Oct 1st, 2008, 03:17 am
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| eslHQ Member | | Join Date: Oct 1st, 2008
Posts: 4
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 How do I spruce up my class?
I am teaching 9 adult French speaking students in Brussels. My job is to prepare them to enter the hospitality industry. I have a very mixed level class as in two of my students are native English speakers (!!) and the rest have minimal exposure to the language they range from absolute beginners to false beginners.
I am teaching for now out of the face2face textbook which incoporates a lot of listening, speaking, and some simple text work. Some students in my class are hesitant to do the work. When I ask them to do an excercise I get a lot of sighs and glares. I can also understand *some* french (although not a lot) but enough to know that one student was complaining about me during a spoken excercise "she is sitting there doing nothing, this is not quality" or osmething along those lines (I was actualyl listening to them for mistakes in pronounciation while reviewing notes for the next part of my lesson) I explain grammar rules as they arise but because the class is so low level there are very few to explain right now. I focus mostly on speaking and listening because I only have three months to prepare these students to be somewhat capable at English to work in the hospitality industry.
The problem I have always faced with French speakers (this isn ot the first time I have encountered this problem) is that they want A LOT of theory and minimal practice time and they feel they are getting ripped off if you give them too much practice. They also dislike that I do not speak French. I believe they expcet me to give the lesson in french and the english equivilen. I have taught all levels of people from different backgrounds but I have only encountered these types of problems with french speakers. (I have also taught Flemish speakers who are more than eager to get into discussions and lots of practice time)
I am not sure what I am doing wrong? I have only taught two lessons with them and this is not my first class ever although I wouldn't say I am totally experienced. How can I make teaching froma text book more interesting? How do I appear more engaged witht he students so they do not get the impression that I do nothing? How can I satisfy this seemingly French need for theory overload without getting too theoretical? (what would the point be anyway if they can't understand me??) How do I make them see that I do not need to speak their native language in order to teach English? As for the native English speakers I don't even know what to do with them! They are from Zimbabwe and Ghana, I spoke to the school director (who was also not pleased that I did not speak French) and she said "yes some students have lived in an English speaking country you will need to tailor to them" but how can I improve on native Englishs peaking ability? How do I teach them when the other 7 people require so much more attention?
P.S I am currently teaching out of face2face textbook and once their basic understanding of English is up to speed I will start with the "Highly Recommended" Series which centres around the hospitality industry. |
I think you need not worry about not speaking French, if they feel that they profit from your lessons they will forget about that fact.
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