For the summer I’m teaching full-time at a great language school downtown. I’m grateful for the two months of work as I continue to adjust to the reality of the ESL industry here in Canada!

And what a great group I have this month! I’m amazed at the demographic variety from one month to another. In the summer there are a lot of students from Europe.

When I heard that more than half of my class would be Spanish students, I imagined a room full of spoiled Eurobrats with attitude. Shame on me! Instead I’ve been blessed with a group of very special young people:

Eight of them are from Spain, two from Brazil, two from Japan, one from Germany and one from Switzerland. ALL of them are bright, fun-loving and motivated.

I'm quite sure Jaime (on the left, from Spain) has a crush on one of the other girls in the class. I'm observing these young adult interactions with great interest!

Most of them are between the ages of 16 and 22, and they are here for a month of their summer vacation. It’s quite an adventure for them!

Caroline (in the blue) is here from Germany for only two weeks - then she's going travelling around Ontario and Quebec with her friend and her friend's parents who are here from Germany on holiday too.

They stay in ‘homestays’ with a Canadian family. This of course makes their stay in Canada more authentic in terms of language and culture. They find it quite intriguing that their homestay parents are (like so many people in Toronto) first or second generation Canadians.

Silvia teaches English to little chilren in Brazil. She is working very hard on her English and is determined to do lots of challenging homework while she's here.

This is a pre-advanced class, which means they are all at a high level of English. This allows us to have some great discussions in class!

Janine is from Switzerland and Michiko is from Japan. Michiko is here for half a year or so, like many of the Japanese students, who generally have much much less experience and confidence with English than the European students.

Here the students are practicing dialogues using ’should have’.

“Did you do well on the exam?”  “No, I didn’t study hard enough. I should have studied harder.”

They go on to practice different dialogues like this, then discuss their own regrets from decisions they’ve made.

Here we have moved out of the classroom to the lounge area where there’s more space. They are trying to solve a murder mystery.

Each student is given a character to play in the mystery, and have to collect information from other characters.

“Where were you at 8:00?”

“What were you doing when you heard Ms. Gillis scream?”

They go around collecting information – motives, alibis, clues…

Marcella is just 16, and she's the youngest in the class. This girl has such a vibrant spirit and infectious energy - quite typical of our Brazilian students!

The students have all expressed a desire for speaking as much as possible. In their own countries they have so few opportunities to use English in spoken discourse, so I try to give them lots of opportunites to do so in the classes.

Giving them task-based activities (for example, where they have to solve a problem, find a solution, etc.) gets them busy with a purpose, and they use language in a natural, fun way.

So even though we dig into grammar and explore, investigate and dissect it…

Even though we discover, drill and integrate new vocabulary…

Even though we focus on intonation and enunciation…

Even though we know that strong listening skills need some pretty intense work…

We all agree that interactive, fun activities like this are fantastic opportunites to put all our work into action – and as the students are focused on a fun task, they can easily forget that they are developing myriad language skills. And of course they are also building confidence, which most of them say is something that hinders them.

Patricia (on the left) is from Spain, and just today got news of her acceptance to the university of Madrid for September. She's done summer homestay/study trips to Scotland, England, and Boston before this summer in Toronto.

For me, the most enjoyable part of teaching is coming up with creative, fun ways for my students to practice the grammar and vocabulary they have been learning.

After all these years, it’s still a challenge, and it’s still lots of fun!