Reaching Real People



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Reaching Real People ( secondary)

Students run a radio programme and communicate

with pen friends
by Insa Antoine Camara

Teacher of English at Lycée Valdiodio Ndiaye

Kaolack, Sénégal, West Africa

Email : siacama@hotmail.com



Introduction

I started teaching English as a foreign language ten years ago in a small town in Kaolack, the central province of Sénégal. In our school system, English is taught as a foreign language. Students start learning English as early as the seventh grade. That is the first year of the secondary school.

Here almost all the students choose English just out of curiosity as it is a new subject for them and because English language is extremely popular now worldwide. For this reason there is a great excitement about the new language for the first year and teachers do not suffer from lack of motivation on the part of the students. At this level the approximate age is 13; they have six hours of English per week, which is enough for the teachers to establish a good base of language input. But as they go through the upper grades most students progressively lose interest in the subject and by the time they get to the second cycle of “ Lycée”, lack of motivation becomes a real obstacle to “the teaching/learning” process.

In Sénégal the second cycle of lycée includes “ Seconde, Première, and Terminale” classes. For these levels students have three hours of English per week (this is not enough compared to the academic curriculum we have to cover for the year). In my school, Lycée Valdiodio Ndiaye , one of the biggest in the country, the size of the classes varies between sixty five and seventy five students per classroom! So students are often difficult to manage in these over-crowded classrooms, specially when they lack motivation in learning the language. At this level we teachers feel that the students learn English for the sole purpose of passing exams.




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