Making pancakes using our kerosene stoves.

A Saturday morning spent at college observing two lessons: Chemistry and Geography. The chemistry lesson consisted of a blizzard of chemical equations, group work to solve symbol equations and then one demonstration by the teacher to show the effect of an acid and an alkali on litmus paper. During my subsequent feedback discussion with the teacher I naively questioned why she didn’t at least give each group some solutions and indicator papers to test for themselves. The answer: they cost too much. Hmmmm...there’s definitely scope for trying homemade versions. The geography lesson was about working out map scales. It would have been interesting if the students had actually had any maps to look at.

One issue that comes up again and again at college is the quality of the English language used by the students. The summer programme students are all school teachers. The instruction in the college is all conducted in English, and all the students in theory have a good level of English. The reality is somewhat different. When I talk with students, they struggle to understand much of what I say and vice versa. Trying to correct students’ English (and that of the staff) is often tricky because my knowledge of the rules of English grammar is rubbish. When I try to correct some particularly mangled phrase, usually the best I can do is go through the correct version and reassure them that I am correct, even if I can’t really explain why. There are plenty of resources I could use but, call me fussy and narrow minded, reading about subjunctives, conjugating verbs, etc bores me beyond my grammatical ability to describe. Give me a physics book any day.