The Classes

The classes are a max of 25, (too big!) focus on Reading and Writing, students aged 18-20ish. The most important thing to remember is that they are compulsory classes and most of them, if not all, don't really want to be there.

I didn't know this before coming - I didn't ask, and naively assumed that students at a University would be keen to learn and would choose their own classes. That's why we say the ELC (English Language Center) is more like a school, as I think at a University no one should be 'forced' into classes. Lessons are 50 mins or 1 hour 15, and towards the end - or even 20 mins before the end - the students will often groan 'Enough' or 'halas teacher.' Halas is a word you hear all day every day in Palestine, it means 'finish' or 'enough.'

The classes are (somewhat loosely) grouped into Beginner, Intermediate and Advanced. This semester I have the good fortune of having just Intermediate and Advanced, as the Beginner classes can be very rowdy, immature and of a very low ability, despite having apparently studied English in school almost all of their life. Mixed ability classes are always difficult to deal with as you feel you should be juggling many different sized balls at the same time.

That said, there haven't been any great problems with classes, mainly just talking too much in Arabic. I have given up trying to get them to speak solely in English as it's impossible and the classes are intended to focus on Reading and Writing more than speaking anyway. I very rarely do any group work either as the often somewhat dull Northstar curriculum we use doesn't seem too tailored for that, but I guess I should try it more. (Next semester we are changing to the far superior Headway, but I will be back in England then!)

Overall they're an ok lot for kids / adults who have been pushed into classes. I should experiment more as there's not too much to lose really - A colleague of mine said it best; that teaching in the Middle East is a great opportunity to experiment as you can't fuck things up more than they already are! One of my best lessons was when I got an exceptionally bright student to be the teacher for the lesson, it was great fun and she did a good job teaching Abstract Nouns. She even did an angry walkout at the noise in imitation of mine the lesson before, funny.