My first attempt at going over my syllabus in my introductory college level course for my university did not inspire a great deal of confidence. Last year when I gave my students a syllabus for the higher level course, I was able to have conversations with a lot higher level of confidence of being understood. Now that I am teaching level one, the beginner level, I have twenty wide-eye stares of people that seem to want to bolt for the registrar and look for another teacher. It is going to be a really significant problem to get over this difference in ability.
A few weeks ago I went through all my materials and simplified everything. I don’t write in a complicated style for students to begin with, but I decided that I needed to be more concise and use simple tenses and verbs. Present tense whenever possible. Positive statements. No idioms. I eliminated any compound sentences, and I used common verbs that students that studied English from elementary school should know. I have lots of ways to organize my materials, but I went for a simple, straightforward style with bullet points and a few rules. I’d introduce a rule, then have a short three or four sentence paragraph with clear reasons behind how I would enforce this rule. I’d pause after two sentences, state the idea another way, write on the board, then continue on when I thought that I had exhausted the point.
I have a tendency to speak pretty quickly on my first day of a new class because of nerves. I hate that awkward silence where no one is comfortable speaking. I am aware of this, so I intentionally tried to slow down. I took long pauses after I introduced a topic, drinking water and asking for any follow up questions. Last semester, I went through the entire syllabus and the explanation of what we were going to do class by class, and it took around forty minutes. I spent the rest of the time going over any personal questions the students have about me, had a few little conversations with higher level students who were showing off by asking questions, and let them go after an hour.
Today, I went over only my syllabus and it took an hour. I slowed my speaking down and covered the materials as clearly as I could, yet I still got no responses from the students. I don’t know if any student in the class could understand anything I was saying.
I took attendance, then opened up the class to asking me a few questions about myself. The first question was, of course, “How old are you?”
I used to shrug off this question from children. They don’t know any better than to ask it to everyone. Their lives are spent hashing out who is older and younger. They want to know who will spent time making them feel like shit, and who they can talk down to in a condescending way without getting in trouble. It’s not that I am sensitive about my age in Korea. I’m older than all of my university students, so I don’t need to worry about some ageist patronizing bullshit, but if students in university really still don’t know it is rude to ask people about their age before any other single thing to a complete stranger, I have a long, hard road ahead of me.
At least that student asked me something. I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t a little worried about this semester…I hope my classes tomorrow are a little better.