2 months in (Girardot, Universidad de Cundinamarca)

September 18, 2019

2 months in (Girardot, Universidad de Cundinamarca)

I have now been in Girardot two month, supporting the learning of the English language with the Licenciatura program at the Universidad de Cundinamarca through conversation clubs and workshops.

Conversation Clubs : 3 hours/week

Karaoke Club : 1 hour/ week

Writing Workshops : 2 hours/week

Exam Prep Workshops 7 hours/week

Individual Tutoring : 3 hours/ week

English for Staff/Faculty : 1 hour/week

Attendance was a challenge the first few weeks. 1) Students needed more advertising to be familiar with the schedule. This was shared through Whatsapp, but raising the attendance required support from the English teachers to remind their students in class. 2) Incentitive needs to be clearly communicated from the beginning.

Students were told that 20% of their grade would be taken from their attendance to my clubs, but the logistics of calculating the grade was not decided from the start. Once students recieved their first term grades, attendance increased on average 272% between weeek 4 and week 5 (4th semester 400% increase, 5th semester 133% increase, 6th semester 500% increase, 7th semester 500% increase, 8th semester 50% decrease, 9th semesster 220% increase). It should be noted that attendance in week 4 was on average lower that week 2 and week 3.

Regarding the increase in attendance, I implimented more group activities, as well as kinesthetic and game-like activities.

Successful activities included :

Writing love letters/thank you cards to a friend, family member, or partner (4th and 5th semesters. Students sent a photo to me, but gave the letters to the person it was addressed to. Students were reminded about gerund use (Thank you for helping me) as well as greetings, salutations, and practicing syntax construction.
Writing stories based on story cards (4th semester, 5th semester, English for Staff/Faculty). This activity engaged creativity and narrative construction. Students were challenged to continue the story with correct verb tenses, using connectors and relevant vocabulary.
Human knot game (a mix of 5th and 6th semester). This is a classic team building activity, but in a second language it comes with new challenges. Vocabulary like "tangle", "untangle", "knot", as well as prepositions of place and commands were essential before starting the activity. This communicative activity challenged students to problem-solve in English. Encouragement and "target language policing" was necessary to keep group moral up while ensuring that students communicted in English.
Synonym games (all semesters). I made four sets of cards that had 7-8 synonym pairs. Students were put in groups and asked to first find the synonym pairs (vocabulary expansion). We played Memory, The Slap Game, Find your Partner, and Charades with the same words (varying based on time). This not only helped students practice synonym identification and learning new vocabulary but gave the teachers-to-be some ideas for vocabulary learning in the classroom or with individual students.

(I will include another posts resources for each activity).

Challenges included:

Attendance. As mentioned before, attendance needed a clear definition of incentive. Some classes were also eliminated after four weeks of zero attendance (Upper level Writing Workshop and Intermediate Conversation Club were eliminated and replaced with individual tutoring).
Unknown attendance numbers. I struggled with preparing my classes without any knowledge of how many students would show up, especially regarding how much time to plan for each activity. To address this problem, I usually plan an extra activity or addition to a activity if not many students show up, and plan for modifications (adding groups, extra card sets, etc.) for bigger-than-expected groups.
Students arriving late. I felt that students arriving late interupted my activities. I can usually incorporate them easily into an activity, but sometimes it consumes a lot of time re-explaining or shuffling around groups. After the first term grade was given, I made it clear to students that they would not be included on the attendance list if they arrived more than twenty minutes late (still a stretch for me and for them culturally, but I think this is a good compromise).