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Teach English in Renhekou Zhen - Ankang Shi

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As a part of my TEFL course in Prague, I attended a two-session, 3-hour long Farsi language lesson to experience how students might feel learning a completely new and foreign language. As complete beginners in Farsi, we were not required to learn the Persian script. Instead, we were taught the basics using romanised alphabets. Although this was meant to simplify the learning process, the pronunciation for Farsi words were still very different compared to my first language, English. There were also significant differences in terms of cognates. There are certain prefixes and suffixes that have to be kept to when referring to the first and second, singular and plural subjects respectively. We attended Farsi lessons with the goal of developing an understanding towards learners of a foreign language different from their native tongue. Personally, I felt that the lessons were successful, as I understood the contents of the lesson without using any external materials. The lesson was initially conducted with the teacher translating basic greetings from Farsi to English. We then requested for her to teach only in Farsi to better understand how our future learners might feel when attending a new language class for the first time. Repetition also influenced my positive experience in learning basic Farsi. The teacher modeled the basic phrases for self-introductions and repeated the exercise with each student. We then worked in pairs for the same exercise. I felt that repetition reinforced my learning, and speaking out loud gave the teacher a chance to correct our pronunciation. Some monolingual students were visibly frustrated or confused during parts of the lesson, especially for words that had no direct translation into English. For example, the phrase “befarmaayiid” has the general definition of “please”, but we were told that it could be used in more than one context: to signal “after you” or “here you go” amongst others, depending on the situation. “Lotfan” also means “please”, and it is used as a polite addition to request (i.e. Can I have coffee with milk, please? – Lotfan, yek kahve baa shiir.) It took us some time to confirm the definition of “befarmaayiid” and some monolingual students were adamant in finding out the English equivalent of the word before moving on. This might also be due to the fact that the teacher’s native language was not English, so she spent some time trying to think of an English word with a similar meaning. However, I noticed that students, who were proficient in languages from different language families, including myself, were more understanding and agreed that it is normal for a language to have different nuances and knowing the different context for the usage of words like these was sufficient for us. We eventually persevered and completed the lessons, but it was obvious that some enjoyed it more than others. Overall, it seemed that most monolingual students faced more difficulties in learning Farsi than the multilingual students. The teacher’s main form of presenting the language was through speech. We repeated the phrases on greetings and self-introductions through speaking with the teacher and with other students. The teacher later gave us a gap-fill exercise on the same theme, and we were also asked to create our own dialogues with the exercise as a guide. As we progressed during the lesson, new lexis was introduced and we started to learn about the different suffixes at the end of each pronoun. However, due to the lack of space on the board, the teacher was unable to write every new word on the board as she did not erase the sentences on self-introduction, which all of us have already copied into our notebooks. This left some of us rather confused, as we relied on both spelling and verbal repetition from the teacher to remember and pronounce the words. Students who weren’t engaged or were falling behind were also unable to retrieve the new lexis at a later time since it wasn’t written on the board. This is something that I would not do if I was a teacher, especially if I’m teaching a group of students, as different students learn in different speeds. Teaching English as a foreign language could mean that the learners are being exposed to a completely new language for the first time. From this experience, I’ve learnt that effective boardwork, modelling, repetition and gestures were essential for beginners. Gesturing allows students to infer what the teacher is trying to say without having to resort to explaining it in their native languages. However, that might not be enough, as we have experienced with Farsi. Writing new lexis on the board provides students with a reference point to what the teacher was saying, as students might not be fully engaged all the time. Similarly, modelling from the teacher and doing repetitive practice also helped. Although it has been five days since the lessons, I still remember the basic phrases that we learnt from the two lessons. Having learnt more than one foreign language, I understood that it is inevitable that some words or phrases cannot be simply translated due to cultural and contextual nuances. However, not all my classmates behaved the same. This might mean that as a teacher, I might experience the same frustration from my future monolingual students.


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