One of my favorite English students asked me over and over if I would please come to his English club. He even came to visit me at home with a member of his club to convince me to skip church on a Sunday morning and go to their English club instead. I finally agreed to go. He said that the club would be 2 hours long and I could observe and then they’d be interested to hear what I thought of it, and they wanted to let the club members ask me questions at the end if that would be ok with me.
I took a taxi across town to a high school complex, and I found my student setting up a classroom. He had me sit in front, facing the desks. The club members came in and I was announced as the honored guest for the morning. They really treated me like a celebrity or something, it was kind of strange. At the end they all wanted to get pictures taken with me. Someone commented that he was really impressed with my accent and really liked how I pronounced words in English. How funny is that?
The leaders of the club took turns leading different activities – a grammar lesson, a short reading, discussion of 2 proverbs, a short skit, ect. I really enjoyed the fact that although none of them was “fluent” in English, they took what they knew and shared it with those wanting to learn. Finally, with a solid 20 minutes left to go, I was asked to stand up and talk with the students. I introduced myself and then opened it up to questions. They asked a lot of different questions, but the ones I found the most interesting were about language learning. I encouraged them to keep up their learning and practice in the club, to find English language music and movies, to keep working at it every day, and to allow themselves to make mistakes along the way. Someone asked if I could share the “secret” to learning a language. I sure wish I knew some magical secret that could help me in my own language learning! I don’t think there is a secret, it’s a process, something that you just have to keep working at.
LIKE! :)
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