English Grammar and Apple Pie

One the most amusing tasks of this internship thus far has been tutoring some grade 10 high school students in English after work each day. We were asked to provide some intensive instruction in English so that the students who are on our scholarship program could improve their grades and be competitive with their school peers. It is very common in India for students to do much of their learning outside of school through paid tutors. Our scholarship students, for who WLC provides everything from school books to uniforms, come from very poor families and cannot afford expensive private tutors.

The tutoring process has been a big learning experience for me in many ways. I have developed a great relationship with the children and have been given the unique opportunity to see into their world. I also have had to adapt to a new kind of English curriculum, one that is heavily grammar rules based. It is hard to imagine learning a language through grammar rules but this is what is tested on the board exams and therefore we are teaching a lot of grammar. Having learned English through immersion and never having been taught pure grammar, I have had to give myself a crash course in it. Trying to wrap my head around and then teach how to convert direct speech into indirect speech, when it is in present perfect continuous form, from an English grammar book, that has all its instructions in Hindi, to my Hindi speaking students, who understand about 50 percent of what I say most of the time, reminds me that learning is a life long experience (speaking of grammar I probably have used too many or too few commas in this run on sentence).

After sloughing through horrid English grammar we do get around to having some fun with our students. One incident to note is our not so successful apple pie afternoon. The kids had been working very hard and we thought it would be a great idea to take them to the café next door for apple pie and chai. The idea was great in theory. The kids were excited to spend time with their tutors and go to a western style café. We arrived and were seated. The apple pie arrived and we looked at the kids with great pride as they started eating. Manjari, one of the students, made a strange face, her mouth stuffed with apple pie, and then so did Ranjana. They clearly did not like the taste of it. I asked her if she disliked it and in response she hid her face behind her hand and laughed unable to bring herself to tell me that she in fact did not like the taste of it. Fearing to offend their teachers, all the students cleaned their plates.

To this day I still can’t tell how many of the students actually enjoyed the apple pie and how many of them hated it. It was definitely an interesting lesson on the cultural value associated with finishing all the food on one’s plate in order to not offend people. This became even more obvious when I got food poisoning on my trip to Kerala. I had to explain to the concerned and slightly offended waiter that it was not his food but the fact that I had been vomiting in the bathroom for the last ten minutes that I had not eaten anything on my plate.

Our second outing was an evening boat ride and was far more successful. The girls sang songs and we floated candles in the water and watched the arti ceremony on the main ghat. There was no strange food involved and therefore we were a very merry party.