The Legend of CELTA - Legs A-Shakening (Days 2 and 3)

I didn't post last night because after a day at the school and prep in the evening, I needed a break. But I have no prep to do for tomorrow (other than a little checking over of Friday's lesson) so here's my second two days on CELTA summed up.

The morning sessions at the school follow the same pattern. After everyone's arrived we have a class about either an aspect of teaching of an aspect of language. Yesterday, Boswell, who's one of the three teacher-trainers who's running the course told us we were going to cover the present continuous form, and we should take out our notebooks and copy down what she was saying. She spoke quickly and went over the uses and construction of the form and then told us to write ten example sentences. Most of us had had a hard time keeping up with the explanation but everyone was going along with it until Carol, who's in my teaching group asked, "Are you having us on?". "Yes, yes, I am," was the reply. The point of the exercise was to show us everything that was wrong with that style of teaching, how it alienates the students by giving them no involvement and how 'teacher talk' should be kept to a minimum. She then started again and used a scenario drawn on the board to introduce the grammar, and got most of the information from us. In a good language class, teaching should be about almost getting the students to teach themselves. It's a bit like when Socrates coaxes the slave in the Meno to answer his mathematical questions. It's a far cry from anything I was doing in Japan.

Yesterday afternoon all six members of all groups had a 20-minute teaching session with our classes. Mine involved going over the grammar of answering questions of the forms, "Did you...?", "Have you...? "Are you...?" etc and then playing a game with cards to practice. It went well, the students were engaged and I got good comments (a "to standard, with strengths" according to the course criteria), though I was nervous the whole time, despite my three years' experience. I was also told to stop "echoing" - repeating what the students (or I) have said. I never saw it as a problem before, since in Japan I was teaching 40 students who would answer very quietly, so I would repeat the answer so everyone could hear. Repeating instructions was usually necessary because the students' level wasn't so high. Anyway, it's a habit that I now have to try to get out of.

I got home late yesterday after doing photocopying at the school to prepare for my lesson today, which was 40 minutes on grammar. I spent an hour or so writing out exactly what I was going to do in the lesson in addition to preparing my handout. I went to bed at a reasonable hour, and my dreams were filled with people from the course and lessons and planning and waking up was a bit of a relief.

I was nervous and for the second day in a row I struggled to eat breakfast while watching the Chilean miners on tv. The stomach butterflies won out and I couldn't finish my cereal, and I had to head to the school so I could do some more photocopying. I finished my two-sided handouts and made a transparency for the OHP (how retro is that?) before the morning session started.

This morning, we watched a DVD that looked to be from the 80s where a teacher taught a class on the past perfect tense. She did it by telling a story about her car breaking down on her way to a Simply Red concert (LOL) and through lots of questioning managed to turn the students towards the 'marker sentence' "When I got to Wembley, the concert had started." It was impressive how much she got the students to do themselves and how late in the lesson it was before she actually wrote anything on the board. After this session we had one with Sabadi on using texts, and about different kinds of reading and listening. There was then time in our groups for those teaching tomorrow to discuss their lessons with the trainer, while the rest of us stressed about our after-lunch lessons.

I was second to go in our group after all, and I was able to fulfil the aims of the lesson in the 40 minutes I had, though some stages perhaps ran too long and others didn't have enough time. I got the only "above standard" in our group, which I was really happy about, though I was aware that I was still echoing some of the time. Those of us who taught today got our lesson instructions for Friday to look at and ask about tomorrow, but other than that I don't have any prep to do tonight. Phew. It gets tougher from hereon in, though, because in addition to lessons we will soon have to start handing in proper lesson plans, and we also have four assignments to do over the four weeks. Still, it's a relief to know that tomorrow I don't have to do any teaching.

The Legend of CELTA (Dawn of the First Day)

I set my alarm for 6.45 this morning, which was a bit of a shock to the system after months of long lies. I played it safe by getting a bus just after 8, and I got to the place about quarter to nine, the second one there of the eighteen doing the course. While waiting for everyone to arrive we chatted amongst ourselves, and at 9 we started.

The first half of the morning was taken up doing ice-breaker activities. We threw a stuffed parrot around until we'd learned each others' names, then did the classic 'Find someone who...' game. Later we were taught Lao by one of the teachers to show us some of the things we need to be aware of when teaching a foreign language. Sabadi! Later we were split into the three groups in which we would be teaching for the rest of the course. Each group spends about a week with a class of one of three levels before changing round. I'm teacher number 1 of group 2, and so we're starting with the intermediate class before moving up to upper-intermediate, and finishing the course with the pre-intermediates. Being assigned number 1 means that I'm down to teach first when we do our first main teaching sessions on Wednesday, which is for 40 minutes. We all also have to do a 20 minute session tomorrow, for which I have to do a little preparation tonight.

