As luck would have it, Athena’s English teacher at the Adaptive School suggested that she be entered for the PET Cambridge Examination. The director of the language institute and examination centre (who turned out to be a fellow UCL alumnus) asked if I would like to teach there. And so it happened that last Sunday I started teaching two groups, the first about six months away from the KET examination and a young Flyers group, both of them with seven students.
Before I started, I thought that all students would be children and I was a little bit nervous because I have never taught primary age students. But on Sunday I found out that the KET group is made up of adults (one law student, one accountancy student, a 35 year old biologist, a writer) and two high school girls.
The young Flyers group is made up of seven 9 or 10 year-old girls, who according to Iranian school culture, stand up ever time they addressed by the teacher. I didn’t realise why they were doing that to begin with: when the first one stood up I thought she was about to ask for permission to go out. But no: she answered the question and sat back down. I was very impressed by both groups, but especially by the little ones. They were all keen to speak, despite making mistakes, which is not the experience I have with older learners. About five of the girls said that they started learning English at nursery!
Which goes on to show, catch them young.