What am I really teaching?

I have been wondering why these students can't grasp what I would consider to be simple concepts for university students to grasp. They can't find information in a simple paragraph and answer questions about it. Yesterday I discovered that they were recently given a reading comprehension test in Kurdish. The scores on this test were VERY low! It seems that while the best students did score around 66% most were around 30-40%. This is at the 2nd grade level in their native language! While I was told I was teaching English skills, it turns out I am teaching literacy skills....this is a much more difficult task, especially in a foreign language.

When teaching English, one expects that the students can transfer certain knowledge from their native language into English. We assume certain general knowledge and certain skills. Both of these are severely lacking with these students (pupils?). It is tough to teach about sending letters when post-offices are very rare, and nobody writes letters. How do you talk about a bathtub when people just don't have the concepts? None of my students has ever used a bathtub, though they do have baby tubs that they use, so I was able to extract it from that. Using experiences to teach is difficult when their experiences do not include many things that one takes for granted! Time to delve more deeply into Iraqi-Kurdish culture!!

Teaching of logic is another problem. I realized this problem while taking my showers...when one wants to adjust the water temperature, they turn one of the taps. For example, one thinks the water is too hot, so they either turn down the hot water or increase the cold water. While this is simple enough, when I take my shower, I attempt to turn down the hot water, and it gets hotter! I attempt to turn up the cold water, and it gets HOTTER!!! How am I supposed to expect the students to think logically when the basic things in life do not behave logically?

I suppose I am making a little much out of all of this, but I am at a place where I must readapt everything I was thinking. Not getting the correct information makes it very difficult to do what one needs to do...hopefully I will just be able to simplify things enough to get them where they need to be....and hopefully I can do it without driving myself completely crazy!!