English Class.

[Domo]

I'm volunteering to teach an English class. Several people I know are taking it, like people we know from church (even our pastor) and the parents of some of my friends. This'll be my first official day teaching (I do it on Mondays and Wednesdays) and I'm slightly freaked out but I should do okay. Evidently I was the favorite candidate, and when asked the students said they would want me as a teacher. Which is kind of intimidating. I suppose the fact that I write so many stories has convinced people that this means I have a superior grasp of English syntax and grammar, but I'm just a nerd with a rod up his ass when it comes to proper spelling.

Anyway. I'm leaving in half an hour. Wish me luck. I'll post how it went when I get back.

[Domo]

Today was the first official day I taught English class. It was fun. I had to get there earlier than I'd expected to (I forgot I had TWO classes to work with, not just one, and I needed to be at the building at 9:30) and I left the house late, being easily distracted, but I still made it on time, thank goodness.
I work with Natasha, who translates the texts and works with the students. My job is mostly to correct pronunciation, grammar, or explain spelling or grammatical rules. The only annoying thing is I have to use a British English textbook, so we have to stop and explain why I pronounce things differently than the book does.
I noticed Natasha has better English handwriting than I do. That's kind of weird.
Sometimes I help Natasha read words, too. She's a professional translator (last week she finished translating a book into Russian for publication) but she still gets stuck on certain words. So we make a good team.

I was amazed at how well the students were doing, even in the Beginner class. People who I have never heard speak English before were translating simple sentences from English to Russian or figuring out which articles to use and when. Russian doesn't have "a", "an", or "the", so a lot of our work today was explaining when to use those words. It does seem like it would be pretty hard to learn, especially when your native language is so vastly different.

So yeah. The students seemed to like me, and evidently I read the phonetic/grammar stuff clearly and enunciated well (which I don't always do in regular speaking) and was easily understood. It was interesting to realize that things like vowel reduction are found in English, too, but also we kind of have consonant reduction. Say "got to" and if you say it the way most English-speaking americans do, it's more of a long "T" noise instead of two seperate words, even if you don't outright say "gotta". "The" is also usually just the "TH" noise, too, I noticed. I'm sure there's a lesson covering things like gonna, wanna, coulda, shoulda, would've, and all that. I hope it's not too confusing.

Stolen from my blog which none of you will likely ever see. Unless for some reason you asked to see it. And even then I might not tell you because you'd all leave comments like "COCK" on every entry. I know how you people operate.

[Forever Finite]

hey, congratulations. my mother is an english-as-a-second-language teacher. if you ever need ideas for a lesson plan or how to explain something, i can hook you up with some solutions.

if you find that you're really good at or really enjoy teaching, that would be a great opportunity to think about majoring in teaching. being an english teacher can get you all over the place, almost anywhere in the world. if you like to travel that's a pretty sweet job.

[Domo]

That's part of my plan. Next year (or something) I have to go back to the States to go to college (I'll be twenty next year, but still) and I plan on majoring in Russian and Creative Writing. But I can come back here as a teacher---it'll look good on my visa application. I could probably make some money this year doing tutoring or something.

[MST3Kakalina]

that's pretty cool. we offer ESL training at my school and i've been remiss in taking it, but i really want to take advantage of it next semester. i figure when i enter the job market my only marketable skill is going to be my smattering knowledge of foreign languages, so ESL training will probably be useful.

[Domo]

Yeah, I think so too. I'd really much prefer to teach here (I just fell in love with this country and I wanna live here now), though.

[Kelvan]

I think you should first learn the language of the natives perefectly before teaching them english...

[Domo]

Kelvan: I have a woman helping me translate. Besides, it's good Russian practice for me to teach English to Russians.