January 10, 2010

• Teaching, teaching and more teaching

  Had first CELTA (Cambridge Certificate of English Language Teaching to Adults) session on Friday in Verona. It went well and I enjoyed it, which is a good thing as there are 19 sessions to go! There are 12 of us on the course, split into two groups. I am in the group who are teaching the Intermediate level group to start with and then swapping to the beginners' group after. There are pros and cons to each - as the tutor said, those going from Beginners to Intermediate will find themselves suddenly being able to speak properly to their students and actually get responses, and those going the other way (ie.my group) will find that while they were used to having decent conversations they suddenly get a 'huh?!' response. That's not for 10 weeks though so I don't have to worry yet!

  During the morning we had a 'get to know you' session and then an input session on 'What is a language learner like' etc, and then some time to plan our first lesson for that afternoon.  It was very interesting to be thrown straight into the situation of planning the lesson (with guidelines) and implementing it. The lesson was from 2.30-4.30pm and we taught a 20 minute slot each. From next week we'll be teaching 40 mins each alternate weeks, and then finally a 60 minute session each. All the teaching practice is observed and assessed. My first assessed session is next week. We also have 4 assignments to complete, with the first one being a study of one of our learners. I have to arrange to interview one of them next week!  There are 12 students in our Intermediate class. They are mostly middle aged/retired Italians with a couple of exceptions (a couple of slightly younger, a couple of different original mother tongue). I'm the youngest trainee teacher in my group (there are some other similar aged trainees in the other group) and younger than all the students, which makes it quite different from teaching at school.

  I already feel like I have picked up a few tips (from the session on Fri and the recommended reading) that will definitely help me improve my method in all the situations I now find myself teaching.
  Next week I am attending the first 3 hour session of a CLIL course for school (the rest of the course involves lots of self study leading towards a diploma at the end) and then I will apparently be taking on some CLIL lessons. CLIL stands for Content and Language Integrated Learning and at the moment there is a big push on this in Italy, especially in Istituti Tecnici such as the one I work in. I've no idea what this will actually involve me doing because clearly I'm not a Law, Economics etc teacher, but apparently I will be asked to 'bring my knowledge of the language' to the lesson.... could be interesting. Good to get experience of doing different things as well.

  The same week I am also starting the Trinity exam preparation course. Teaching it, that is. This is the thing worrying me the most because I have 10 hours (1.5 hours a week, so not even 10 weeks) to prepare an as yet unknown number of students for the Trinity ISE exam. They've got a book to follow (which I haven't even been given my copy of yet), but it's going to be up to me to choose which bits to cover in class, what to ask them to work on at home, to mark all their work etc etc. This will be my first experience of doing such a thing , and although I'm sure I will find myself capable of doing it, it's also a little nervewracking that these kids actually need to pass the exam....

  Back to the lesson planning now!!!
  

  • 10:36 am
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