saturday english classes

2 saturdays ago at the convent, my sister was complaining that her group of children is lazy and doesnt learn anything. I am convinced that an intelligent student can learn from even the worst teacher with abit of motivation and initiative, but these children lack these two qualities and are rather lazy. In situations such as these, it is important that the teacher motivates the students and makes them want to learn. I do not think the reason my students are the best at english is because of me, i think it is because they WANT to improve and persevere untill they do so. When i told my sister this, she told me to take her group and to test them the next week on what i had taught them the previous week and she guaranteed that they would have forgotten.

So..i took her class. I told her what i had been teaching my students-how to conjugate regular verbs in the present tense, and told her to carry on with that. I went to her group and sure enough, they didnt know half of the letters of the alphabet. So as not to overwhelm them, i taught them a, b, c, A, B and C. This may seem simple but as they write in sinhalese and tamil, the characters are completely different and one cannot decipher the sound of an english character by linking the shape to a sinhalese/tamil one and that characters sound. Also, sinhalese and tamil are phonetic.

Last week i taught the children where to use capital letters as in sinhalese and tamil there is no such thing.

My goal is to teach them the whole alphabet and get them to start speaking enlgish more. By the end of the year i hope my group can write in sentences using verbs and my new group can immediately recognise a letter and which form it is in (capital or simple) when shown one. I also want them to be able to write a little.



Me helping them to read: