college students

I haven't written much about the college class I'm teaching. It's.... hm. I wouldn't say it's going well, I wouldn't say it's going poorly, it's just.... going. Going on, and on.

My former Tower of Babel has dwindled to 6 students. Maybe 5 now, as I haven't seen one all this week. I'd describe them as follows, in no particular order of who I like the best:

1. speaks almost fluently, would prob'ly teach the class better than I do, and thus is completely bored in class, does no work
2. could speak medium-well-to-quite-well, but doesn't because too shy, great at grammar and repetition exercises
3. speaks medium well (good vocab, iffy grammar), but enthusiastic, wants to know everything, always asking why
4. seems to somehow speak quite well about some topics, but simply refuses to talk about others... don't know why
5. speaks poorly and never wants to, says everything in Hungarian instead
6. speaks medium well, I think... don't really know because also shy

Hm, writing the list actually made a couple things clear... namely, that many of them just don't want to speak, for on reason or another. That, along with the late hour, the fact that they'd rather be sleeping, I'd rather be sleeping, we have a crap textbook, and I don't plan well enough... well, let's say things are not stellar.

Actually, it's only been in this week (I've been teaching them since September) that I felt like I really related to them at all. It's funny, when I was doing my napló today (which, ahem, I should have been doing every day, but...) I realized that we've had almost 30 lessons together... that's the same amount of time I would spend with a high school class over an entire year.

Completely out of the blue, one of the students asked me today, "Didn't you take a Hungarian exam recently?" This fact I had not shared with them. It led to a flurry of questions and a breakdown of my resolve to speak only English. The girl later told me she had heard it from friends of hers who go to my high school Varga. Thus confirming my theory that in Szolnok, EVERYONE KNOWS EVERYTHING ABOUT EVERYONE.