He stepped on my fruits!
Print this Post As most of you probably already know, I’m an English teacher by trade. I work in a high school here in Burgos and I also teach a few private English classes on the side. I enjoy all my classes (both at the school and the private ones) and really like working with my students. Still, no matter how much I enjoy my job or like working with my students, there are always those days when things just don’t seem to go right.
Today was one of those days. You see, I just got home from a private class with a “very energetic” five year old student. Don’t get me wrong, he’s a great kid, but keeping his attention is a task. Let me give you an example….
The topic of today’s lesson was “fruits.” I went to my young student’s house with my colorful “fruit book” and I also brought along some plastic fruits to use as visual aids. I read him the fruit book a couple of times and everything went fine. After a while, my young student was starting to recognize the fruits in the book pretty well… so I decided it was time to whip out the plastic fruits and do some vocabulary practice — bad idea. My dear little student saw the plastic fruits and went totally “loco.” He began to grab the fruits from me, hit me over the head with them, and he even went as far as to step on my plastic apple leaving it totally squashed. Of course, he did all this while laughing uncontrollably and saying “frutas, frutas” in Spanish.
What have I learned from this ordeal? When using plastic fruits with five-year-olds, be careful that they don’t throw any at your head. You may also want to watch their feet just in case they get the urge to trample a plastic apple. And always carry a “back-up” supply of plastic fruit — something is bound to come up missing.
I suppose I can say that the class was a learning experience… for the teacher, at least.
Hasta luego,
–Chris
http://abroadinspain.com
I know this has nothing to be with the post (at least with the fruit part), but you’re the best person to ask.
From your point of view, what do you think about the way English is taught? I mean… I have learned almost nothing at high school!
I have been learning English since I was 4 (English wasn’t compulsory at school), so I had to go with a private teacher (but I don’t remember throwing fruit at her ^^).
The point is that since I stopped learning English there (not sure but probably when I was 10-11), I’ve learned English through Internet, mainly by reading things that I couldn’t find in Spanish so I had to make an “effort”, but the main improvement was meeting a British person a year ago and I’ve improved a lot despite what you may think because of my several mistakes here. Before meeting her, my English was really, really poor.
So after 14 years learning English, it’s not still as good as it should be (I can’t understand very well English conversations and I can’t speak it fluently). So occurs with my 8-year-old sister.
This might be a personal case but have a look at this, and look where is Spain…:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:English_foreign_and_second_language_EU.jpg
So after telling my boring personal experience, what’s your opinion?
@Sergio – First, I’m glad to hear that you didn’t throw fruit at your teacher. I’m sure she would have thanked you for that!
To answer your question: here in Spain, English is taught mainly from a grammatical point of view. I mean that in most high schools, students memorize verbs, do practice exercises where they have to fill in the blanks, and learn vocabulary. None of that is bad, but it seems to me like students spend very little time actually practicing their English (actually speaking).
In the USA, the teaching of foreign language used to be that way many years ago. Nowadays, there is much more emphasis on “communication” (actually speaking the language) as opposed to “grammar.” In fact, in the USA we often say that it is OK if you don’t conjugate a verb right as long as you get your message across and are understood.
Personally, I think that your ability to speak a language comes from the amount of time you spend actually speaking the language. That’s why, when I teach English classes, I try to focus more on getting my students to speak rather than spending too much time on grammar grammar grammar. I think that what’s wrong in Spain is that people spend a lot of time studying English, but very little time actually speaking it. Things are starting to change though… now more and more people are interested in “conversation” classes in which grammar isn’t the central piece of the puzzle.
You’ve brought up an interesting topic… I’d like to hear what you (and any other readers of my blog) think about all this.
Thanks for the comment!
Hey, perhaps he was disappointed it was only plastic fruit!
My hypothesis is intelligent kid normally starved of first hand experience overdoses on first experience of experiential learning. Antidote to this is to reduce levels of stimulation and introduce increasingly greater levels when he can handle it. Otherwise set boundaries like No we won’t learn with the fruit until you can behave properly. If all else fails give him a banana if he promises to behave! If punishment and bribery fail you will have probably realised what it is to be a teacher impotent in the face of a child. Happens to the best of us!
@Alan – Yes, I suppose I’ll have to resort to punishment and bribery like you’ve said. Maybe I’ll bring him some type of reward if he behaves.
What else can I say? I agree with you, the problem is that it’s too focused on grammar instead of speaking and/or listening.
On my high school there was a woman from USA who was supposed to help us in speaking, but thanks to our dear teacher that wasn’t possible since my teacher didn’t like her, so because of her “preferences” we couldn’t practice English, instead that teacher made us to learn endless lists of words, phrasal verbs and all that stuff and, of course, she asked the less common ones.
Also the problem is in the student’s part, nobody complains about this so nobody solves it.
Well, this is one of the reasons that makes me want to leave this country.
PD: Sorry but I couldn’t answer before.
@Sergio – Well, I’m glad to see you share my opinion. Things in Spain are starting to change though… more and more “English Conversation Classes” are starting to replace grammar classes.