Thursday 1 September 2011

TEACHING STUDENTS TO FLY IN ENGLISH

I was an English teacher in Bumayong High (1993-1994) and Busu High (1995). In both schools I was given the grade 9 English classes for a good reason. This was the grade in which the internal assessment started for the grade 10 exam.

Both grades were not good at written or spoken English. A basic problem was that they knew very little about the world.

I had a TV set at the house with a cassette in the top, the latest for 1993. Each Sunday, I would tape the best report from 60 Minutes. On Monday mornings, the TV would be set up in both class rooms and we would watch, discuss and write a summary.

That would last about 3 days. In the end, they wrote a long report that took about 30 minutes to write. They were already familiar with the new words.

That report was collected, corrected and edited. Their job was then to re-write and polish. That process was repeated in the year with about 30 reports from 60 Minutes.

A few weeks after each report, students would be given the task of rewriting the report in their own words to a time limit. This was preparation for the Written Expression exam in August.

Their standard of writing, general knowledge and confidence lifted. The Head master told me later that this group gained the greatest number of Distinctions and Credits in the Grade 10 exam of all time.

If I went back to teaching English, I would find a portable video player and bring into class the DVDs of the Discovery Channel. Students would soon be experts in pyramids, Napoleon, whales, Charles Darwin, tuna breeding migrations, Incas, Galapagos turtles, Titanic and many more. Then they would talk and write on the facts and issues involved.

The following year after grade 9 at Bumayong High, I was sitting in the tea room with the grade 10 English teacher. She had a pile of essay books for her students from the year before. I asked to look at the work.

The essay on the top of the pile had the English teacher say the student would not receive a mark as the essay had obviously been copied from a book.

I was pleased to explain that this was an essay that she had polished and repolished the year before. It seemed to have been given a further polish. The students was then given top marks.

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