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jons journal 10

This coming week is semana santa, a big religious thing here I gather, enough so that school is closed the next week. Odd taking a vacation only a week after starting work. I actually don´t quite know what to do with myself, being all geared up with no one to teach. I decided to stay in Pereira instead of traveling about. I suppose I´ll read some teaching books, try to find some hikes nearby and at least buy a hat and walk around in shorts. Fuck trying to blend in by wearing hot sweaty jeans while the full tropical sun burns the back of my neck to a golden crispy brown. No, here comes the gringo in pantolenatas and a hat, handing out papayas to anyone who looks my way. Maybe itll be more acceptable during semana santa or maybe itll be worse, a violation of everything held sacred during the coming week. Thats the thing, I really don´t know what is going on here. My spanish is pretty much that of a 4 year old and its a block between me and everyone around me.

Having said that, I´m getting more and more involved, albeit slowly, with this place. I´m on very friendly terms with people at the places I buy things - hotel people, internet cafe people, the resturant I go to all the time people. I´m also beginning to run into students and other miscellaneous repeated faces. The students say, "Hello, Teacher!" Pereira definitely has that small town feel in that respect. I´ve been invited by another teacher and also a student to go off on some day trips to farms or hot springs or something. I think I´ll go with the student who has a sister whos married an australian. Thatll feel the most natural as I´ll provide the english language starved australian with someone to talk to and I´ll have that family goes into the country experience. I don´t know whether its me making an effort to talk to people or its the Colombians friendliness, but starting a conversation, getting invited to do things, smiling, making eyecontact all happen more here.

About teaching. Overall it seems to be going very well, although I haven´t been observed yet. Some highlights this week. Got the advanced group to do a dance warm up walking down the hall way, changing the walk halfway to their own walk and having the next student copy the walk in the opposite direction. Lots of laughter and embarrassment. Hardly any language but the idea was to warm them up for the next task. Two groups of students planned a mime together to illustrate a word. This was a nice part in that their language was driven by a purpose - to plan the mime. They were very creative. For "nightlife" it was boyfriend and girlfriend sitting at a cocktail table, another girl gets the boyfriend to dance with her all sexy like, and the now jealous girlfriend stands up and pulls the boyfriend away. Another word, "scenery" found one person posing as a tree, another flapping his arm-wings and another on all fours posing as a mountain. Got the same group on another day to learn "despite" by coming up with a sentence on the spot - "we can still learn in this class, despite the noise from across the hall" this was a minor drama an hour earlier. I explained that we use despite for contrasting ideas in a sentence and then got them all to stand up in a circle start a sentence and have another person finish it with a contasting idea. They all picked up on it, with just a few false starts which the other students corrected with my prodding. Taught a large conversation class, a group of twenty or so students that I had for the first time. Used an idea from a book. Got them to guess who I was thinking about, writing their questions on the board. Then in pairs, they asked eachother these and other questions to guess who their partner was thinking about. Today I subbed a very low level class for another teacher and it was easy peasy. The teacher provided me with all the materials, I went over them, modified them slightly and the students pretty much got everything. One thing I learned before and applied with them was to make a sincere effort to learn their names at the beginning of class. I must remember to use the names more during class because I had forgotten some after 4 hours.

On the need to improve side, a student complained to the director that I spoke too fast. The director had suggested earlier that I give them a chance to write or say what they liked disliked about the class but I forgot to in the class that Im having more trouble with. It started with a class of 7. One person changed to another class, another hasn´t showed up for two days, another looked very frustrated by the end of thursday, two students, aged 12 and 14 seem very engaged and able to get things, another older man smiles alot and likes participating but speaks with great difficulty compared to everyone else. The last student I saved for last. He drives me crazy. Hes 10 years old, doesn´t listen when others speak, doesn´t quickly do things I direct him to do, needs requests and directions repeated because hes not listening. Once he banged the desk 5 times hard. Hes also the best speaker but he doesn´t get the grammar any faster than the other students, so its not just that the class is too easy for him. I asked the director about him and apparantly I have to put up with him for another week, before he catches up to the childrens class where he belongs.

Well, teacher Jon signing off.

