At Bumayong Secondary School in 1994, I was given the grade 9 classes for writing skills. Assessment for grade 10 started in grade 9.
This was where I started to learn to teach English to PNG students. I mastered the process of teaching English at Busu High School. I found basic problems for teachers and students.
(1) Many students could not write a sentence in English and (2) Most could not write an essay as they had little knowledge about anything. If given an essay to write in class, many would write only two sentences in half an hour and then suck their biros for the rest of the time.
I used to bring my portable TV into class and show movies from the video shop or reports from TV "Sixty Minutes". That was the old days. Then we would write essays that were assessed, polished and rewritten.
The following year, I was given another batch of grade 9 students who were given the same treatment. The students from the previous year went to grade 10 reinforced by the writing skills they had already mastered.
One day I was sitting in the staff room beside my teacher friend Jocelyn who was correcting essays. I picked up an essay book and the student was given zero mark out of 10. It was a polished essay from the previous year.
I asked the teacher why such a low mark. She said it was copied from a book. I was pleased to tell her that it was an essay that had been polished from my class.
The essay was sweet and perfect and would help the student gain a distinction in the coming grade 10 exam.
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