What is entailed in this speaking activity? Well, for the activity you must go to one of the classrooms and speak about a randomly assigned topic with whoever shows up for the activity. You get paid for it, of course, it’s free for the students who come, and there is only one speaking activity per day, either in the mid-afternoon or early evening before evening classes. “Not too bad,” you’re thinking, “to sit and chat for an hour and get paid for it, and it sounds like it’s good for the students too.”
Yes, it isn’t too bad. At first. It sure is a good source of extra cash when you add up your hours at the end of the month. But after while, these activities become very, very tiresome.
Usually, it is the same twelve or fifteen students who come to the activity; on rare occasions do fresh faces appear. Not always do the regulars come all at the same time of course, but some will come one day, and others will come others. Naturally, this becomes very boring, having the same students in the activity all of the time, especially over a period of 6, 8, 10 months, because you come to know every little thing about these people who have nothing better to do than come to speaking activities – their job, where they live, where they’re from, what they studied, their (lack of) interests, their personal opinions, facts about their families, their romantic interests (or lack thereof). This makes it increasingly difficult to hold a long conversation, especially after some months.
“Well, it must be easier to have a conversation with people you know well,” you’re thinking. Guess again. A speaking activity is usually anything but, because the students never take the initiative to talk. They expect you to ask them questions for an hour to which they can give “yes” or “no” answers. For example:
“So. Tell me about yourself,” I prompt. Strangely this job has made me feel like a therapist.
“My name Ali. I’m live in Istanbul. My job engineer. Mmm…………...finish.”
“That’s it. That’s all you can say about yourself.”
“Yes, teacher.”
“OK, you do realize this is a speaking activity, right?”
“Yes, teacher.”
“Which means you speak and I listen.”
“Yes, teacher.”
“OK, so go ahead.”
Blank stare, dumb smile.
“Ugh,” I sigh. “What’s your favorite color?”
And so it goes for the next hour, pulling teeth like an army field dentist. The worst is when only one person shows up and they have no knowledge of English at all, and you have to sit there for an hour and attempt to have a conversation with this person.
The speaking activities are exacerbated by the fact that the assigned topics get recycled after a month or two, if they change at all from one week to the next. I could work with that no problem, but the assigned topics are usually subjects that you can’t talk more than 5 minutes about: “Should children have pets?”, “Do you like animals?”, “What’s the worst part of living in a city?”, “Do you help poor people?”, “Are there any dangerous animals?”, or “Does money make the world go round?” (the answer is always “Yes”). Sometimes I ignore the topic altogether, but that still doesn’t make the activity that much more exciting. It gets even worse when advanced students come to beginner activities, as they dominate the conversation and cause the beginners to revert to having the advanced student translate for them. A bit contrary to the point of the speaking activity.
Sometimes one can pass off unwanted activities to coworkers feeling particularly sunny on certain days, but this rarely happens. Which means you usually have to endure the hour of non-conversation with the hope that you won’t die of complete boredom and you’ll survive to chalk it up on your hours sheet.
Death by boredom, and dried out by lack of student creativity
Well, I can’t complain too much about the activity, as I have gained one valuable skill from it: now, after over a year of such speaking activities, I know, with confidence, that I can have a long conversation with anyone on the face of the planet. Even a brick wall.
The resting place of those native speakers who met their untimely end in activities
*Photos provided by a trip to the Istanbul Archaeological Museum*
