the words and what they mean, but they always have trouble pronouncing them and interpreting what Luke and I are saying, which I think are two of the biggest things that they need to know.

Next week Luke and I are planning on going to a river about 2 hours from here with some of the officers. They told us that the water is this amazing color becuase of the location of the river, I guess it is a place where a sulfur river from the to of a volcanoe meets a regualr one and when the two mix it is beautiful. But with the way 75% of plans here go Im not betting on actually getting out there next week. Well I am done for today, I think I will wander around some tourist shops and pretend like I might buy something. Hope your having a good weekend!