Yes, I can! is a teen leadership building program created in Australia. The Benaa group is a Jeddah based business who has adapted and modified the program in Arabic for Saudi consumption. This is their third year of running the program and their first time adding an English language learning component. However, my biggest competition was the fun daily physical activities that captured the students' attentions. Flying Fox, Paintball and obstacle courses are a few of the samples.
I worked closely with two wonderful mentors from Beena, Al Mahmoud and Rajaei. Khalid, Muhummad and Abdullah were also part of the heavy hitting team. Accompanying us in a system of rotation was Ustaz Jamaan, Ustaz Hamza and Dr Ghassan. As I always say,"Team Work, Makes the Dream Work!" We traveled together to four locations throughout Malaysia with the same group of students to conduct the program. Those places are as follows: Gopeng, Bukit Tinggi, Port Dickson and finally Putra Jaya. Our day's began early and we would continue well into the evening. Not to mention, we had two occasions of jungle trekking at night.
First of all, I realised this was a big order. Trying to teach a group of 19 mixed ability students traveling around Malaysia, it takes some finesse. I met the group in Gopeng on Thursday, 11th of August. The group had already been traveling for almost 2 weeks by the time I joined. The wear and tear of travel was catching up to them. A few of them had the flu and a few them were homesick. Nonetheless, we met for our first session in a scenic and secluded resort in Gopeng.
The group had selected they were interested in a communicative approach to learning the Fry's 1,000 words list. It was decided that our goal would be the first 500 words on the list due to time restraints. These words are high frequency words and the most common in the English language. Our aim was to be able to recognize, pronounce, comprehend, spell, use and own these words. As soon as I arrived, the clock was ticking.
Therefore, I decided to start at the most basic component of the English language, phonics. I am a student of the Arabic language. There are many challenges besides pronunciation in learning. A few Arabic sounds are unique and pose difficulty to beginners. One of the first hurdles beyond sounds is recognizing foreign script. It is only matter of time before you have to learn to write it. I felt I could relate to some of the trials the beginners in class would face. A few of the students had English fluency so it seemed like a step backwards in the beginning for them. In our very first session, we started getting everybody hooked on phonics. None of them had been exposed to this methodology previously.
It was a new experience and met by reluctance from a few. Why don't we starting learning the words yet? First, we need to be competent in recognizing the letters and the sounds those letters represent in our desired words. I got them up on on their feet and introduced them to first 26 of the 44 sounds in the English language. For the kinaesthetic learners, I taught them with the actions. The foundation of the playing field was being levelled by phonics.
The first session ended with an English nashid, "We Love Muhummad." It was popular with the students and ended up becoming our theme music for our English educational odyssey. These sounds and actions proved very useful throughout the whole trip. By the end, all of them were competent in phonics. Believe it or not, they actually had fun learning it. We had to pack our bags in the morning and leave the river in the jungle for our next destination.
