A few personal lessons from an Elementary and an Advance class.

Since returning from the Christmas holidays I have been fortunate enough to widen the range of levels that I have been teaching. As such I now have taught all the way from Elementary to Advance as well as some children's groups and some business classes. I would certainly say that this has helped me understand the differences between all the levels and helped with grading my language across all the levels [or un-grading in the case of Advance]. 

I have noticed some interesting things about learning styles that I want to comment upon here.

1. Advance students can recognise, understand when to use and know how to construct a certain grammar point and yet still avoid using it. 

I covered some Advance groups that were experiencing problems with using conditionals. To start my lesson I decided to test how much they knew and so asked them some questions about their dreams goals, how they would achieve them etc to get them to use conditionals. Some of these students came up with very complicated ways to avoid using conditionals and only a couple [across 3 classes] seamed to use them naturally. 

However when it came to stating the grammar, the rules, the structures etc the students had no problem. I then asked them to use conditionals to talk about  the questions we had previously covered and they set to the task with enthusiasm. 

By the next lesson I found out that they were still avoiding using conditionals and that in fact they didn't recognise some of the more complicated forms. As such the challenge of getting students to use grammar points continues.

2. Confidence is important

I had a class of elementary students who were going over questions and short form responses for "where are you from?" and similar questions regarding country and nationality.

One student started of very enthusiastically and could remember the different nationalities very well but did confuse some countries with nationalities [i.e German/Germany]. However later on in the class she made a mistake with nationality and country, I pointed out the mistake and the difference between the two to her on her own. She lost confidence, changed some of her correct answers and then asked many other students what the answer was and didn't believe their answers frequently saying "I don't understand nothing" in Russian. 

Because of her lack of confidence she didn't believe she did anything right and found it very hard to continue learning. I've certainly learnt an important lesson about being more careful over instant feedback to a student and insuring I install confidence in my students over their abilities.

What would you like to know?

Do you have a burning question about the Ukraine? Russian language? Something about me perhaps? then ask it bellow and I shall answer it via some form of media. You can choose to get a video response using Vyou or get a text via Formspring or a full blogged response using the comments section. 

So come on. ask me a question.

A quick reflection and update: 21/02/2011

Today's blog shall be very short as I have a few writing activities that I must do. These included the first of my International House Young learners course, A guest Blog post...well sort of. [more to be revealed later] an online training course, AND I need to do my regular planning as well. This is part of the reason for the brevity of the post today and will simply be a little update with some thoughts.

Work has become much more time consuming and the fact the office is further away from my house means that I end up spending the whole day out of the class [and I now have every day from 8-8 apart from Monday when I finish at 6:30.]

The weekend once again flew by with several highlights [not the basketball this week though!] including an amazing lunch with the other teachers, inventing a new Russian word [when trying to ask for the spiciest chilli a man had] and a very good sermon [once again] at Nadesda church.

I still haven't done the video I said I would and I am contemplating removing videos from my aims, I shall continue to reflect on this though.

The month is nearly over! This means I only have four months left on my contract! Where has the time gone!

Mobile internet can be really slow.

Hopefully the next post will be longer and more thought out. please comment or ask me a question.

Why are words embarrassing?

As you may have seen from my 2011 years aims I am trying to write a song a month for the year to recap on my previous passion for writing songs. One of the things I have finally got round to using is a moleskin music notebook that my sister gave me as a present a few years back. I haven't used it until now as it is note based and most things I had wrote were chord and lyrically based and so I didn't need to use it. However recently I realised I could still use it for this in addition to normal note writing as such I have started carrying it around with me in the hope of capturing a moments inspiration.
During a class a student noticed my notebook and asked what it was, I had no problems explaining what it was and felt completely comfortable about him looking through at the notes that had been scribbled in place. What struck me was that if I had written some lyrics in this book then I would have hated him looking through it! For some reason my words embarrass me.
As you may remember this isn't unique to song lyrics it is also present in my blog post and I frequently feel uneasy knowing friends have read what I have written and are dissecting ever word I put down in a post.
What compounds this strangeness of this situation is that really, words are even the most common from of communication we have. What we DO actually reveals a lot about ourselves, what we value, and what we think about issues and people.
So why are words so embarrassing?

Seven Signs Advert

My good friend Andrew Brims [over on Brimming over blog] is starting a new Vlog series next week. I whole recommend it.

Speak to me

One of the greatest things in blogging is when someone comments on something you have written. It shows that this person hasn't dropped on your blog, realised they have made a mistake and then left without even reading what you put.

Unfortunately I have never really been blessed by an abundance of comments on this blog, I did have some minor success when I was on wordpress and blogging about political things, but since the move over to blogger and changing the main topic of post there has been a rapid reduction in the amount of comments I have received on here.

