On the Spot!

Wagner the English teacher at Estrela do Mar also teaches English at a private school. He invited me along to his classes to get a view of a different school. His students range from about 12 up to 18 years in 5 different classes. Wagner’s idea was also that his students could practice talking to me in English and asking me questions.

The classes are big – up to 40 in each room, and the noise level was pretty chaotic, I think it would be a challenging environment to learn in. Probably about 2/3 of the class pay attention at any one time, the other 1/3 make a fair racket with constant chit chat. And Wagner is pretty assertive with them and good at keeping them under control. I think a more mild teacher would get drowned out.

So after the basic questions of “Where are you from?”; “Why are you here?” etc, we got down to the serious stuff….So here I am up the front of the room with 40 Brazilian teenagers that Ive never seen before and I get asked the following kinds of questions:

“Do you have a girlfriend?”
“Which girl is the prettiest in this class?”
“Do people in Australia have sex everywhere (outside etc?)”
“What do you like about Brazilian girls?”

Talk about being put on the spot and having to put the deflector shields up! I was squirming a bit as I tried to think of a witty but neutral way to answer those kinds of questions. Previously I think I lost serious “cred” with most of the 17 year olds – they asked me “What is your favourite soccer team?” to which I replied that I didnt follow soccer. Then they asked me if I liked to drive my car like a racing driver to which I replied that I preferred to ride my bicycle.

But I managed to claw back some credibility when I was asked “What do you like about Brazilian girls”. Thinking quickly I replied “I think they are intelligent”…Suddenly, at least every girl in the class thought I was OK.

🙂