What I learned teaching English As A Foreign Language In Singapore

Problems
How do you teach English as a foreign language to pupils who themselves speak different foreign languages? How do you teach a ten week course from a thirty chapter textbook?

Answers
1 Follow a text book course, fitting the number of chapters to the number of weeks on the school course or year for which the pupils have paid and committed.

2 Remove the last week / lesson for giving out results. Remove the previous week / lesson for the exam.

Marking Exams
You may need a weekend to allow time to mark all the papers if the school is giving out awards.

If you are simply doing a test, you can get the pupils to swap papers and mark each other's work. If you don't like the idea of two friends swapping papers, swap the papers of people who sit far away from each other.

Alternatively, let each pupil play at being an examiner. Conceal the names on the papers with post-its. Let the pupils do the commenting on how some of the pupils have done well, others badly, which papers were hardest, what the person marked as a fail has to do to reach the passmark.

Ask those with problems answering or low marks or lower marks then they expected to say what they found hardest. Reveal the names of those who did best and ask them to stand up and advise the others on how to revise and remember.

If you cannot do this for the final exam, do it for the mock exam.

Mock Exam
Remove the week before exam for a mock exam. Remove a week before that for revision (unless you can do revision in the first half of the lesson and the mock exam in the second half.

Spacing Lessons
Check the number of weeks remaining and the number of chapters you need to cover. Supposing you need to cover only one chapter and have two lessons. You can then have pupils reading the chapter aloud and starting it in one lesson, reading out the answers or doing the questions a second time in the next lesson.

On the other hand, you might have two chapters to cover in a day or week, but only one lesson. In that case do one chapter in the lesson and set the other one for the pupils to read for homework.

Games Lessons
If you have a spare lesson in the afternoon, this can be a fun and games lesson, using the material learned. For example, if you have taught them to say, I am taller than you are, they can line up in height order. Then starting at the front each person will say, I am taller than you are to the pupil on one side, and you are taller than I am, and I am smaller than you are, to the person on the other side.

You can buy books of language games. Make up your own. Ask the pupils to devise a game. Ask other teacher for a game. Check the school library or resources box. Ask the head of department or school head for games.

Author
Angela Lansbury, travel writer and author, English teacher.

Literary Landmarks: To Kill A Mockingbird in Alabama

To Kill A Mockingbird is a novel set in Macomb, Alabama, based on Monroeville, USA, home town of the author Harper Lee. The town was named after President Monroe. It is now known as Literary Capital of Alabama. Harper Lee died, aged 89, in February 2016. Landmarks in the town of Monroeville are:

• SIGN: The welcome visitors sign (billboard) showing covers of Harper Lee's two books and thanking her. Placed on the site of the home of her neighbours, family of Truman Capote. (The house burned down.)
• COURTHOUSE SQUARE STATUES: Courthouse Square statue Celebration of Reading of the girl on seat reading the book, statues of two boys standing behind. You can sit on the seat for a photo opportunity.
• COURTHOUSE BUILDING: The Courthouse building exterior and picnic area.
• MUSEUM: Monroe County Heritage Museum, interior to visit: court room, shop.
• MAP A walking tour map is supplied by the museum
• Mockingbird Inn
• First United Methodist Church and cemetery alongside with graves of Harper Lee, her sister Alice Lee who lived to the age of 103 and their parents A.C. Lee and Frances Finch Lee.
• http://www.monroecountymuseum.org/#!functions/cq4e Buy a copy of Kill A Mockingbird or Go Set A Watchman when visiting or online. DVD of the movie.
• PLAY Annual performance of a play based on the story of To Kill A Mockingbird is performed outside and inside the Courthouse building in May. Tickets on sale from late February.

Quick Guide to Facts

• Nelle Harper Lee born 28 April 1926.
• Harper Lee's childhood friend and neighbour was Truman (whose mother's second husband had surname Capote).
• Harper Lee studied law and wrote articles and short stories.
• Truman went to New York and wrote Breakfast At Tiffany's.
• Harper Lee travelled with Truman to interview people whose story was the basis for Truman's book In Cold Blood. 
• Harper Lee worked for BOAC and was introduced to a literary agent by Truman.
• Two of Truman's friends subsidised her for a year so she could give up work and write a book.
• Literary agent who had written the biography of a campaigner helped Harper Lee turn 'a series of anecdotes' into a novel.
• Harper Lee's To Kill A Mockingbird was published in 1960.
• 1961 Pulitzer prize awarded to To Kill A Mockingbird.
• Movie in 1962 starred Gregory Peck as Atticus Finch.
• To Kill A Mockingbird was on the school syllabus in USA.
• Lee was awarded Presidential Medal Of Freedom by President George W Bush Nov 5 2007.
• Book To Kill A Mockingbird was semi-autobiographical.
• Hero of book, Atticus Finch, (lawyer father of 6 year old narrator Scout Finch), was based on the author's father.
• Harper Lee's friend Truman Capote was the inspiration for character Dill.
• 1970s Harper Lee researched a murder case for use in a book she never published. She met the man who shot a suspected serial killer (several members of his family died including a close relative of the man who shot him). She interviewed the lawyer who defended the suspected serial killer and afterwards the man who shot him.
• 2003 Museum was sued by Harper Lee's lawyers.
• Harper Lee's second book Go Set A Watchman was published July 2015.
• Harper Lee was in Meadows nursing home.
• Harper Lee died aged 89 on Friday 19 February 2016.
• Funeral on Saturday 20 February 2016 at First United Methodist Church.
• Harper Lee is buried in the cemetery beside First United Methodist Church where her family are buried.

Books
To Kill A Mockingbird by Harper Lee published by HarperCollins.
Go Set A Watchman by Harper Lee.
Mockingbird By Harper Lee by Charles Shields, a biography.
The Mockingbird Next Door: Life with Harper Lee by Marja Mills.

See Wikipedia for an article on Harper Lee

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harper_Lee

Also see articles in

BBC website
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-35623948

CNN
http://edition.cnn.com/2016/02/19/entertainment/harper-lee-obit-feat/

Daily Mail online
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3456366/The-Latest-Harper-Lee-laid-rest-private-funeral.html

The Guardian
http://www.theguardian.com/books/2015/sep/09/alabama-harper-lee-true-crime-book
http://www.theguardian.com/books/2016/feb/20/harper-lee-to-kill-a-mockingbird-monroeville-alabama

Visits
http://alabama.travel/road-trips/monroeville-the-to-kill-a-mockingbird-experience
http://www.ruralswalabama.org/attraction/atticus-finch-monument/
http://www.monroecountymuseum.org/#!functions/cq4e

Angela Lansbury, B A Hons, CL, ATG, travel writer, author, researcher, speaker.