This week was an exciting week! My students seem interested in what they are doing, finally. I guess it is because the interview project is just more interesting than the other projects. Maybe I should have done it first, before the comparison/contrast paper, to get the more excited about their research, but I also wanted them to know more about their topic before asking "experts" to help them and give them more information. So... I will have to think about that. It was already an interesting experience for them to write some questions and realize that many people DO know a little at least about their topics. More about that soon...
On Monday, we worked on our interview strategies. They had to have a list of questions, already, and they tried them on each other to see if these questions made sense, if they were clear enough, and if additional questions were needed. We talked about questionnaires, also, and the fact that it is more time consuming but can be useful, sometimes. I talked with one of my students, in particular, who is doing some research about Jihad... and who might have to face some hostility when he asks his questions, so I told him to write a questionnaire and give it to several people. It will be more objective, because people would not be scared to say what they really think, since it is not to his face, and it is also more neutral and less direct. For him, it makes it easier because he does not have to pretend that he is not hurt or angry about people's responses. The important thing I emphasized too, was that these interviews should be an opportunity to learn more about their topic, and not just to confirm what they already know. They have to go deeper into their research, and not stay at the surface of things the way many have in their comparison/contrast papers. It is easy of course to simply find materials that confirm what you already know and to not stop and think about things, to not analyze them, but to now say "and now, what else is there to it?" When I was grading their comparison/contrast paper, I sometimes wrote huge lists of questions they could ask during their interviews because I was a little frustrated at their "shallowness" and lack of... enthusiasm... or thinking... I don't know, but I hope I made it clear that I expect more. The problem with some students is that they started to focus too much, to narrow down their topics so much that they forgot to look at the big picture. While they were working on their interview questions, I also mentioned that they have to be flexible and allow the topic to go where it was going, even if it was not in their original plans, because after all, they do not know all the interesting things they can learn and all the sides there are to it.
Tuesday was the most exciting day. I had written to some friends to ask them to come to our class and be interviewed by my students so they could practice their interview skills and see if their questions made sense to "unknown" people. Eight people came, graduate students and 106 teachers, and my students spent the whole hour talking with these people. It was very interesting to go around the classroom and listen to what was taking place there. Our "interviewees" reacted very differently depending on their experience with non-English speakers and also depending on the topic of the interviews. Some of our guests were giving advice to my students when they were "leading" the discussion or when they would not phrase things well enough or speak loud enough, for example. Other were answering "I don't know" to most questions because I guess they didn't know anything about the odd topics of my students, while others were trying to lead the discussion to topics they knew something about. Overall, my students were able to talk to 2-3 guests and they loved that experience! They realized what it meant to ask questions, listen, and take notes at the same time, what it is to organize your questions so you can have a real conversation going and not just random questions, and hopefully how they needed to interact with their interviewees to keep them interested and glad to help. It was a "fake" interview exercise, but many students have already learned a lot from our guests and will include this new information in their interview report. That is when they also learned that they need to go deeper into their topics because what was new information to them was often not new information to the interviewees, especially those who were older and who had taught international students before.
On Wednesday, we didn’t have class. I let them work on their questions and find people whom they could interview. As usual, I think maybe one or two students actually took advantage of this day to do something and the others just took a day off. It is hard to know what to do and how to allow the good students to do good work while not allowing the less enthusiastic students to be lazy and wait for the last minute to do their mediocre work. I must say, though, that I was impressed with the feedback given by our interviewees after Tuesday's class. Those I talked to, said that they thought my students were very prepared, polite, and able to conduct a great interview. Some even said that they were impressed by the way my students were able to ask follow-up questions and keep the conversation going! Ha! My work with them was not useless! I also asked about individual students, especially those I was worried about, and it seems like they had done well, much better than what I had expected. Now I know the people who told me all those good things were also 106 teachers, so they are used to talking to less-than excited students, but still, I feel rewarded (and I told my students about it and told them that they should feel rewarded for their hard work too), and less worried about those few students I thought would not be ready. On a much less exciting note, though, I lost a student. This is one huge failure for me. This is the student who was so unprepared for the last project and turned his paper late after I had told him not to, the one who had already missed so many times that if he missed one more time, according to my syllabus (and constant reminders!), he would fail this class… and well, he didn’t come to class on Tuesday, nor on Thursday. Overall, this student was definitely not doing well and never listened to my advice about what he should do to catch up with the rest of the class. I have a hard time thinking about what the real problem was, though. Did he respect me but really needed extra help, or did he simply not care about English or not respect me, or did he have a personal problem (like homesickness) that prevented him from doing as well as he’d wished? I just cannot tell, and his failing my class is also my failing as a teacher. I could have cared more, it is true. Sometimes I got impatient with him because he would never seem to want to understand that to my suggestions could in fact be helpful! I feel so prejudiced too… he reminds me of that other student I had a while ago, from Oman, who was acting in exactly the same way, just as if he thought I really didn’t know what I was talking about. Many other students are not like that, I know, and I need to stay objective: I did warn this student several times about his absences and about the fact that I would not accept any more disrespect from him.
Thursday: I decided to spend some time working on “reported speech.” Well, it seems that I need to spend way more than one hour on that, because I had them do two exercises in class, one to change reported speech into direct speech, and the other the other way around, but it was one big disaster! I don’t think I have ever heard that many mistakes in one hour! It was hilarious, fortunately, and we spent the whole hour laughing, since I managed to not make this too threatening for their ego… Even the close-to-native English speakers made several mistakes. The biggest problem is of course to change a question into reported speech. “When can you go to the movie?” does NOT become “he asked me when can I go to the movie,” unlike what almost everyone seems to think, real native speakers included! So, we will do more of this on Monday, and go step by step, tense by tense, with statements, questions, and imperatives. Those imperatives are tough too: “He told me NOT to go there.” On Thursday too, I brought some nice little cards and had my students write thank-you notes to all the people who helped us on Tuesday. Really, we had a blast that day, and several of these people said that they wanted to do this big practice activity with their students too. Overall, besides the fact that I lost one student, this week was quite an event, and very stimulating. My students are now ready to go “out there” into the real world. I think that many, if not everyone, will do well and gather some interesting information. I am eager to see what will come out of this project.
