What village?
The village does not
exist according to the gps app on my phone, so I had to use the
satellite view to find the village library, where our training will
be taking place. Kate has been there before for the village
playgroup, so she put a star on my phone map and I followed it like
the three wise men.
Follow the star
Village time
keeping
The local children
had been told to arrive at 9am but only two of them were there at
9am. I was not surprised at this and felt confident that a lot more
would drift along later. Over the course of the next two hours, 35
local children came to have their level assessed.
What is your
name?
I had a page full of
questions to ask them in order to determine their English level. The
first question was 'What's your name?' which received a blank look
from the majority of the children. When I repeated the question very
slowly I still had a blank look from most of them. If I said it in a
very strong Jordanian accent, some of them understood. Out of 35
children, I considered 8 of them good enough to start a beginner
class and the others need to start with some literacy work to learn
the English alphabet.
What do they
learn in their English classes?
All of these
children have been receiving English lessons at school but the
lessons consist of learning grammar rules and memorising huge
dictation paragraphs. Even those who get full marks in their English
classes are hardly able to utter a word in English. One lady
explained to me that her son's English teacher gives them a ball and
tells them to go outside to play football.
Speaking focussed
lessons
My aim is to model
and then coach the English teachers in teaching speaking-focused
lessons, but first, I suspect that I will need to help the teachers
to improve their own English level and pronunciation.
The village of Qastal
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