Sunday Night ESL Class

This is Miss Brenda. She teaches the first hour of our Sunday night class. Brenda teaches the level 2 group. There are about 2 or 3 other teachers that cover other levels of English. At the end of the formal book learning period John and I do an hour of casual conversational English with anyone who wants to stay after class. Their class level is not taken into consideration. If they want to join us they are most welcome.

Miss Brenda was leaving when I caught her picture. She has been teaching this ESL course for a significant number of years. The book used is put out by Spectrum and is titled "A communicative Course in English." The topic of American English idioms came up several weeks ago so we decided to use our conversation hour to explore idioms. A search on the web came up with so many idioms that they are listed in alphabetical order. Last week I printed those idioms that start with A and B. The class had over 300 to choose from. This week we tried those beginning with C and D. Another conversational situation we have covered is simulated telephone calls. For example, a call to the doctor because a child in the family is sick or a call to have cable TV installed in the home, or a call to report a fire. In addition, sometimes I may read them an interesting article from a magazine and we discuss it.


Although we talked about a number of American idioms (sayings/expressions) the one I am writing on the board here is "Dead as a Dodobird." Others we discussed were things like "Brownie Points," "At the end of my rope," and "Canary in a coal mine." We have had lots of fun and the oddness of the English language never fails to amaze me. It is interesting that some of the idioms we addressed had an almost direct corollary in Japanese!


Class attendance was down a bit due to the Thanksgiving holiday. But we had students originally from Japan and Columbia, SA.

Idioms in English can often find a corollary in many other languages. Tonight we learned that in addition to Japanese "Don't cry over spilled mink" also is found in some Spanish speaking countries.

Idioms are the subject tonight. Lots of fun with "Don't push my buttons", "A penny saved is a penny earned" as well as others such as "Dish the dirt."