Ah yes, after the mountaintop, there's always a valley...

SATURDAY 19^th March

Well there you go... after the high of teaching a great class last night, tonight I scored a class of non-cooperative, belligerent teenagers- mostly girls. It was a battle of wills to get them to do anything and the lesson was just horrible. I will have to pray for some strategies to counteract the power struggle. Silly thing is, they can do the written work so easily, but their speaking is not up to scratch. Maybe next time I have to teach them I’ll tell them to do all the bookwork in the first 20 minutes, then come up with a variety of activities that are not in the book... I just need to get them to do what I say without arguing! The CD player in the room wasn’t working tonight so I had the students read the script from my manual, but one girl declared that she was going to read the boy’s part and the boy was going to read the girl’s part. She was quite prepared to argue with me till I told her she could either do what she’s told or leave the room. She did comply churlishly, but that sort of confrontation leaves such an unpleasant atmosphere. And when I tried to get them playing a game, it took a ridiculously long time just to get them all out of their seats and lined up!  When the game finally got under way, they loved it!!!  AAARRGH.... teenage girls....

But then I had a new adults beginners class, who are delightful. Their spoken English is very poor, but they have an amazing written vocabulary. We played a game where they took turns to write any word beginning with particular letters of the alphabet, the longer the word, the more points they scored and these guys wrote words like application, manoeuvrability and navigation!!!    (Some of them must come from the Maritime College...) yet they can’t yet put together a few simple sentences with understandable pronunciation.  They will go ahead in leaps and bounds because they are so teachable.

Oh yes, and the thing that made today special was that we woke up to SUNSHINE!! It was a gorgeous day. When I walked to work at 4pm there was a really festive atmosphere on the streets... lots of people about, and especially lots of little children (who have been confined indoors during the rainy spell). The sun was still shining on the upper storeys of the buildings along the street and it was warm.  Now at midnight it’s cold again, which wont be a bother as soon as I go to bed!