Profile of the day

Tuesdays are my heavy teaching days. I teach sixty young Omanis over three different lessons and what I like most is the different things that can happen out of the blue. Some of them are good, some of them extremely annoying.

My D4 class are pretty difficult to keep motivated. The class is dominated by a few characters who are easily bored and have no qualms about letting me know just how bored they are. To make Telephone Skills a little more interesting, I downloaded a couple of youtube videos of some Korean students role-playing a conversation. I thought it would be nice for them to see that the language I'm teaching them is used by people all over the world. The response from one student was that she was bored, didn't like the video and that it wasn't fun to do. Part of being a good teacher is recognising when things don't work and changing them accordingly. I took her feedback on board an altered the next lesson accordingly but she irritated me by blurting it out like that. Rest assured she is now filed under 'rude little bugger' which will do her no favours in the coming weeks. What is becoming more and more apparent with this class is that they expect me to 'entertain' them for an hour and forty minutes. I do try and make things as interesting as I can by introducing multimedia and games into the lesson and when I don't, they think they're being cheated.

TG2 are a different kettle of fish. They don't need entertained; they are at college to learn and they love doing so. They are generally quite a serious bunch but are very easy to get along with and are extremely respectful and polite. Aside from the coursework that needs to be covered, they like just learning things about culture and language by chatting away (especially Ali, pictured), and vice-versa on my part. Today, I was telling them about 'portmanteaus' and managed to get them to show me how to write shukmabrook - shukran (thankyou) and mabrook (congratulations) - in Arabic. "Teacher, don't play with our language" was the response from Ahmed, delivered with a little smirk.

D1, my last class on Tuesdays, are a delight; a great bunch of clever, bright, sparky, witty students. As a lesson 'warmer' (a short activity that doesn't have to be connected to anything in particular) I showed them the youtube clip of Susan Boyle on Britain's Got Talent. (I'd never heard of that show until today which probably shows how hideously out of touch I am with all things UK). The reaction was pretty much the same as the audience in the clip, and three of the girls were actually crying at the end of it!

Three classes, three very different types of student. By and large, I'm really grateful for the opportunities in my life that have led to me being able to stand up in front of a class and deliver a lesson in Oman. It's certainly not something that just anyone can do...

...although a quick shifty at the astronomically high levels of retardation in the teachers' room is slowly sapping me of that viewpoint.