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Teach English in Gaoluo Zhen - Jinzhong Shi

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I had an opportunity to learn French for twelve months before going to university in the Democratic Republic of Congo. I learnt French with two Filipinos, a Kenyan and a Tanzanian. The classes were divided according to the professor’s field of speciality. One taught us grammar while the other taught us phonetics. The biggest advantage we had was that the teachers had no clue of English, which meant that our interaction with them was purely in French or sign language. These interactions forced most of us to read or to always carry a French-English dictionary around, just in case we had a need and in turn learning the French language on a general level much faster. The disadvantage was that interaction among ourselves, as students, was in English at every opportunity, either in class or outside of it. Which in turn became a counter productive measure on our French progress as a group and a barrier to our individual learning abilities. Our mixed backgrounds came along with mixed learning abilities as well. We were never on the same level after each lesson. I would read ahead and come to class ready to learn and progress, only to realise that one of my classmates was lagging behind. This used to frustrate me a lot because I felt that the teacher was more sympathetic with the slow learners and less sympathetic with the fast ones. The teacher was also, to an extent, lost on how to deal with such scenarios. His classes were always well prepared and he seemed to insist on finishing his schedule knowing very well that some of the students struggled all the way. He was rigid and stuck to his lesson plans and was much happier with having achieved his lesson target, than he was with our progress as a class. This made the classes less and less interesting for me, since I knew I was going to listen to the professor’s monologue. This in turn increased my desire to learn on my own and the same was true for most of my classmates. This caused a huge rift within the class between the fast learners and the slow ones and also between the class at large and the teacher trying to race to finish his syllabus. All this affected the atmosphere of the class and made learning French more difficult than imagined. With the rapport between the teacher and class having been eroded, the classes became dull and very little learning was taking place. However, the homework we were given made us to gather together to do it since we all needed each other’s help, which was another advantage of classes of mixed abilities. It meant we could revise our work, correct one another and learn the language as a group away from the classroom which was more understandable and simplified once explained by a fellow student. It also made remembering the language much easier after l had explained certain concepts to my colleagues. At the end of the French course, we had learnt the language and fulfilled the hours needed for one to obtain a certificate. The struggles we had, especially with the fundamentals of French grammar continued with us through out university. In my own opinion, we could have benefited more if the teacher understood the importance of building a rapport with his students and most importantly, if he knew how to teach a class with mixed learning abilities. After university, I became a teacher in a religious institution, where I’m currently teaching introductory courses to philosophy and other religious studies. I teach mixed classes from different nationalities and definitely different learning abilities. The advantage now is that we all know and use a common language, English, thus the progress can be easily measured. The disadvantage is that it’s really hard to strike a balance between fast learners and slow ones. The bigger temptation is to want to work only with the fast ones and let the slow ones catch up. I realise that this affects the atmosphere of the class. The greatest challenge in teaching classes with mixed learning abilities is that the institution wants us (teachers) to cover certain materials, at the end of a certain period of time, which puts me in a dilemma of choosing how to model the lessons either according to the fast ones or slow ones or to risk disrupting the learning process of the students and abide by the stringent rules of the institution and focus on completing the syllabus with little learnt by the students. In conclusion, I feel that all these challenges of classes of mixed abilities can be easily over come by placing students in different groups according to their learning abilities during lessons and mixing them up for group discussions while paying close attention to how they relate to each other so that we can avoid making certain students feel inferior and others over confident. Im aware this division according to abilities might demand more resources in terms of personnel or structures or even finances but this can eventually strike some sort of learning balance, for both the students and the teacher.


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