First of all, I feel like I am always the last person to know what is going on. On Mondays I am supposed to teach 4 classes, so this Monday I woke up and got ready to leave for the campus. As I was putting on my shoes before leaving, my host mother (also a lecturer at the university) looked puzzled and asked where I was going. Apparently Monday was still a vacation day! I'm not complaining too much, I mean- it was nice to have a free day- but if I had known I could have at least slept in a little bit.
On Tuesdays and Thursdays, I am teaching at a boarding house affiliated with the university. I told them I had those days free, so they asked me to teach 2 classes from 6:45-9:30 in the morning. I couldn't think of a good enough excuse to ask for a later time, so I have been sucking it up and waking up at 5 AM. I wasn't sure what to expect going in, but I really think I will enjoy teaching there the most. The room where I teach is smaller and the air conditioner actually seems to function properly so I don't have to worry about my pit stains and B.O. all the time. On Tuesdays, I teach English speaking to college sophomores for an hour, and also to college juniors for an hour and a half. It's for some sort of engineering program, so it's all guys. I was pleasantly surprised with the small class size- about 10 students each, and their willingness to speak up and learn. So far, most of my students at the university won't speak in front of me unless I force them to, so I came up with an activity where the students would get into small groups and discuss different questions with each other. I was surprised when they started looking at each other like they didn't want to get into groups, and one of them asked if we could just discuss things as a big group so that they could get feedback from me about their ideas. The class discussion flowed very smoothly, and when I told the students some of my ideas for future classes, they seemed excited and willing to participate in the kind of activities I suggested. The next class also went really smoothly. I'm not nervous when there's such a small number of students in the class, and nearly all of them were willing to speak without too much pushing on my part.
I'm glad things went well on Tuesday, because Wednesday really made me question my abilities as a teacher. On Wednesdays, I'm at the university, which means classes of 30+ students. There is a white board in the room, but there's no projector so I can't use anything from my computer for the class. There's a textbook for the course that I can take material from, but the students don't have it, and if I want to make copies, I have to pay for it myself (and I have 180 students...). This has been frustrating for me while writing lesson plans, because I feel like I am so limited in what I can do. I only teach 2 classes (same subject- English Speaking I) to freshmen on Wednesdays, and both of them went the same way. I try to start each class out with a warm-up question so the students can start talking right away to people around them. The question of the day was simple-- just asking everyone what they did during the holiday/vacation time. They all mumbled quietly to each other, but when I asked for volunteers to share something with the class, everyone tried really hard not to make eye contact with me, and the room got really quiet. I tried encouraging them-- telling them how impressed I was with their level of English during the first class, and that practicing will help them improve even more. That failed, so I tried a bit of a different approach, explaining that this class is their chance to practice English and get better, and it's their loss if they refuse to speak during class. I also reminded them that daily participation is a part of their grades. In each class, this got one person to speak up, but that's all. It threw my lesson plans all out of whack too, because I had a certain amount of time set for the warm-up activity, and I also wanted students to contribute ideas during the presentation of the lesson (about starting/ending conversation) so it wouldn't be a boring lecture, but I couldn't get more than a word or two out of the students. I asked all of them to come up with dialogues with a partner and I made every single person present their dialogue, because otherwise no one would say anything. Does anyone have any ideas for getting the students to speak up? Or any ideas for creative lessons that would get students excited about speaking? It really tires me out to have to constantly push my students to speak up.
Thursdays are similar to Tuesdays at the boarding house, except that I teach English speaking to freshman for an hour, and academic writing to juniors for 1 1/2 hours. The group of freshmen is a bit bigger (18 students) and they are dead silent or mumble something in Indonesian, even when I ask them yes/no questions. But the academic writing class went really well. I came up with a really basic lesson just to see how comfortable the students are in structuring paragraphs and writing in English, and it was way too easy for them. It makes me excited to come up with more challenging things that will really stretch them and help them improve their writing.
As for making friends: I'm working on it, but it's hard to be patient. I hang out with my host brother sometimes, and he has been really nice about giving me rides places. There are also some younger lecturers in the English department that I've become friends with. One of them took me to try some traditional Indonesian food in a special street lined with food stalls that's a really popular place. The other one ate lunch with me the other day and took me to a Padang restaurant, Sumatran style food like beef rendang (beef simmered in coconut milk and spices) and jackfruit curry. It's nice to not eat lunch alone like I did every day during Ramadhan because everyone was fasting. Anyway, today I was invited by one of my students to go see the Kraton, or the palace of the royal family in Solo (which still exists and lives there). It's a popular tourist destination and I hadn't been yet, so I took him up on the offer. He works there part-time restoring old texts written in Javanese script. That means I sort of got the inside tour and held a 300 year-old book handwritten by an old Javanese king. I was so afraid I would drop it on accident, but luckily it is still in tact.
The street food hub of Solo: (it's only so empty because it had just rained)
Me outside the Kraton (I'm wearing a rented sarong because it's required...)
An offering at the Kraton, where traditional Javanese mysticism is still strongly believed/practiced
Me being a tourist
This weekend, I will be meeting up with old friends/teachers in Yogya. The same study abroad program that I did in Bali has now expanded to include a trip to Java as part of the coursework. This means that my old teachers/program directors are in Yogya right now with the new group of students studying abroad. I am so excited to go see a few familiar faces and go to some of my favorite places in Yogya.
Also, I'm in a reading rut again. I need some suggestions for good books to read that are available on kindle!!
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Hi -- I'm Anton's wife Beth. I've never taught English as a second language, but I'm a speech comm graduate, and I might have some ideas to help, because fear of public speaking is a problem amongst English speakers too.
ReplyDeleteI'm not sure how practical this idea is in a big class (although you could break up in groups): gather in a circle and toss a ball, when a person catches it they have to say something along a particular theme (foods, adjectives, whatever). It's not meant to teach so much as to get people comfortable with speaking. Tossing the ball to other people (and catching it!) gives a distraction from the discomfort of speaking aloud (if that makes sense) -- kind of like if the doctor wiggles his fingers against your skin when giving you a shock. You pay attention to the wiggle instead of the prick of the needle. Your paying so much attention to the ball and whether or not it's your turn, you don't worry so much about talking.
Another idea might be reading children's poetry aloud to make people more comfortable with speaking to the group. That sort of literature is generally simple and humorous. I could email some to you if you'd like. There are poems short enough that you could just write them on the white board instead of somehow typing them up, printing them out and making expensive photocopies.
I'm sorry if these ideas don't help. I figure there's always a chance brainstorming can help though, and even if these aren't good ideas maybe they'll inspire something for you. With good wishes!
Beth,
ReplyDeleteThanks so much for all of the suggestions. I am really new at this, so any new ideas are definitely helpful for me. I think I might be able to work the ball idea into an activity for my class, and I think they would enjoy it. More suggestions are always welcome!
-Erica