So I want to encourage you to write comments. I don't care if they are literally just to mention that you read the post or if they completely disagree with everything I have written but please do write.

Or if you don't fancy writing a comment but would rather ask me a question then you can choose to ask a quick text based question [with text response] or a text message and a video response using the appropriate service bellow.

I love speaking foreign languages

If you know me pretty well then you will realise just how strange the statement I am about to make is....

I enjoy learning/speaking foreign languages.

I'm not sure exactly how this happened as it never use to be true. At school I found French frustrating and frequently skipped German lesson by fanning regular illness [how NO one seamed to pick up on my regular Tuesday and Thursday stomach aches really is beyond me!]. Of course this was no doubt compounded by the difficulties I faced being dyslexic (though I don't use this as an excuse).

However since starting to teach English an incredible metamorphosis has occurred to bring me to the point of saying the statement above.

I suppose I had always enjoyed finding out the routes of words and debating post-modern logic of relative meanings of words for individuals rather than a fixed abstract truth [a position which I still hold to, though there are general rules]. At the same time I had also always enjoyed learning about people from different background and finding out about people and so I suppose being able to communicate in their language allows for this possibility to occur. In fact, If I hadn't learnt Russian whilst I was out here, then the circle of people I could communicate with (and the level) would be very limited indeed.

The moment of true realisation came when I saw that on facebook some of my friends had set "languages" as one of their interests and I started to think. At first my gut reaction was "Urrrg" and then as I thought I realised that I do love to speak in foreign languages and have in fact tried to revive my German and French [and even learnt some very basic Spanish] whilst I've been out here!

and so I will say it again.

I love learning and speaking foreign languages

2011 Aims: January update

Here it is, update number 1 for the new years aims 2011. How have I done this month

1.I will give at least a 10% tithe in addition to any other giving I will do.

Decembers was given away and January shall hopefully be given as soon as I am paid it. 

2. Making Prayer a stronger habit. 

As usually there has been success and failure here, I have noticed some great improvements and some great failures. I could go into great length over the details of these success and failures but I think it would be better to focus on next months goals. I will put a picture of the city up on my wall to focus prayer on. I will use meal times as a focus for prayer. When ever I have a meal I will use that to thank God for providing all my food/needs and for his Son.

3.Use skype more to chat to people back home/Britain

There has been a noticeable increase in Skype activity but this has mainly been with people based in other countries actually! I am not complaining and for this to be fully successful it partially relies on people from England being on Skype. As such for next month I have already arrange a couple of "skype dates" (as I have heard them called) and will try and arrange a few more soon with some different people than last month. 

4.  I will improve as an EFL teacher.

The young learners course has continued and I have an upcoming assignment for it! In addition I have started my "teaching methodolgy and the church" series which aims to lay out a post on EFL teaching methodology [or an aspect of it] and then apply it to teaching in a church. This should help cement my understanding of EFL methodology

5. I will improve my Russian.

I have increased the amount that I have been practising with people around me. A particular highlight of the month has been using Inductive logic to work out why I had heard a different case being used than I expected. I suddenly remembered that on other occasions I had also used this case there as well in sentences which I also didn't understand why I was using it. All of a sudden it made sense.
In addition to this I have finally worked my way through one of my Russian language CD sets [completely] and so now I am going to start a second. As for devoting time to study... the start of the month didn't really see this occur though there has been an increase as the month has warn on. It is still not to the level I would like and this is something I shall have to push forward with more.

6. I will write more songs.

Well this month it wasn't really a song I wrote and it is an old one I wrote a while ago but I'm just warming up.

In addition the second months song has started development though is going to be a bit different.

7. Host a weekly meal at my flat.

Not achieved this since I've been back. I have however cooked my [almost signature dish now] Chicken and Chorizo Paella which was received well and I am trying to figure out a new dish to become an expert at as well. 

8. Regular and higher quality blogging.

Despite a shaky start I have managed to get at least a post on Monday and Friday...with the exception of last week. My favourite of the month has to be on teaching methodolgy.

9. I will get involved with some form of charitable work in the Ukraine.

This has been the most disappointing failure of the month. I honestly think I have put in very little effort in the search. Writing this post has however promoted me to search online again for some charities. It has raised the question about whether it is good to just get involved with any old charity or perhaps I should be more picky? what criteria should I use to distinguish this with? Basically I should have thought about this more before writing it!

10. I will make a Public video each month
Unfortunately my initial idea for a video failed to emerge this month, However one has been recorded and now needs to be uploaded [a big problem with slow internet and no internet currently at the school. As such expect it within the next couple of days.

That's the update. As you can see I really didn't do too well with a few things so I'm going to have to put in some extra effort for this month. If you want to offer any help/advice/ideas then please do.