How many students does it take to teach English?

Hey, this is Anya and I’m going to talk about teaching. For those of you who don’t know, the summer English course that we set up is completely new. We have never done anything like this and really weren’t sure what to expect.  We started with 30 students, ages 13-44, who got divided into three groups based on a diagnostic test.  We expected that some of the students would dropout or stop coming because who really wants to do English grammar for three+ hours everyday over summer vacation? Apparently the answer to this question is: the students of Terceira. Not a single student has dropped out and since the first day we have actually added 6 people!  There is a lot of work that goes into the lessons (roughly an hour of planning for every hour of teaching) but I think it is definitely worth it. The students that I am teaching are beginners and while they have had some exposure to English, they still don’t know all the basics. At times it is difficult to work with beginners because we don’t speak Portuguese but we manage to find creative ways to teach them the new vocabulary sometimes relying on pictures or charades.  I really admire the students’ commitment to learning English.  When we asked them why they wanted to learn English many of them have told us that they want to be doctors, work in tourism, be journalists or travel. I have a newfound appreciation for anyone who manages to learn English as a second language because it is much more challenging than I ever realized.  Some of the biggest challenges so far are with pronunciation.  They have a lot of trouble making the “th” sound so that is something we practice daily.  Also, today they had difficulty distinguishing between “this” and “these” so we will be doing more work on that tomorrow.

In summary, I love the internship.  I wish that we had some sort of grant so that we could have more materials for the school, but again this is only the first year so that is something that next year’s group should certainly look into.  I also really love the island and the other people on the trip.  Life here feels much slower paced than in the US so it will be quite an adjustment to go back to the states.