I was partnered with another student to observe a couple of classes today.

The first class only had 2 students. The teacher worked with them on superlatives (words like best, most, worst, least, etc). I think we (observers) learned at least as much as the actual students did. It’s been a very long time since I’ve had an English class, and somehow I really don’t remember them formally teaching us a lot of this stuff.

I’ve been concentrating in class on trying to understand the terminology and the proper uses of words myself. At this point, I think I would probably mislead any students who might ask me to teach them English. Yes, I know how to speak it, but I don’t know why I speak it the way I do. I don’t know how to articulate the rules, I just know them in the back of my mind somewhere and follow them unconsciously.

Our second observation started at 2000. There was only 1 student and he was at a fairly advanced level. This class was much more conversational. The teacher went over how to write formal and informal emails. There was some discussion about proper forms of address, how to open and close the communication as compared to letters (snail mail), etc.

It seemed like the hardest part for the student was getting to clearly understand some of our idioms, like “the more the merrier” for example. Easy to understand his confusion, I have the same issues while trying to understand Spanish.

Classes finished at 2100. Now, I should be doing homework (reading the workbook). It put me to sleep last night. I suppose I should try going to bed earlier. 😉