The sound of a fan

Woke up at 3 and could very distinctly hear the sound of a fan in the house.

We had locked the door when we came home last night after a nice dinner with Poonam and Michael at a nice indian restaurant in downtown Suva. We lock the door when we know that no one will enter…It’s perhaps the maid who has forgot to turn the fan off while cleaning the room next to ours.

I couldn’t fall back to sleep and my brain started to reflect; it seem as it has a great workload - I’m dreaming a lot. This reflection is about my knowledge and skills in English: I started learning English in 4^th or 5^th class. We had a disputed teacher! (The explanation is that I was a pupil at the Teachers School, were pupils in class 3-6 were integrated). After that I have studied English in secondary school and in Highschool. My whole first year at the University studying sociology all the literature was in English. But, the lectures were all teaching in Swedish! This was before the PowerPoint time. The lecture was writing on the blackboard or was it on a whiteboard; I don't remember, and the students were copying what the lecturer was writing and saying. I didn’t read all the literature, that’s for sure. The result of this was that I didn’t learn so much English as optimal and that was due to both my own acting and the lecturer’s behavior. After my university studies I have tried occasionally to read novels in English and I have even practiced English at work at the Swedish Immigration board and at the former Växjö University. During my time at the latter I had the opportunity to have a two weeks course in English in Colchester in England. At my present work at Malmö University I have really tried to recover and improve my knowledge and skills in English.

When you are lying in your bed, either asleep or awake your solutions on problems and situations can be very smart and trustworthy. My thoughts about the explanation to my limited knowledge of English fell back to first what the disputed lecturer in class four or five really was teaching and the second to how smart it was to teach a topic from the sociological literature in English in Swedish…

I’m doing the same thing at work. Through my own behavior I contribute to the same acting of my own students as I myself did when I was a student a long time ago. Why do I teach basic counseling skills from Egan’s The skilled helper via Power Point in Swedish? This is not so very smart!

The questions now are: Can I change this? Is it appropriate to help the students over the average line and facilitate for them to be better in English in the long term? Is this way the right for a society where we are talking about lifelong learning and internalization?

The sound of a fan came from next room were a new guest, Tom, has slept this night.