October 28: Language Teaching and Learning

Looking back, I believe that we haven't related much information about either our progress in Kinyarwanda, or my students' progress in English. This is such a major part of our time here, so I will give a few glimpses into our experiences in these departments.

Learning Kinyarwanda:

The run down:

Learning Kinyarwanda is going very well for the most part. We are no longer taking lessons three days a week, as our language teacher moved to Gahini. She still comes about every-other-week, so we try to squeeze a lesson or two in during that time. The majority of what we learn comes from asking Frank questions and speaking in everyday life. In that way, most of the introductory level communication is becoming like second nature to us. It will be the next level that will be a challenge.
It is exciting because even though we can speak basics, we can understand much more. We are able to sit in on conversations and at least understand what they are talking about. Our word bank is getting fatter every day!

Stories:

After we adjusted Drew's presentation of me as his "leg," we found out shortly after that the slight adjustment was causing him now to introduce me as his "pair of shoes." haha so now we have gotten it correct for the last month and a half so that the majority of people we know understand that I am his wife.

One of the very confusing parts (out of many) of Kinyarwanda is that their word for "no" is "oya (pronounced 'oh-yea')." This has made for some very awkward situations ranging from the chef asking us if we liked the food to others asking us if we want something. One of those situations was when Frank asked Drew if he loved his wife. Drew answered quite emphatically, "ohhh yeaahhhhhh!!!!!" And everyone in the room just started dying laughing.

Teaching English:

The run down:

As a part of our business strategy, and even for functionality in day-to-day life, we started teaching English classes to the staff 7 weeks ago. We originally split the staff right down the middle into two classes based on their departments so that one department was never left bare. That meant that there were approximately 8 in each class. After about a week, our VERY enthusiastic assistant manager started inviting random people to join the class. I did not turn them out, mainly because I felt as though I couldn't decline when I already had the classroom and the lesson plans and was volunteering my time. It began to be a problem when he continued to bring people from the church, the market, etc. I finally told him after he brought me four new people during week 5, "Francois.....NO MORE NEW STUDENTS. We are too far along in our course to have beginners entering class!" haha so thankfully that has ended. Now I have about 15 students in the second class, while many students in the first class seem to "get a headache" every Tuesday and Thursday at about 2PM, and therefore I am lucky to get five.

I also have been to Morning Star School four times to do observations, but they have finished their exams and are on holiday until late in January. So, unless they ask me to come to teach seminars or anything, I will not go back again until January. I will try to write another time about my experiences there as it would be another big chunk of information.

My Methods:

The focus of the class is not an academic analysis of English. We are not doing much grammar or sentence structure. It is for function with us and with customers. Even so, I am here for a year, and I think after we get through the functional phrases of everyday life and hospitality lingo I will ask them if they want to continue. If so, then we will start to get into the nitty gritty of English. by then, they will have a good foundation to build off of.

Usually, I begin with everyone in the class saying the day and date together and reviewing bits of previous material. Sometimes I have easy ten-question quizzes. Then I present ten (usually) vocabulary words or phrases, and after we review them together and they write them, followed by focused (where they only have to fill in one piece of information) exercises and communicative exercises. Focused exercises are very difficult without access to printers and photocopy machines, so that part is almost always done orally. The communicative exercises are where the fun comes in. I can't even tell you how many hilarious episodes we have had as we practice the words in small groups or in pairs presenting to the class. It seems to have been very effective, and they are becoming more and more confident daily in their greetings and answering questions.

Stories:

Although it is certainly possible to teach a language without direct translations, it is 100x more difficult, in my opinion. Especially when there are not many resources available for pictures, etc. Imagine trying to explain abstract ideas or conjunctions without a translation in their language. You could point to an old woman washing clothes and they could think that you meant so many different options: "old woman" "washing clothes" "she is tired" "black woman" etc. You could point up to the sky and say "sky." They could interpret this as "sun," "clouds," "color blue," "it's going to rain," "weather," etc etc etc. This poses as a problem in countless situations. No matter how much intonation you use, it is so difficult to explain isolated words or parts of a sentence when they don't know the rest of the sentence. There is no frame of reference. Of course you could use 10 examples of what you are trying to communicate so that they are able to glean the word you are trying to communicate, but direct translations are much faster and easier.

Needless to say, I try to get the translations initially and then let them be creative with plugging in other words to model sentences and practicing them communicatively with each other and the class.
One of the most difficult parts of teaching for me is getting proper translations from English to Kinyarwanda. Everyone seems to have their own opinions about what is correct. The funny thing is, sometimes people are on completely different ends of the spectrum. One will say that something is correct, and the only option for being correct, while another says that that is not even remotely close to it.

One such instance was in the very first language lesson I taught. I asked our Kinyarwanda teacher to give me the word for "question" so that I could teach them both "question" and "answer," as those words are used daily in class. She told me that the word for question was "ikibazo." So I taught that word to the entire class and have been using it for the last seven weeks. About a two weeks ago I found out that it was also the word for "problem." That explained why I seemed to be hearing that word constantly. I was fine with the fact that it was used for both problem and question until an English speaker from Seeds of Peace in Gahini came about a week ago and the topic came up. He told me that ikibazo is not used for question at all, but only for problem!! He said another word was that I can't recall. I was a little distressed about this but was hoping that maybe in common use that it was still used for question, as I was recalling the last 5 weeks of asking them to repeat the "problem." The next day I was asking John Claude where one of our workers, Jaci, was. He said with his face scrunched up in thought, tapping the back of his head, "She has a....question...in her head." Oh dear.
Another instance was one day that I was teaching about conditions. We are always asking each other how we are so I was teaching, "tired" "hungry" "sick" "sad" etc. so that they could plug that into the sentence they already knew, "I am fine." It was a list of 10 different words all relating to how one was feeling. One girl, Josianne, in the first class, came in, and after reading the list she came up very quickly and deliberately pointing to the word for "busy," which was "guhuga." She scratched it out and added an "n" so that it was "guhunga." I assumed that must be correct and I had made a mistake since all 10 words were in the same category, therefore she must have inferred what I was trying to say. So I taught the class and everything went fine. When the second class came in, one student from the market who has joined (who speaks very good English, but has wanted to practice listening to my accent) came up and said, "umm... teacher.... you must mean to use 'guhuga.' This word 'guhunga' means to flee the country." haha I just laughed and laughed, and even now the first class tries to correct me when I say "guhuga."