English Class

A trickle of sweat glides down my back as I turn away from the chalk board. As I slowly sound out 'rest-er-ont' I am silently chastising myself for hanging the board up in the sunlight weeks ago. Today the heat is getting to almost everyone. The cadre of adult students who come early to snag seats on the floor under the slight shade of the waist-high wall are too hot to be talking and giggling, and for once the kids sitting on the benches are not following my every move with rapt attention. 'Ok, pasamos al siguiente.' Content with their pronunciation, my caffeine infused hands shake as they write 'Hotel' up on the board. Its a short word, so none of the letters collapse into poor chalksmanship. As they write the word into their notebooks I say it twice. Then when everyone is again paying attention I say 'Ho... Ho... HO... Tellll... Telll...Ho-tellll'. As a chorus of Ho's greets my ears I fail to stifle a chuckle.
Pronunciation is very fun for me to teach, and everyone seems to enjoy it. Whether it consists of the students holding a finger in front their mouths, and "blowing out the candle" while pronouncing p (in hoss-Pitt-uhl), or learning the difference between the s in 'police' and the s in 'is' (demonstrated by having everyone touch their throats for the pronunciation of both), it is wonderful to hear pronunciation improving so rapidly, and it is fascinating to break down words into the way that they are said, instead of the way they are spelled.
So far the course has been meandering through basic phrases and questions that would be most common from tourists (greetings, time, buying and selling, directions, etc.). Also, we've been struggling through numbers. Altogether it was probably much to early to spring numbers on them, but with a little review in each class and few more lessons later on, I hope to have them down before long. The currency of Costa Rica (500 colones (literally 'Columbuses' is roughly one dollar) make large numbers imperative, so I am not content with just doing 1-20. Unfortunately the word 'Thousand' is a pronunciation minefield, since the th the ou and the voiced s are sounds that do not naturally occur in Spanish, and much less so close together.
Overall, I feel as though we have made a good start, and hopefully the class will continue showing up once school starts (February 10th).