Mr (present) Perfect and Mr (past) Simple

I had two 1-hr lessons this week. The first a grammar lesson, on present perfect simple VS past simple. Oh god. The prep had my brains in knots – for days prior to that I was wrecking my brain planning the lesson, sleeping at 2am accompanied by Mr PPS and Mr PS. It didn’t go too well – well, the students got it and all, but course-wise I forgot to do what we’re expected to do - concept-checking, drills etc. plus, I TALK TOO DARN MUCH. that was a Bad Lesson Day, and luckily (tak baik aku) everyone’s had one so far.

The second one rawks! This time it’s a skills-based lesson on listening and speaking, and the theme was the environment and being green. Alhamdullillah I’ve done this theme like every year for every level I’ve taught back home. And I tapped on student’s experiences – I got gunawan (a civil engineering lecturer back home) to share what he knows of the Sidoarjo mudflow environmental disaster with the class. And this time, there was less of me talking – I had to physically put a finger on my lip to stop my big mouth from talking and butting in their discussion. And boy did they talk today. Gunawan was in his elements talking abt indonesia’s (almost futile) efforts to prevent deforestation, Lily shared China’s baby-steps in green practices (“But it’s hard…we have too many people”), and even Keigo ventured beyond his polite nods and smiles by telling us how in japan they really sort out their rubbish into categories. And Marwa rolled her eyes and with a sardonic smile said “In Lebanon we never recycle. And pollution is everywhere.”

I must say it was interesting how for this particular lesson/theme, our arab friends (Saudi and dubai) were for once rather muted. Apparently it’s an alien thing to them, both in terms of vocabulary and practices. They’ve never heard of the word ‘recycle’. Go figure.

In one of our post-mortem discussions, we talked about how should we respond to potentially sensitive situations. In her lesson, Jo asked the students to talk about where their countrymen usually go for holidays. Shekhan from Kurdistan partnered Huong from Vietnam.

Huong: Shekhan says, in Kurdistan, people do not go abroad because their country is having war.

Poor Jo had to make her repeat that a few times due to the mispronounced 'war'.

Shekhan: Huong says that Vietnam people want to go other countries for holidays but cannot because they don't have money.

Whoa..how do you respond to that? We came up with “Well, we’re really happy to have you here with us.” Boleh?

I realize that being a non-native speaker-teacher, my ears seem to be more tuned to thick foreign accents, and making out what the students are trying to say. probably being singaporean/malay/muslim exposes us to more diverse nationalities/cultures/tongues. Hence I could explain to Cynthia why the class did not really warm up and share her enthusiasm when she started off a lesson on accepting/refusing invitations with booze, gig and BYOB party. it might have worked better if she had a class of fellow brazilians.

2 more weeks to go.

meanwhile Baba and Ilhan's bonding time of movies and kitchen-adventures continues...:)