Jobshadowing at Adult Education Centre (Tynset, Norway)

 

Job Shadowing in Tynset On March 12th-19th

I embarked on the EOI Norwegian adventure together with Paola and the group of students taking part in the video editing project. In my case, as an English teacher at EOI Alcalá, I was interested to see how our Norwegian K2 partners deliver their language classes. The school for adults at Tynset focuses on providing adult expats and refugees with the tools they need in order to settle down in Norway, from culture classes and primary education to the mandatory Norwegian language courses. Aware of this fundamental difference between the Tynset centre and our EOI I joined Norwegian language classes with an open mind and ready to go with the flow. The management staff, Ullrika, Svanhild and Manuela showed me to a different room each day and all I had to do was peep and say “hei hei”. 

After briefly introducing myself in my basic Norwegian and answering some questions from the curious students I was immediately “adopted” by the group. From A1 to B levels, classes were invariably easygoing and relaxed, just like “at home”, but at the same time I sensed the teachers’ earnestness, I could tell they were focused on the important task at hand: making those people learn the language so that they could find a job and obtain residency. If you go on reading you will understand what I mean. Here’s a brief account of what I found in each class I took part in: 

Level A1. As soon as I sat down at my desk I scanned the room and saw a digital board, a miniboard with that day’s agenda (greetings, how to tell the time…etc.), clock prompts that students could use to learn how to tell the time, books. Pretty similar to an EOI environment for that level. 

 What reminded me I was not at an EOI? 

1: As the students introduced themselves to me, they recited their (real) complete addresses in Tynset and nearby towns, street and apartment number included. All of them! It made me smile at first. I imagined each of our students saying something along those lines “Hi I’m Pedro, I am Spanish I live in Alcalá, Daoiz y Velarde 30, bloque 1, piso 3A, 28807”. 

Then the penny dropped…in one of our classes we wouldn’t mind students not being so detailed or making up an address at that, but here of course, that was vital information for a person who has just landed in Norway and might have to provide their accurate address in case of an emergency, despite not being articulate in the local language. 

2: For a few of them, the Norwegian alphabet was their first ever. They spoke their own language (African dialects, Arabic, etc.) but they had never read or written in any language before. This made me appreciate how easy it is for us back in Spain to teach students whose literacy we take for granted and who can read and write using the Latin alphabet. 

Level A2 

Day 1: In this class students were making posters, sticking scenes and descriptions taken from a textbook and filling up the space on the poster with their own drawings. Our students also do that, depending on the level…except that absolutely all the vignettes and descriptions here were about unpleasant incidents and problems: a person getting their bag stolen and giving a description of the thief, another with a knee injury, and so on and so forth. The expression “what could possibly go wrong” acquires a new, all too real, meaning for these people. 

Day 2: I joined the same group again and they were working on prepositions (as you know, prepositions are beloved by students in all languages :)). It involved reading examples on the board, listening to the teacher’s explanation (in Norwegian), then working individually filling in the gaps of a variety of exercises. 

The low number of students allowed the teacher to check on each one individually. I teamed up with a Finnish girl and a boy from Congo who seemed to be happy to figure out the Norwegian prepositions in English. I cannot imagine how hard it is for refugees to sort out the grammar in a language they still don’t speak or understand properly… and not all of them can use English as a lingua franca.

Afternoon class with Sondre. 

This was a mixture of culture and language. Students were going to watch an episode of some kind of drama (book material) in Norwegian. They summarised for me the characters and the plot and the teacher didn’t hesitate to google anything interesting that came up and show it on screen (such as the geographical location of a place that came up in the description, the number of inhabitants, etc. ). As a task we were given pictures of scenes /characters appearing in the video which we had to describe (background situation, feelings etc.). Once more I was surprised by how practical and life-related it was. A woman was lying in bed probably thinking about her ex boyfriend, a man with a despondent look was fishing with a friend..”you know, his son has taken his life” a student tells me, looking at me meaningfully and concerned. 

The same student explained to me that the girl was a mechanic, “a mechanic you know, she is really smart, she can fix cars on her own!”. Once again I am reminded of the multicultural background of these students and of how much we take certain things for granted in our country and in our EOI classrooms. I also realised that pace in this class is not important. 

They can stop and linger over whatever aspects they need to clarify. Coming from the background I come from I would probably be obsessed with covering content and being in control of the timing of each activity. Unfortunately chances of slowing down and addressing cultural aspects are few and far between when one has to comply with deadlines, exams galore and syllabus. 

B2 class 

This time my “hei hei” met a different group of students. Among them, a Syrian, two Swiss people, a Lithuanian and a US person. They had moved to the country because of their job, their children had married a Norwegian or they themselves had a Norwegian partner. After introducing ourselves we opened the book on a page dealing with the meaning of happiness and related vocabulary. One of the first expressions that popped up in the text was “å koble av”, “to unwind”. Maybe that’s the reason why Norway ranks among the 10 happiest countries in the world. Thanks to Kari, Bente, Sondre and Trond I could have an insight into their teaching routines. 

My conclusion is that while we use very similar methods, the students’ background and motivations at Tynset school for adults add a layer of urgency and commitment (both on the part of teachers and students). Besides, the number of hours students spend learning the language and their full immersion (they keep speaking the language once they leave the school) make them advance by leaps and bounds. So much so that they may move on to the next level within the same year. For this reason it wouldn’t be fair to compare with our own system (comparison couldn’t be helped, though :). 

I will end this contribution to the blog mentioning one of the things that I particularly appreciated: each classroom has a corner/shelf with tea making facilities, food, etc. for teachers and students to “koble av” and replenish energy during the lesson breaks. 

 

Tusen takk Tynset for showing me another side to teaching.

Monica Stacconi

English Teacher at EOI Alcalá