Mind the gap

As I believe we've mentioned, Jerry and I have started teaching English to sustain our life here in Bogotá. Between the two of us teaching roughly 20-25 hours per week, we make enough to live off of. We work for a language institute that has contracts with businesses and individuals. We generally teach in the mornings before people go to work (starting between 6:30-7:30am) and sometimes during people's lunch breaks or after work as well. Though waking up early has been an adjustment after our several months of sabbatical, it is wonderful to be home by 9:00 or 10:00am with the whole day ahead of us and with some money-making hours already under our belts.

Most of my students are "intermediate," meaning that they have a grammatical and vocabulary base in English, but don't always know how to express themselves and don't understand everything I say. They often understand almost everything in written form, but the same sentence spoken aloud is incomprehensible. So, I have been working a lot on listening - me talking or reading an article aloud, or watching a TED Talk or other video together - and then making sure that the student understands what's going on. This usually leads into a discussion so the student also works on speaking and building up their confidence in English, which I have found to be one of the most important things that we work on in class.

But Ivan falls squarely into the "beginner" category; I am Ivan's first English teacher. He works for Colombia's equivalent of the Small Business Administration (Patricio, I feel like you especially will appreciate that) and aspires to become the head of the organization one day. Of course, part of the job description is fluency, or at least competency, in English. That's where I enter the picture.

And then there is Sebastián, the 12-year-old grandson of Luis (who Pat talks about in the previous post). I helped him with his English homework a couple of times, which he has been taking in school for a year or two.

The learning gap between a 40-something highly educated man and a 12-year-old public school educated boy was staggering. Sure, theoretically young people pick up languages more quickly - but from my limited exposure to these two people from very different parts of Colombian society, it would be much easier for Ivan to reach a passable level of English.

Though Ivan's grammatical and vocabulary base in English is limited, he has been exposed to English - he has traveled to the US, he has surely interacted with foreign businesspeople. Not to mention which, he has learned how to learn. When I say, "this is an adjective" or "this word can be both a verb and a noun" or if I speak slowly in simple terms, he understands.

Sebastián, on the other hand, had a homework assignment to write 10 English adjectives. Well, he wrote the first 8, copying them from a page out of his workbook. I made him pronounce the words with me and ensured that he understood what he was saying. When I asked him to write two more adjectives, I quickly realized that he had no idea what an adjective was. Which led me to explain the concept of nouns, verbs, and adjectives. He has never been taught how to learn or think critically; he has only been taught to complete the pages in his workbook and do what he is told. On top of this, he doesn't understand a single word I say in English because in school, this is how the typical English class goes:

Teacher: "Good morning, class." (with heavy Colombian-accented English)

Students: "Good morning, teacher."

Teacher: "How are you?"
Students: "Fine, thank you. How are you?"

Teacher: "Fine. Ahora, por favor miren la página 16 y hagan los ejercicios." (Now, please turn to page 16 and do the exercises.)

Colombians are required to learn English. However, the average public school student in Colombia does not learn English from anyone with a base knowledge of the language, but rather goes through rote motions of completing written exercises without actually absorbing anything.

So for now, I am making a living off of people like Ivan. I have offered to give Sebastián free English lessons as long as his family brings him to our apartment. The family seemed excited and understands that it's important. But, like many situations in Colombia, people often say they will call and do things and then it never happens. We shall see.