English as a Second Language

It’s been a couple years since I was involved in an English as a Second Language (ESL) program. And I am glad to have gotten back into it. I really enjoy teaching conversational English (with  work on good pronunciation) to internationals. Yesterday evening, I taught words related to food. We looked at words to describe taste in general (tasty, delicious, etc.). We then moved on to more descriptive words for taste (salty, sweet, etc.), words for texture and consistency (crunchy, chewy, etc.) and then finally described temperature (hot, cold, lukewarm, etc.)

Going from there to let them share some food likes and dislikes, and why, using these descriptive words was very interesting. Having to talk about what “favorite” means after people list 15 different vegetables that are their “favorite” is always interesting. It’s like trying to explain “favorite” to my daughters. No, wait, I think the internationals may actually get it eventually…

I also enjoy interacting with the native languages as well, in breaking moments. Sharing knowledge about Chinese characters, Korean characters, and IPA descriptions is always a lot of fun.

There are always fun language barriers. Like when you say, what topic would you like to cover next time I am teaching (I teach every other week)? The answer? Oh, I really like when you teach. Trying to get across the idea of theme, topic, material for discussion didn’t go smoothly. But I eventually got a, whatever you would like to teach.

So, Lord-willing, I will continue.