some teachers ask me how i deal with students' fear of making mistakes. i guess it helps not making them make mistakes.
recently i taught 16 year old high school students the sentence "I'm going to watch a movie." i wrote it on the board. the students read it out loud with gusto.
wow, that was too goddamn easy. Azri must think we are a bunch of assholes, in one of the top high schools in the city, and probably the prefecture.
ok, hotshots. next target sentence was "___ ___ watch a movie?" i wrote it on the board. i told them they were asking someone out. i asked for someone, anyone, to fill in the blanks and smother me with their magnificence.
half of them crapped in their pants. a few kids were making some unconfident stabs at the answer until some girl mumbled "Shall... we...?" we all applauded the answer with an unintended sense of irony that only i could appreciate.
isn't it strange how it seemed so easy when they did the same stuff tucked away in some workbook a couple of weeks ago with the japanese english teacher? well there's a small difference between learning from the books and being put on the spot by some dude from singapore.
i would never ask a question to which a student didn't know the answer. that would just be a waste of my time.
i am not here to be impressed by my students. frankly speaking, there is nothing about the english spoken in this country that impresses me. furthermore, in the eyes of this cruel world, i am nobody. my impression counts for shit. there should be nothing to fear when you speak english to me because i'm not here to judge you.
i'm just here to help people speak to me in english. good english. to help people realise that simple english is, well, quite simple. that when the basics are perfected, it becomes quite beautiful. that all this shit actually matters.
there may not be much i can do to fix the attitudes of say, cocky returnee students who are obsessed with mediocrity, or lazy students who are trying to coast through with the bare minimum. but my role never changes no matter who i'm teaching: to help someone improve.
in singapore we like to say, "do it once, do it well." i can give the chance for my students to do well, but they have to take that chance by themselves.
