The Fear of Beginners

I used to be afraid of teaching English learners at the beginning level. For many semesters, I studiously avoided teaching their classes, and during the summer intensives I would only teach grammar, since it's usually the shortest class and gets the most chewed up by announcements and procedural activities. And at least that subject is nuts and bolts and rules at the beginner level. Even as I was finding comfort in the orderedness of beginning language instruction, I have often felt guilty that all too soon they would start discovering the multitudes of exceptions to the so-called rules I was teaching them. You have to start somewhere, with some framework, though. So we English teachers have this set of rules for beginners that some other English teacher will get to disabuse them of.

I would think, "How could I possibly teach a conversation class for beginners?" What on earth would we talk about? They have no vocabulary around which to build conversations. I was less than thrilled when we created the schedule for this month's intensive immersion and my name was next to Beginning for an hour of grammar and 2 hours of conversation each day.

Once the program began, I was frustrated with their incessant use of the native language (they all have the same one) in the first few days, and then I realized that they did not know the language they needed to interact with one another in the classroom. They weren't using English to ask each other, "How do you say ____ in English?" because they didn't know how. So, we spent an afternoon learning this phrase and others like it. How do you pronounce this word? What does _____ mean? Repeat, please. I don't understand.

Then, I looked around at the program and realized that their participation in our social activities was severely handicapped by similar lacks of vocabulary and sentence structures. So I started building them scaffolds. From that point on, our two daily hours of conversation were largely given over to preparation for participation in other aspects of the program. We reviewed the scriptures and ideas mentioned in the morning devotional. We examined the vocabulary and images of the praise songs and hymns we sang everyday. We brainstormed questions they could ask other students or teachers during mealtimes. I would write on the board any announcements that had been made orally by the director or the support staff. It was incredibly draining to constantly be analyzing each item on the agenda for what these students may not know and then seeking out the staff members who could tell me what would be on the menu at the restaurant on Wednesday or which hymns we would sing on Sabbath.

However, it was also incredibly rewarding. This month I have learned how wrong I was and how my fear and avoidance of beginning level students caused me to miss out on the opportunity to create wonderful relationships and connections. The new language learner must be willing to make mistakes, must humble themselves to take correction and redirection over and over and over again. This vulnerability creates a unique intimacy among unrelated adults. Beginning students fall in love with the teacher. By trusting me with their vulnerability, they give me an incredible gift, and the only way I could repay it was to teach them more.

One night when I volunteered to sit with the beginners during Sabbath School for the second week in a row, a colleague said to me, "You really do love those Level 1's." You know what, I think she's right. I do. Next year I'll request beginning conversation.