Wow, I wanna say that my students’ English grew so much better on their 2-week Australia trip! Not everyone is at the same level. Basically the better students are now really really good at listening and pretty darn good at speaking. The lower level students are so much better at speaking and listening. It’s nice. The two cool things that I observe are students responding to my regular-pace English with ease, and students formulating English questions with ease when I come to talk to them about their speech. For example, “I’m not sure about the pronunciation of some parts, so could you tell me how to say this part?” And it rolls of their tongues so easily. Great!
When I asked them about the experience, almost all of them were totally positive. A couple of students didn’t like their homestay, and I wonder if this has to do with the fact that they didn’t get a picturesque white family of five. One girl lived with an old Caribbean woman, and one girl was placed with a family from Singapore, and they both said they didn’t have the best experience. Okay, I see, hmm… Maybe they need some diversity prep before they go? Just a thought. It’s always a big unknowable how the family dynamic will work with any exchange student. It’s a small matter, since anyway there was no one who would say the trip wasn’t good. Another aspect that would make it less good would be the frustration and difficulty level that some students could handle better than others.
Anyway I just wanted to write a post about this, I’m really happy to hear students had good times and I’m amazed at their progress.