Tuesday, October 31, 2006

I take it all back

I've spent the past week being grumpy about my BTS students. Anyone who asks me about my students gets variations on the theme of not that great. They seem passive to me, unwilling to take responsibility for what they need to learn and what is necessary to progress. They complain about the homework (too much and too hard), they complain about the work we do in class (ditto), and they complain about the supposed French genetic language learning deficiency (yeah right), which all translates into the ever-irritating oh-poor-us syndrome.

Imagine my surprise when, after a cruel listening comprehension exercise, one of the students said, "Hey, I did ok on that. I've learned more English in three weeks with you than I did during my four years in high school." Banished all my grump.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Congratulations!

Lex Lata said...

There's a French urban legend about an inability to learn foreign languages? Interesting. I hadn't heard of it before.

What's the backstory on that?

Nicole said...

BEth and Christi - I don't think it's so much about me as it is what doesn't happen in language classes here in high school.

LA - Mystery as to how it got started. Education Nationale, however, has made sure it remains.