I'm volunteer-teaching an adult refugee English class on Wednesday nights.  I've never taught a formal course before so at the end I might have to evaluate the efficacy of a program utilizing completely unqualified teachers to "teach English".  The program is run by a student group (of which I'm staying as far away from in administrative terms as possible...I have a history of becoming overly involved haha) and the students test into levels and everything.  I'm teaching level 1b.  The students range in age from 20ish to late 40s.  They are from Guinea, Chad, Sudan, Ethiopia, and Somalia.  I'm starting to get to know personalities (who's shy and becomes easily flustered, who shouts out answers before the others even try) and names after this week and hopefully I'll have cemented the names by next week. I've been trying to gauge their level and they know the English alphabet and extremely limited vocabulary.  (On the alphabet thing I realized we need a refresher on that next week).  I was originally going to teach this class with another volunteer, who never showed up.  So Justin and I are going to teach it together, he starts next week. :)  He's a little bit more of a qualified teacher...but neither of us really are qualified to teach English as a foreign language so we'll really see how effective we can be. 

Anyways, tonight was the first real class (last week was introductions and the like) so we're still in ice-breaker mode.  I googled ESL icebreakers for some ideas and found one that sounded fun to me, and would place value on the languages that the folks in this class already speak.  The idea is that you come up with some basic phrases like "hello", "how are you", "what's your name", "good bye" etc. and then ask the class to break into groups to translate those phrases to as many languages as individuals in the group know.  Even though we're talking about many different languages, the conversation is (supposed to be) in English.  Since we're such a tiny class we first brainstormed together all the languages they speak so I could list them on the board then make a grid next to them to enter the phrases translated.  I asked "what languages do you speak?"  They all murmured "Arabic" (part of the point of the ice-breaker was to cease the shy "murmuring").  Yes, they all have learned Arabic or spoke Arabic in their home country.  I wrote it on the board.  I again prompted "What other languages do you speak?"  A brief silence, then a couple said "French".  Ok I put that one on the board.  "What other languages?" I asked? Silence.  Questioning, confused faces pointed my way.  I asked the question again "Other languages"?  Here I am staring at a classroom of seven from various parts of West and Central Africa, and the Horn of Africa.  Not that I know much about those complex regions, but I do know that the official languages of these countries (usually remnants of colonialism or Arab migration/empires) are usually not the only language of home regions, home-towns and homes (households) in particular.  But they're staring at me, looking confused.  So then I specifically asked a (sweet, I know I shouldn't have favorites but she is the sweetest woman!) woman in the class I know is from Ethiopia about the language of Ethiopia, Amhairic.  "Do you speak Amhairic?"  She looked suprised, and exclaimed "of course I know Amhairic!"  I write it on the board.  Then the rest of the class murmurs and one speaks up: "you mean not just international languages?"  I reply "of course!"  Then smiles and exclamations of comprehension "ohhhh!"  Then the list came pouring out.  Between this class of seven they spoke 8 languages. 

Arabic, French, Amharic, Ormo, Susau, Pulal, Maneka and Guran. 

And let me tell you, if there's anything that will help the class not feel bashful about their mispronunciations of English words ('apartment' is a hard one!) then it's me trying to pronounce "How are you" in languages that require multiple apostrophes when transliterating into English text.  And others in the class trying out new languages as well.  By the end of the class they were no longer murmuring answers but shouting out in (good natured) arguments over the best way to spell various phrases in English.

What is most striking to me about all this though, was how when asking about "languages", their regional and non-"international" home languages didn't count.  It didn't even occur to them that I would be interested in those languages.  Hmmmm...