New Semester, New Us

A new academic semester began today. After metamorphosing myself into the new official avatar I entered the classroom with the sole objective of making the students think independently and I made them think about their immediate academic past. The semester began with a review session of the just concluded University exams. In the world of literary critics and post-modern theorists, it is termed as 'analepsis'. In layman's language - flashback. To make the language more figurative it can be termed as 'a trip down the memory lane' The activity in my class today had the following objectives:

1. To encourage students to think critically and voice their own opinion. 

2. To conduct informal minor research based on the topic:  General English/University Exam -     

    Experience Sharing 

3. To make the students speak/communicate

4. To make the students aware of the importance of the feedback system.

5. To get to know the students' linguistic level through a result-driven informal interaction. 

In the first class which I attended this afternoon, students were pretty satisfied with their University exams. One boy stood up and told that he found it difficult to write exams seated in a room which was not his classroom. He said that he felt strange and eerie inside these rooms which were in some unexplored areas of the campus. Two girls shared the same opinion that they had problems related to time management. The stipulated three hours was not just enough for them to pen down their answers. One girl bemoaned the fact that she was not able to fill up the 42 pages which are the number of pages found in a University answer booklet. 

In the next class, which was a foundation English I year class, I was able to witness two cases of students' apathy towards learning. This made me realize that there is an extreme need for the teachers’ sympathy and empathy. In the first instance, one boy found it difficult to get the English word for 'nail'. He was able to communicate the word in his mother tongue. I found the experience quite bewildering. The second student was not able to express in English his excuse for arriving late to the class. He wanted to convey that he got up late and he missed the train. It was indeed shocking that the students are not able to convey simple thoughts in simple English. I really should do something to address these issues and help these students to come up in their lives. Will be posting more about this journey and the tales from my ESL classrooms.