English Club

Our first meeting

So far, I have held eight English Club meetings for students at the Ukhta State Technical University. For each meeting, I pick a topic and we go from there. Sometimes I bring props, sometimes clips of movies or radio programs, sometimes fun handouts that I find on the internet or in the various English-as-a-foreign-language books I schlepped along with me in my luggage. So far, so good. My audience has dwindled a little from the first few weeks of about 20-30 English-enthusiasts, but I've still had a steady flow of 8-10 people. And, it's actually not accurate to call the students who come to the English club an audience. Really, I try to be in the audience for a good part of the club. I try to get the students to talk. Of course, it doesn't always work out that way, but I try.

The last three English clubs have been particularly memorable. First: the Turkey Club. Despite my Thanksgiving dinner cooking dilemmas I wrote about in my last blog entry, Thanksgiving with the English Club went wonderfully. On Thursday--Thanksgiving Day--I was a little sick. I taught a few classes in the morning, but by midday just wanted to crash. A teacher could tell I wasn't feeling too well and asked about English Club: What would I do? Would I still have English Club and prepare food for Thanksgiving? What? I was going to prepare the food and carry it across town myself! That wouldn't do! I told her that it would be fine. But, as soon as I left for home, she must have called some of her students, because next thing I knew, two girls from class were trying to locate me. Well, they aren't just girls from class--Kristina and Nastya are good friends. They just happen to be in one of the weekly classes that I teach. Bearing loads of potatoes, they found me. Together we managed to make mashed potatoes in the nick of time. I gathered the other foods I had prepared (right along with the Pilgrim, Indian and turkey hats) and we called a taxi to bring us across town. Only four minutes late to club, we placed the hot food on the table! We ate, chatted and laughed. I asked the club to put on an impromptu play using the hats. The students preformed wonderfully: a strange plot involving a turkey in a Russian McDonalds.

Memorable club number two--the theme: superheroes. Last week, a few new students came to the club, so I decided to start off with a name game. Say an adjective that starts with the first letter of your name and then your name. Mine was easy: Super Sara. (I mean, it went well with the topic, right?) We went around the room with a couple funny adjective suggestions (it can get hard with many names starting with K and O or Y). We only let one noun slide: Cucumber Ksenia. The names stuck till this week. Next, I asked the students an important question: if you could choose flight OR invisibility, and you are the only person in the world who could have this power, which would you pick? (I got this idea from an episode of This American Life last summer--the first segment of "Superpowers" is great. ) This led to a great discussion of powers and capes.

Memorable club number three: funny laws. I found lists of outdated or just funny laws around the world, both in English and Russian. I gave the students the Russian lists and asked them to translate any ones that they liked. We laughed quite a bit. Did you know that in France, it is illegal to call a pig Napoleon? (That one came from: http://business.timesonline.co.uk/tol/business/law/article2251280.ece)

Halloween with the English Club