In our opinion, as future teachers, it is important to know what students think about learning English: if they like, if they don’t like, why... Thus we have gone to a pre-school English lesson to have some contact with real situations.
We went to E.E.I. Noalla in San Cibrao. It is a one-room school where there are fifteen educated children. They have English lessons twice a week and each one is about one hour. In this post you could read how is a pre-school English lesson.
After the break, children sat down on the floor to start an assembly. First, they greeted the English classes’ mascot, a monkey bear. One by one were saying “Good morning, Monkey, how are you?” After welcoming Monkey, they revised the days of the week and vocabulary in relation to weather (it is raining, it is cloudy, it is sunny…). To revise vocabulary of weather, students played a game called “the gangster”. This game consists on say the word of a flashcard that the teacher shows them, they have to do it quickly because the last one is eliminated. Next the children stood up to dance while they were visualising the following video:
The last activity in the assembly was practice a short stage play to represent the Mayos’ Day. After twenty minutes of rehearsal, the students sat down again to watch an episode of Magic English.
Finally, we asked the children if they like learning English, why and if they would like to change something about their English lessons. The majority answered that English is one of their favorite subject because lessons are enjoyable and they usually are playing games. Some of their answers are:
- “Me gusta porque también jugamos jugando”.
- “Me gusta porque mi palabra favorita es butterfly”.
There were some children who don’t like English because they sometimes don’t understand what the teacher tell them. For example, one student said:
- “A veces, porque a veces no lo entiendo”.
In relation to if they would like to change something they have different opinions:
- “Yo quiero cambiar la mascota porque es fea y su nombre no me gusta”.
- “Yo no quiero cambiar nada porque son muy chulis”.
To sum up, children are satisfied with their English lessons and they feel happy in them.