In the afternoon we met the students for the first time, though for most of the 2-hour session we just watched the teacher-trainer teach the students. After teaching in Japan for three years I was comforted to see a class that was active and interested, able to communicate in English and eager to contribute. I'm hoping teaching in this situation is going be easier than the blood-from-a-stone experience of being a JET at non-academic schools.

We finished around five, and by the time I got home a little before six I was completely exhausted. I was starving but I barely had the energy to eat. I had a bit of a power nap earlier, though since I still have to cut out some things for my session tomorrow. Will post a report of how that goes.

Big Changes

So I've slowly been easing myself out of the complacent torpor I'd been living in since I got back from Japan. The main reason has been the starting of my Creative Writing course, which has begun to activate my brain in news ways, which is exciting. I've been writing something (nothing really that will develop into anything, but things that are good for exercising creative muscles) every day, and I've been more eager than usual to stay ahead of the workload. Of course, there's another reason for being more than up to date with the creative writing course, and that's because my Cambridge CELTA starts tomorrow. I did two pre-course tasks designed to brush up on my knowledge of English, so I now know the difference between simple past tense and past perfect, I know what register and collocation mean in relation to word use, and I know what a modal auxiliary verb is. Sort of. I'll need to keep going back to the reference material every now and then until I have it down properly.

Anyway, the course starts at 9 tomorrow morning, and runs from 9-5 for the next four weeks with additional preparation work at home, so it's a bit scary to be on the brink of it all. I hope it will be fun and that I'll be able to share some stories and experiences here, for people interested in the field or just for giggles. If I can find time in the busy schedule.

Flies on us

Taking advantage of an unexpected resurgence of warm weather, I went for a stroll along the convenient stretch of countryside that's in walking distance of the suburban area in which I live. It would have been completely lovely, but apparently it's larva hatching season and the flies were out in serious force. And not just along the river, they were floating around the main road as well. They had no qualms about landing on clothes, faces and in hair. It was not nice.

I wanted to take some nice pictures, since there's likely to be more dull skies and rain for the foreseeable future, but because of all the flies I ended up just taking the one. Enjoy.

Japan Mess

Just as I was settling into my life back home and getting used to the possessions and space I had, guess what arrived at the door!

 It wasn't long before my room turned into this:

I had a whole life in Japan's worth of stuff to fit into my life back home. It wasn't easy, but after a few days I managed to get everything under control. Now everything's nice again.

Back again

I've been out of the blogosphere for the last week, mostly due to my laptop being in the shop for repairs. It was overheating playing Age of Empires 3 and the speakers had been broken for a while. I suppose if I'd been desperate to write I could have done it through my iPad, but I got frustrated dealing with the smaller screen.

Anyway, in the week I've been away I managed to finish my CELTA pre-course task (took me a while, but I got there) and I went to a meeting on Saturday because I'm doing a Creative Writing course with the Open University, starting in October. Should be fun.

Also, I've had a lot of driving lessons recently. Before the end of August, I'd never driven a car before, and I didn't even understand the basic principles involved. Now I'm cruising along merrily, at least until I change gear too fast and stall the car with a queue of traffic behind. This week we started on three point turns, which may be a bit of a mental block for me. Too many things to think about at once.

Also, I got a pinboard onto which I have stuck my Creative Writing course schedule and a weekly planner in the hopes that it'll get me on track with the various things that need doing. I'll see how that works out. I've cleared my desk of most of the unnecessary items and turned it into more of a work space.

Productivity, here I come.

Terminal Procrastination

As I mentioned in the last post, I'm learning to drive. I had my first lesson a few weeks ago. Next week I'm sitting my driving theory test.

From the 11th of October I'm starting my CELTA course. Before I start I have to read up on stuff and learn everything about grammar that I didn't know during the interview.

I haven't mentioned this before, but I'm also starting a course with the Open University in October on Creative Writing. This one lasts until next June, and I'll have coursework to do while the CELTA course is going on. There's a lot of reading and thinking about ideas that needs doing.

And here I am, doing nothing.

In fairness, I have done a fair bit of preparation for the theory test. But that's probably the easiest part of what I have to do. The problem is that when I have a lot of things I know need doing, I end up starting none of them. And playing computer games instead.

Sometimes, the efforts I go to to avoid procrastination are in themselves a form of procrastination. "I procrastinate because I don't have whiteboard markers to write down what I have to do on a whiteboard, which will make all the difference." So I wait until I have whiteboard markers. Procrastination. Then I have whiteboard markers, but suddenly the whiteboard seems insufficient so I need a pinboard. Order one on amazon, and in the meantime, procrastinate.

Then, when I've run out of excuses, instead of doing the things I'm supposed to be doing, I'll blog about not doing them. Procrastination on the subject of procrastination.

It has to stop. Not the blogging, necessarily, but the excuses. I'm back in the real world, now, and it's time to get real.

Word.