tests and teaching

Good afternoon readers (it's 4:30pm) where I am today while reading this and I don't have class tonight! I have a midterm instead. But it won't be bad. The professor will email it out at 5pm. It should take us 2-3 hours to complete, but we have 72 hours to return it. It's not nearly as bad as my other midterm this semester. I have four classes but only two have tests. The other two are very theoretical and broad concept classes so instead of papers, we have papers, many many papers over the semester. But my other class with a midterm was International Law, which in itself is an impossibly broad and theoretical class, as was its midterm. The midterm was emailed to us at 2pm. It was estimated that it should have taken us 6-8 hours to complete and we only had 24 hours to return it. In reality, it took much longer. I finished in just over 9 hours, and my 7 friends in the same class all took longer. There are 6 people that I know of in the class that pulled all-nighters to complete it. And now I sit, awaiting my grade. The professor emailed a couple of hours ago that he is in the process of posting the grades along with comments for each of us online now. Mine still is not posted... so keep your fingers crossed with me.

I have also been teaching English this semester as a volunteer in one of the churches in Coptic Cairo. It has been a lot of fun,and the new English semester will start in 2 weeks. I taught two classes (22 students each) on Wednesday nights. I will move up to the next level with my students. It was so much fun, and kind of challenging. I didn't realize how much of the English language that I don't know, and apparently others don't either. I would ask some of my friends questions I had, and NO ONE seemed to know the answers. For native speakers, it seems we take a lot for granted in our speech. Rules are not so much dictated to us as we grow up, but instead we just pick them up through listening and conversation. They exist no doubt -because we do it, but we don't KNOW them. So when trying to describe to my class why can't use this word here or can't say this, I needed more than "because that's what you do" or "because that SOUNDS more correct".

It turned out I would often look on the internet and find really weird or completely inaccurate statements, or none at all. On the internet! Are you kidding - NO ONE has asked this question on the internet before! So I would sit for a while and write example sentences of whatever grammar problem I was presented with, and try through trial and error to deduce a possible rule that might exist. I was successful in most cases. However sometimes I would THINK that I found a very concrete, clear rule, only to my dismay to find it mis-used in next week's homework, and i would have to start over again... frustrating.

The worst questions were the ones that came on the fly, and which I answered confidently and quickly. I learned to stop doing that actually.
"Mr. Randy - we can make 'she is' the contraction of 'she's', what is the contraction of 'she has'?"
"Oh class - that is also "she's"
Next week's homework: "She's a tall woman. She's brown hair."
Randy - CRAP!
Next week's class: "Okay class now you can only use "she's" for she is when describing someone - nouns and adjectives. And you have to use she has otherwise. You can only use "she's" for she has when using verbs. Such as:
She's been to China twice this year. OR She's ridden a motorcycle before"

This was my process week in week out. I would never have told you before I got here that there was a rule for when you could use she's for each of its forms. One for verbs and one for nouns and adjectives. It is just part of our speech. But now I have to know it - because 44 eager college students are depending on me to make sure they don't tell someone "she's brown hair"!

I appreciate my teachers all the more now - forced to come up with smart, engaging, concrete rules and answers on the spot for eager minds with many questions. It is harder than it looks people! Appreciate those who taught/teach you! I do! This one's for you Ustetha!

G'do