Let's speak English

My 3rd course students are my best students. As a class, they have a lot of potential. They are active. They are interested. They are quick learners. They continually surprise me.

Yesterday, as I was prepping the blackboard for class, a few students entered the room. One of them, Holly (her English name, of course), held a rolled up blue sheet of paper, held rolled by purple ribbon. When she saw that I noticed what was in her hand, she quickly hid it beneath her jacket, saying: “Teacher, will you stand outside for a minute?” As the rest of the class came in behind her, I, confused and chuckling, asked: “You want me to go outside?” Excitedly she replied: “Yes! Yes!” So, I exited the room. I stood outside for a good 2 minutes wondering what it was they were up to.

“Okay, come in!” said Holly grinning from ear to ear opening the door. As I looked ahead I saw a rolled up blue sheet of paper tied closed with a piece of purple ribbon, held to a strand of black string hanging from the ceiling. Hmmm.
“What is this? Is this for me?” I asked them, all sitting, giggling, anticipating. “Yes. Yes. Read, Teacher!” So I pulled the paper from the ribbon, the ribbon now dangling at my shoulder, and I read:

Thursday,
November01,
2007

Dear Teacher
Well, we are happy to write this letter to you. We always admire you. So we are very lucky students. We have known a lot since you began to teach us. We really aim to speak English fluently. So we are organizing the curriculum named “Let’s speak English” after lesson. We would like to learn more. We want to cooperate with you closely. We are expecting that you will promote this new, important outdoor activity and it would become efficiently to study English.

* This activity has the following goals:

- To improve speaking ability. To express own opinion precisely.
- To cooperate with you closely. To strengthen cooperation between teach and students.
- To exchange bilateral culture of two cultures.
- To improve listening ability. To pronounce right and to learn from civilized cultural communication.

* There are organizing procedure and operation:

- By the rule of questions and answers.
- To use pictures, photos and books.
- To collect and prepare interesting news…
- Unexpected surprising from a teacher and from a students every week
- To ask any information what everyone wants to know.

This activity will be held for out class. So please promote this activity. We are expecting we can cooperate with you and we hope you will devote us your leisure time. Can you write your reply in three days? We are looking forward to hearing you as possible as.

Sincerely, Your students



“Who wrote this? Did you all write this together?” I asked. “Yes, Teacher, we did. You will tell us what you think?” Today I was told by one of their Mongolian teachers, one of my counterparts whose English is quite good, that the only instruction she knows they were given was her own, a few words of advice in Mongolian, nothing in English.

What can I say? I’ve never once mentioned the idea of an English club.

What can I say? They continually impress me.

What can I say? Yes, let’s speak English…