These last few days we've gotten quite a few compliments, which has been encouraging. Last week, within two days, we got compliments from 3 different people on our language. We're feeling like we can do more than simply speak for real, not just the basic phrases. We are using helping words, prefixes, and suffixes! After a few discouraging classes with one of our language teachers (two different teachers switch off), Angela and I were talking how we thought our money was being wasted on the class. The one teacher always demands, but really (at least we feel) doesn't teach very well. On top of that, he is finishing up his thesis, so his mind is always preoccupied. We decided we liked the other teacher better (who is actually the "less-experienced" teacher) because we feel he creates a learning environment. Yesterday we had class, and the night was great. We really felt revived in our desire to learn language and encouraged as our teacher complimented our progress (after the other teacher had made indirect comments that we were learning slowly). We think that in a few months we will really be speaking much better.
At school, I am teaching an advanced level of English, so my students are pretty proficient. I am teaching a more skills based class (i.e. I concentrate on teaching reading, writing, speaking, and listening rather than teaching from the book). One of the activities we have done is writing a script and recording a video. After a little problem with offending some of the friends of the people in our class (basically they didn't think we should be acting a kidnapping because that is not acceptable in their culture). Anyway, that got smoothed over, and we finished the video. To conclude the assignment, I asked each student to write their opinions on the movie, etc. One student wrote the following paragraph as his conclusion:
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I am teaching Level 9 right now. Angela taught these same students in Level 8. What an encouragement!
