English Club

Little Note: Ann Stanley Wins The Prize for First Letter Received in Kazakhstan! I received it on Friday.

We had our first English club on Monday, and it was quite ridiculous. We put up 3 signs in the school that said, in English, “ENGLISH CLUB, Monday and Wednesday, 15:00 – 17:00, Conference Room” and at three o’clock we had 45 kids sitting in the auditorium of the school excitedly staring at us. Jason and I took half and taught songs and played games while Alex, Susie, and Mary took the rest to go on a nature walk, draw pictures, and play some games. The point of English Club is to get the students to practice English outside of a classroom setting. The cool thing is it is all kids who want to be there, wanting to learn more. We taught the kids Cecilia by Paul Simon, and it was definitely a hit. We went through slowly teaching the words, then the melody, and then sang it through a few times. We played a basic version of Charades, did the Hokey Pokey, went outside and played Red Rover (with only one injury), and Steal the Bacon. Back inside, we did Simon Says, the Hokey Pokey again, and then Cecilia one more time. At one point during Steal the Bacon I believe we had 32 kids in our group. The kids were excited and having fun, but it is definitely hard for two of us to control and organize that many hyper kids – especially when many of them didn’t really understand much of what we were saying. Afterwards, I had a crew of about 8 kids that wanted to walk home with me, so my posse and I headed out. They treated me like a celebrity, jostling for position to walk next to me – RIGHT next to me. One kid, the one with the best English, asked me the questions they all wanted to know, like: Are you married? Do you like video games (especially CounterStrike)? Do you like Kazakhstan? Do you like Uzunagach? Do you like movies? What about Terminator? Isn’t Schwarzenegger the governor of California? Do you like President Bush? Have you ever met Eminem or Fifty Cent (rappers)? Is it cold in Kentucky? Are there a lot of people in America? …et…cetera. As we approached each of their houses, the crowd dwindled, but almost all said they would come back on Wednesday. I’m not sure that we can do songs and games all the time, and I don’t think it is as productive as it could be. Since these are the more interested students, I think we might try doing a something a little more intensive that gets them talking in English more. We didn’t really get an idea of their English abilities, so perhaps we’ll make some kind of survey or quiz to test them next time. I think we keep doing the clubs throughout training (the next 8 weeks), so we have time to try new things to see what works well and what doesn’t. We’ve been reminded that now is the time to fail successfully, meaning that we should try things now while we have language and technical advisors to help us, and if things fail we can at least learn from them.