Week two of the CELTA course, we had our first assignment due in on the Tuesday. I thought I had done it okay, but was not too surprised when it was returned to me for a resubmission. If our assignment did not make the grade it was handed back to us and we had to resubmit it a few days later, after addressing the points our tutors had made. I was glad for this, as my knowledge of English grammar was not the best. In fact it was probably the worst among my peers, which I was not particularly proud of, especially since I was the only English lad. Of course, I KNEW English, having spoken, read and written it my entire life, and could tell you what is grammatically correct and what is not, but I did not know the grammar rules that had been constructed around it.
We were given our second assignment, which involved talking to our students and learning about their motives for learning English, the aspects of English they had difficulty with and why, their strengths, weaknesses, errors they made, and their attitude and behaviour in class. The student-teachers worked together to gather as much information as we could about our students and shared this information with each other for use in writing our assignments, which required us to analyse and assess this information in order to say how we would help students overcome the difficulties they have and eliminate the common errors.
The pressure was on that week, as we were expected to show improvement against our first week's teaching, which we all did of course. It was almost impossible not to, certainly for those of us who were teaching for the first time, which was the category I fell into. It was interesting and fulfilling to see the improvement in the students, which you could see even after one week of lessons. Some had not studied English since they were at school, so much of their improvement was probably a result of refreshed memories, but it was fulfilling nonetheless. Looking back I have never seen a person's personality revealed so cleanly as I did when I observed my students as I taught them. You have a front row seat to human psychological development. You feel their happiness as they speak their new language correctly, no matter how little they show it. You watch them slip up, correct themselves, and you feel their happiness as they improve day-by-day.
As the week drew to an end there was a little bit of apprehension, as we were unsure how much harder it would be teaching the upper intermediate students, and for the last two weeks we were to be working under a new teaching-tutor; Nigel. Nigel was a lovely guy, quite meek in his personality, but confident in his profession and a good teacher. Some of the people in the other group had told us that he was quite strict and unyielding in his tutoring and feedback, but I was not too worried. I could tell that he was a nice guy and I would have been surprised if he had been anything other than encouraging and supportive, which he was completely.
After our last lesson with the elementary students we had a bit of an emotional goodbye to them all. A few hugs were exchanged as they thanked us for teaching them and told us how well we had all done. A couple of people gave us all their contact details and promised to stay in touch. It was a wonderful experience, a strange experience, being students ourselves, being congratulated by our own students for how well we had done. It was a very unique experience, and looking back I feel a warm feeling inside as I reminisce. I made many wonderful friends that first two weeks.
This is 'The Twentieth Blog Of Trig', signing off.
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