Every week I teach English conversation as part of a voluntary group working under a local church charity… it’s non-denominational, my group, not the church, and all are welcome. Over the four years I’ve been doing it the group has changed in many ways, not just the people who attend, but where they come from, and what they particularly want from the group. What has stayed constant is the focus on making friends, socializing, learning English in a supportive setting, having fun, and also learning a little about British culture and society… the latter, it has to be said, mainly through eating cake and talking about food!
When the group first started, many of the people joining us were women who were at home with young children, who had little opportunity to meet others and have a chance to converse in English. The sort of thing they wanted from us was the language which would be useful going in to school about their children, seeing health professionals, and enough conversation to be able to chat to people they might meet at the school gate or when out shopping. We had very structured classes, teaching basic English, trying to encourage conversation and to build confidence in using the language. as their children got older, some of the women got jobs, some of them no longer needed what we offered, and some families moved away.
Gradually a different set of people began to arrive; European men and women who had come to Britain to look for work, but also to improve and refine their quite good English to be able to improve their job prospects, either here or back ‘home’. Many of them had a good command of English and wanted to improve their listening skills, their pronunciation, and to learn about British society, history, customs. They wanted quite formal lessons – reading news items, discussing current affairs, extending and improving their vocabulary and refining their grammar. Soon they began to get work and moved away from us, although many still keep in touch!
We now have a very different group; mostly young women, bright, quick, intelligent, fun (not that our other ‘students’ weren’t these things, it’s just that our new ‘customers’ are more so!) Many of them are working here, in hospitals as nurses, as au pairs, in schools and they want to talk, talk, talk! Our classes now are very much looser, and quite often there is no writing at all – just stimulus materials and objects, conversation games, and a continual buzz of chatter.
This week I put a collection of objects on each table; I get to the hall at 8:30 to set up and we actually start teaching about 9:45 because people arrive at different times. I always have something on the tables to interest our students so they are not just sitting waiting – puzzles, word searches, pictures to look at and discuss with our volunteers. So the objects on the tables when they arrived this week were tools – hammers, screw drivers, a mallet, a spirit level, a spanner, paint brushes… Useful, amusing, intriguing, fascinating, stimulating!
Lois Elsden 