By Jon on Mar 19, 2005, 20:38 in Friendly Talkzone.

utopiacowboy says on Mar 19, 2005, 20:51:

Grammar? Why even bother with grammar? Show me one preschool child who knows any grammar yet they can all speak their native language with some degree of proficiency. I know almost no Spanish grammar and my wife knows more English grammar than I do and I was an English major in college. What language do we communicate in? Spanish.

Disclaimer: any comment I make is inane and is not to be taken seriously, and is so patently ridiculous that no one should take it seriously, even as an insult.

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poco says on Mar 19, 2005, 21:11:

Suggest Handing out Mangos. Those papayas will give you a hernia.

"When you men get home and face an anti-war protester, look him in the eyes and shake his hand. Then, wink at his girlfriend, because she knows she's dating a pussy." Quote - General Tommy Franks

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Desideria (Moderator) (Trustee board) says on Mar 20, 2005, 04:51:

there's a reason for teaching grammar when you are working with adult groups. A pre-schooler and a twenty-five year old don't necessarily engage the same kind of mechanisms for learning new things. All the children learn how to speak their native language at about the same speed: by the age of five most children have empirically learned all the relevant grammatical patterns in any language, but they don't have the vocabulary, the terms or the expanations for the reason why they say certain things in a certain way. There are still a lot of minor details to be worked on: verb tenses and conjugations are often wrong, especially if they are irregular, just to mention an example. The abstract thinking processes are not yet developed, the logical and analytical thinking processes have just started to take shape.
All learning is by absorption: rote and imitation.

An adult could use this same process for learning a new language by total immersion and adopting child-like attitude to learning; however it is almost impossible for an adult not to try to find a reasons, patterns, structure in a new language. The learning process is much more complex: the phonetics, the semantics and the syntax must be learned in a meaningful way for an adult.

Cheers,
Desi

"When shall we three meet again? In thunder, lightning, or in rain?"(First Witch in Macbeth)

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utopiacowboy says on Mar 20, 2005, 07:33:

Call me a 5 year old but I just listen and repeat. I would not claim that a five year old speaks perfectly but they speak well enough to communicate clearly. Once you are at that level then you can learn grammar. I think learning grammar before you have reached that level is putting the cart before the horse. I would say that an adult's attempts to find "meaning" prevent them from just doing it. To me it's like riding a bicycle - you don't have to be a bicycle mechanic - you just have to get on the bicycle and ride. You also have to be willing to fall off the bicycle a lot. Of course everybody's different but it seems to me a lot of people get hung up on grammar.

Disclaimer: any comment I make is inane and is not to be taken seriously, and is so patently ridiculous that no one should take it seriously, even as an insult.

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2retirensa says on Mar 20, 2005, 08:20:

Thank you, Jon! I look foreward to reading all your journals. I will hopefully be visting in Armenia and possibly in Pereira in April. Keep the journals coming.
Maureen

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Desideria (Moderator) (Trustee board) says on Mar 20, 2005, 08:20:

whatever works for you is fine, UC. It really depends on your motivation and goals which method works best just for you. If you are just interested in picking up some conversational Spanish you don't need the grammar. People who study at schools and institutes in Colombia are trying to learn a good, workable command of the English Language, to be able to work or study in that language and they need a much deeper knowledge for that and thus the grammar is absolutely essential for them to understand how the language works.

Cheers,
Desi

"When shall we three meet again? In thunder, lightning, or in rain?"(First Witch in Macbeth)

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Miguel says on Mar 20, 2005, 08:40:

Good points UC and Desi, both of your methods I have employed. For me it is balancing the fall on your face fearless approach, and then putting time in with the textbooks. I joined a Spanish practice group a month ago and observed half a dozen people sitting on a nice deck, with their noses buried in textbooks and realized that I was the only one who could actually describe in Spanish what they were actually doing at the moment. I pointed this out, and now the group members attend with a dictionary for emergency, and the entire hour and a half session is conducted totally in Spanish. It depends on your motivation, for sure. I am thankfull that I have Spanish speaking friends, Desi included, that will gladly correct my errors and answer my questions.

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Miguel says on Mar 20, 2005, 08:50:

An Idea For The Moderator I have often wondered if adding a Spanish Language Help Forum on PBH would be a good idea? Come to think of it, how about an English Language Help Forum for our Colombianos here?

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