Teaching English in Flekke

During my first year at the college, I spent 4 months working as an English tutor in the local community, traveling to Flekke (the nearest town) once a week to teach English to adult students.

The job was a bit difficult as we (the tutors) were given no structured plan of what to do with our students. We had to figure out a curriculum by ourselves. I feel as though I improvised quite well by bringing in children's books and newspaper articles that my mother would send me from back home. I would go through the articles with the students and work on their pronunciation and comprehension.

The students were usually quite old, between the ages of 50 and 80, so they were learning English simply for pleasure. They were very nice but not very studious. Near the end of my time with them, our lessons devolved from structured teaching to casual conversations.

I think I learned as much from them as they learned from me. At first, I was very much only teaching them English, which improved my own language ability. But slowly, they began to teach me as well. They taught me about Norwegian culture by bringing traditional homemade food to our meetings. They discussed Norwegian politics with me. They even taught me a few Norwegian words to make it easier for us to communicate. So really, my biggest helpers in this project were the students themselves. I became more connected to the local community surrounding the college than I would have been had I not done the English tutoring.