Teaching English in Morocco

“You know, like popcorn. It goes ‘pop’! It pops from you, to you, to you. Pop, pop! POP!” I scream as I hop around the room. Luckily, at this point in my time volunteering at Fedora, a Moroccan foreign language institution in Taroudant, I feel comfortable making a fool of myself in front of my students. With each of my hops, the classroom roars with laughter and my students’ hands shoot up into the air higher and faster in excitement to be “popped” and, therefore, chosen to read aloud to the class.

Today’s lesson revolves around an article titled “Sign Language to Speech” which presents a new glove engineered for those who are deaf or mute that interprets sign language and electronically speaks out loud in English for the user.

Besides the fact that I’m acting a little crazy, today my students are mostly intrigued by the projector and laptop I had set up before they walked into class. Usually to utilize articles in class we are forced to do a dictation, which is where I read a section of the article aloud and my students write down what they hear in their notebooks. In a nutshell, dictations are very time-consuming and ineffective, especially in my lower-level classes. Today, though, things are looking up with our new toy. Now, each student is able to read aloud off of the projector, allowing them to practice both their reading and speaking skills.

“Alright class, would you like to see the glove? Okay, during the video I want you write down in your notebooks as many phrases as you can hear and try your best with spelling them correctly. Got it?” In response I get a bunch of nodding, smiling heads; most of them were still giggling from all of the popcorn.

I go ahead and start the video, but no sound comes out. I turn the volume on the laptop to its highest setting, but even the students sitting closest to where I’m standing can’t hear the audio.

Well, there goes the listening portion of the lesson...

— Dana Leger

contributing writer