It’s Tuesday today, the day I do my voluntary teaching, English conversation for adults. We start the ‘lesson’ with some grammar points, then we have a topic which involves some general conversation, so today we’ll talk about May Day, which is tomorrow. We have coffee which encourages conversation, then we split into three groups, roughly beginners, intermediate and advanced… but only roughly, the students can choose which group they go in. After three-quarters of an hour we come back together again and have what is known as ‘bag time’ Each week one of the volunteers brings a collection of connected items to talk about,; for example, one week someone brought a collection of mugs from across the world, another week someone had been doing some gardening so brought in a variety of tools, seeds, compost, plant pots, and the students all planted some runner beans.
Today I’m with the beginners and I’m going to be checking they all know parts of the body, and can describe people. I may also check their pronunciation of days and months. It’s all a little fluid because we never know how many students will be there, sometimes only eight, sometimes nearer twenty! They are all adults and have busy lives so sometimes they can’t make it, or sometimes they come once and find our class isn’t what they’re looking for.
Thinking of days of the week…. Tuesday is named after the Norse god of war, Tyr. There are a couple of actresses I know of named after it, Tuesday Weld and Tuesday Knight, there have been books, films, even an opera with the word in their title as well as songs, and an American band. If you were born on a Tuesday then you are ‘full of grace’ according to the old rhyme!
Lois Elsden 