…and with that, my weekly trips to Milan are done

When I moved to Milan to look for work and a home base in early January, I could not have imagined I would be living in Florence and doing a weekly commute north to the design city to teach a great group of beginner business English students almost every week for six months. But that is what I have done! And today was the last lesson in their course.

Over the past six months we have worked through learning simple tenses, simple sentence structure, irregular past verbs and plural nouns, and numbers…. sometimes very big numbers. And we’ve had fun doing it!

For most second-language learners, learning to read the words of a new language is relatively straight forward, particularly if there are some common words to your first language. The next challenge is getting the sounds of the language into your head. How we say letters – the words out loud – how the combinations of letters sound in our heads in this new strange language can be intimidating and frustrating at times, but is essential to moving forward …where does the tongue sit to make that sound that is so unfamiliar?

Somewhere in between all of this we try to put a meaning to the sounds and words we are reading and trying to pronounce. Some try to learn by straight translation, others try to connect the new word and sound with something personal and memorable. The key is to make some connections, however you perceive them.

My students work with numbers in their daily lives, so we have tackled numbers, and big numbers, earlier than many do. We have played ‘big number bingo’ to help them hear the difference between 40 and 30, 15 and 50. We have used labels to map out our extended families, and we have read news stories about Italy, in English, to look for the big picture to understand why the story is relevant to us.

At each lesson they have struggled and triumphed. They have laughed and understood something that weeks before was confusing. They have talked with each other and held conversations with another English teacher. When they started in late 2013, at least one of them had no comfort at all about speaking this strange language. Now he is able to look confidently at an English speaker and hold a simple conversation.

As a group they have helped each other and learned as they did. They have gone from using Google Translate all the time, to using a dictionary when they need it. Sure, they are still beginners and still frustrated at times by not knowing a word or phrase, but they are learning, they have tried. And they have seen their efforts rewarded. And that, as a teacher, is the most rewarding part of the job.

I will miss this group, and I will miss parts of my weekly trip to Milan. I like the scenery on the train journey. I have enjoyed watching the fields change from bare sodden ground to lush green pastures of wheat, corn and now sunflowers. …of seeing the fruit trees and grape vines change from bare to busting with life.

I will miss seeing the mountains on my journeys – the Apeninnes and the Alps – sometimes standing proud and reaching for the sky, sometimes only visible in small glimpses through the fog or clouds.

And I will miss this time to just observe and write. …but it does mean I will have time to wander to a café and write in Florence, and that will be a whole new chapter of adventures…