Teaching (in) a Different Language

GVI volunteer, Josephine, with Sharon from KG2 at Olives Rehabilitation Centre

My first thoughts: “Help, what am I doing here, that won’t work, never, I’m dying!” 

My stomach turned, I was sweating and spoke my last words…

These were my last seconds, before my first English lesson started…as a teacher! 

I’m a volunteer in Mombasa at Olives Rehabilitation Centre and my job is to teach…in English! The interesting thing about it is, is that my mother tongue isn’t English, but German. 

I live in Berlin and I only learned English at school… And now I have to be the person, 

who should know how everything works and not be one of the people that talk with other students in the lessons and laugh about mistakes that the teacher has made. 

I was scared to fail.

Now I’m at the end of my journey and I’m satisfied with myself and my students! 

Why? 

Because sometimes you have to be brave, if you want to see the result of an experiment! 

I told the children, that I come from Germany and they were happy to learn some German (after three weeks they knew the basics, for example: “Ich mag Madam Josi!” ->

“I like Madam Josi!”).

I also told my kids, that I would make mistakes, because English isn’t my first language and they smiled. I think, they felt motivated, ‘cause their teacher experienced the same as they do now. 

Perhaps we became closer, due to the fact that we have something in common.

The truth is, I made mistakes, I wrote “meet” instead of “meat” on the blackboard and I checked some words in the dictionary, when the students asked me for the spelling.

But that doesn’t matter, because I was able to put myself in the children’s positions. 

I understood, why they had problems with grammar or when they didn’t know how to express themselves or were bored while writing a summary. 

Furthermore it’s easy to reduce your language for the students, 

(when your own vocabulary is limited, so you know, which words are difficult) 

and you can think about the English lessons you had, when you went to school and try to copy some of the parts.

I spoke to my class about their professions and told them, if they want to become a banker or pilot, they have to speak a good English – Kiswahili or German wouldn’t be important in this case.

Perhaps I needed more time to prepare lessons than the other volunteers here, who are from England or the U.S.A., because I didn’t know every word for the math or science classes, 

but this gave me the opportunity to improve my own English!

There is a quotation from Franz Kafka (a German author): 

“Wege entstehen dadurch, dass man sie geht.” -> 

“Paths are made by walking through them.”

                                                        So, non-English people, let’s go!

Josephine, August 2010

Teaching (in) a Different Language