I haven't talked about what I'm doing here yet, and this is a good time to do so. I just observed classes on Friday and most of Saturday, and I taught my first class on Saturday; however, on Sunday I taught five classes, and tonight I taught two.
The school I work at is a private English school. The classes are during the evenings and on weekends, so this is in addition to regular school classes for the children going there. There are three main groups of children: kinder, for the little ones, about 4-6 years; junior, for the ones that have progressed further, is from 6-9 years; and senior, which is from 9-12 years.
Juniors are probably the easiest to deal with overall. The children in the kinder classes can't do much damage, but they have no attention span either; turn your back and they're out of their seats. The children in senior classes can be absolutely wonderful - a senior class was my best yet - but when they're bad, they're impossible to deal with, and it only takes a couple of bad ones to make the whole class very taxing. Juniors can understand you better than the kinders, they can focus long enough to be able to teach, and even if you get bad ones they're not that hard to deal with.
Tonight didn't go so well - two kinder classes, the first time I've taught that age group. It didn't help that my mind went completely blank, and the Chinese teachers ended up having to take over and do most of the work for my classes. Those were also the only classes I've had the Chinese teachers stay in the room; it was a little disconcerting. Now I know how they must feel when I was observing classes.
I think, though, that with practise, I'll be okay at this. I'm still getting the hang of it, but I'll get there.
Now, about that American English! Not surprisingly, it's American English they teach here. I first realised it when reading the phonetic rendering of a word and at first thinking it was wrong; then realising it was right for American accents. The real surprise, though, was when I held up a flashcard in front of a junior class, and said "tomato" in my New Zealand accent. All the children looked at me like I was crazy! They then started shouting out "to-may-to" to me, and I realised they'd been taught American pronunciations. I corrected myself, but I'm sure it will come up again. I can't remember all the different American pronunciations.
This weird plum liquorice stuff is awesome.
Finally: they have very small oranges over here! Back in Australia, they'd be called mandarins, but that is a language here, not a fruit. Here is a photo of one next to my thumb:
2 comments:
Hey Logan! I'm finally paying attention to this thing. :) I'm glad you're getting along well over there. If you feel fairly comfortable with 3 out of your 4 age groups, I'd say that's an accomplishment.
As for American pronunciations, feel free to ask away... I'm always here to push the not-so-attractive-as-other-accents that is American English.
Still, I wonder, America is a big country... full of quite a few accents in itself. I wonder which they're trying for. ;) hehe
*hugs*
~Suzanne
Egads! You shouldn't "correct" yourself, because the way you speak English is correct, too! I'd let them say "tomayto" if they like, but I think you should say "tomahto." It will show them that if they don't speak English like an American, then that's okay! And, like Suzanne said, there are many different American accents.
One of my very good friends when I worked in Japan (well, my only non-Japanese friend, actually) is Australian, and some of his Japanese teachers give him crap from everything to pronunciation to the way he writes on the board. People ought to know that, since English is a global language, that there are many different variants. He and I discussed it as a good opportunity to make younger kids aware of this. (He teaches mostly in middle schools, but I think he does visit a couple of elementary schools, too.)
Heck, even my close-to-SAE-accent warranted confusion at times because I have a moderate Chicago accent. :)
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