Teaching Lessons

Teaching Lessons

I have been teaching English at the New Life Band School. It is so different than teaching in my school. I arrive at the school about thirty minutes before class begins. The English teacher, Mr. Managu, gives me the lesson he would like me to teach. 

The first lesson was on concessions. Now, I have never even heard of this word so my first thought was, "This is going to be interesting." So I read the first part of the teachers manual and it said, " Concessive conjunction signal the unexpected, surprising nature of what is being said in view of what was said before. They signal information which is contrary and surprising to your expectations." So far I have no idea what this means. So I skip down to the examples and figure out they are talking about conjunction words like but, however, as, even though, yet, in spite of, etc.

So I grab The Writer's Craft book that I sent to the school from my classroom. I read about conjunction words and then design my lesson from there. It took me a good half hour to figure out what I knew and what they wanted the students to know. I think I did a good job because in the end, the students understood all the words and they could even write their own sentences.

The second lesson was on coordinators. Again not sure what that meant, so I looked at examples and they were different kind of connecting words such as neither & nor, either & or, both & and, not only & but also. So I was to explain why these words went together, when you would use them, and how you write the sentences. A little more challenging because I couldn't find in my English book any examples of these words together. I did the best I could. Again by the end of class, students were able to write their own sentences using the correct words.

As the students were writing, they had to fill in the blanks of this sentence: You can travel either by _______ (coordinating word) ____________. I was walking around checking their answers and noticed most students were answering car or plane. However, they spelled airplane different than we do. They spelled it aeroplane. At first, I told a student it was spelled wrong but then I noticed all the students spelled it that way. So I had to ask the teacher and found out it was the way they spell it in British English. 

It is interesting how different British English is from American English. So it brings up some challenges when teaching. They are tested using British English not American English. I am learning just as much as the students are learning.


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