I’m sitting on my back porch on a sunny Sunday afternoon talking with two of my students who went overseas after they graduated. I had not seen them since they graduated, so they were both anxious to tell me everything that happened to them over the last couple years. They spoke in much, much better English than when they were in my seminar. One of them had become a volunteer helping to build projects overseas with young people from all over the world. The other had quit his boring computer job after a year and taken off for Canada to study English.
The worst class I ever had to teach was a class on testing. The whole class was testing and nothing but testing. It was my worst class ever: an English test preparation class. From the beginning of class, students did not chat, check their homework, or move their pencil bags around. Instead, they were quiet, uptight, and tense. They sharpened their pencils to get ready to fill in the little ovals on the answer sheet. I tried to be cheerful, but really I loathed it.