DAY 3 : T T T ( Teacher's Talk Time)

So, I made it to the third day! I woke up excited because I have a French class to attend! an observed class to teach!  It is indeed a big day for me.

               

              I was thinking about the whole scene of me going into the IELTS class room and taking the lesson when I was standing in lift going up to CILA building which is in the fourth floor of INKEL TOWER. I rushed to our class room and had a look at the day’s timetable to see if I can get some more time with my lesson planning. I went to the IELTS classroom of 12 students and took my lesson, while Helen and Anu were busy noticing my lesson and taking notes about my performance in the class. My topic was to teach models of deduction; (Must/must have, can’t/can’t have) from their IELTS text book.

                

               To know the names of the students in the class room and call their name while teaching, I told them to write their names on a paper and place the paper cuts in in front of them (Helen did this in the previous day). Lesson went well and I finished on time. Soon after my class I have to write about what I thought about my lesson and what are the areas I need to improve for the next classes. I wrote it just after the class and I had my lunch. 

                

             At sharp 1:30pm Helen came to our class to take the French class for an hour. She didn’t say a single word in English throughout the class and even the explanation of the French greetings, numbers, colors and common objects was in French! At certain points we would open our mouth and look at each other becoming very confused about what she was saying. By the end of the French class we sang French greeting songs with her using You Tube videos that she showed on the OHP. We practiced French greetings, numbers and other names. It was so much fun. The point is to make us understand how it would feel like being a foreign language learner of English if your students are completely ignorant about English. After an hour she finished the French class and went out of the room. Soon she came back opening the door speaking English. We laughed a lot and discussed with Helen about the French class. Once it was done Anu and I were called to Helen’s office to discuss our performance in our teaching practice in the morning.

                 

             Both of us were advised to reduce our TTT (Teacher’s Talk Time) during the class and to engage students with activities. We noted down what we need to improve. Helen gave us the next day’s teaching topic and we all left CILA around 5:30. 

My advice: if you want to do TESOL you should be very well aware of the key grammar parts of English before joining the course, because you will be teaching them! But don’t worry too much about your grammar the teachers here will help you sooooo much , David told me they even had natives speakers coming to TESOL with very poor grammar skills compared to a common Malyalee!

(I highly recommend that you must have a very good idea about TENSES, MODEL AUXILARY VERBS, IF CONDITIONALS, etc.)

Day 2 : Burning some midnight oil

            The second day of TESOL class. I reached at CILA around 9am and all my peers were there. Krishnakumar, Komal, Anu, and Lisa. David came to the class, turned on the OHP (overhead projector) and started talking about how to teach English grammar and how not to do it. The reason why students find learning grammar difficult is because of the poor teaching skills of English teachers. If you want to teach grammar, first of all you need to create a context and make the students engage and interested in the topic you’re going to teach. Then you have to teach the grammar in a communicative style( not just the teacher speaks blah, blah, blah and all students in the class room passively listen to it and think, “oh god, grammar sucks!). Communicative technique is like you make the students say all the things you want to teach! And this kind of teaching requires enormous preparation of lessons which normally no normal English teacher does. You ENGAGE the students, and then they STUDY (the teaching part) and by the end of your lesson you have to ACTIVATE (use the lesson they studied by speaking or writing).

                 

                    The next class was about how to plan lessons from course books and from your heart! It was done by Helen. We learn so many things in this session as well. Guided observation was the next item. Anu and me went to an IELTS class room with Helen. The rest of the three went another class room with David. Helen is going to take a 35 minute class for her IELTS students. Anu and me will observe the class by sitting the in back corner of the class. I have to notice everything that she does in the class and I have to note it down in my Guided observation journal. Later in the afternoon Helen will discuss it with us.

                

                     Its’ 12:30, lunch time! We all had lunch together and we were so excited because next session is Helen’s French class! She came to the class and explained that the French lesson is tomorrow today we will be given all the instruction about what to notice when she is taking the French class. We need to submit an assignment called ‘Unknown Language Journal’ where we have to write all the teaching techniques she used while teaching French, materials she used, how effective the materials were etc. I was a bit disappointed that the French lesson is starting only from tomorrow.

 

             Next session is lesson planning. Helen gave us the topics to teach for the IELTS students next day. we have to create a detailed lesson plan before we take a step into the class. It has a structure. You must write what your topic is , how you’re going to teach it, and  you have to explain the ‘why’ of ‘how’ ! meaning you have to explain why are you teaching that particular point In that way, what will be the benefit and so on.

            The class was over at 5pm and I thought I could finish the lesson plan quite easily from home. I walked home with ease. I finished the glass of juice that was waiting for me on the table. Gracy aunty always does it. After a quick chat with my roommates Jiju, Jomon, Sameer and Brar( new arrival from Panjab to do IELTS from CILA) I opened my laptop, the text book that I have to teach the lesson from. I started thinking of all the stages I’m going to be doing the next day in the class room. And wrote the lesson plan in detail, it took me around 4 hours to finish it! I know you wouldn’t believe it, but come and do TESOL here and you’ll experience it I mean at least the first day of your lesson planning. May be it’s only for me, I don’t know, maybe I’m very slow, I don’t know. So tomorrow I have to go and teach! The terrible thing is Helen will be in the classroom watching and noting every move of mine. And so will be my peer Anupama. When one of us is taking lesson the next one should take notes of the next one's teaching. So that’s it! Let’s see how things are gonna work out tomorrow! And I’m looking forward to the French lesson too!

DAY 1 : Don’t get overwhelmed

         After a good breakfast cooked by Gracie aunty, I left for CILA. It’s about 15 minutes to walk from where I stay during the course. I got there by 9:30 and filled in my name, address, qualification and contact number in a paper they gave me. Oxford Tefl will be sending my Cert.TESOL certificate to the address I put here.

          

           The office staff directed me to the TESOL class room. David, one of the tutors, had started taking the first session. There were 4 candidates in the room, Krishnan, Komal, Anu and Lisa. So it will be 5 of us doing Cert.TESOL in January. David let me in and I took a seat in the class. It was an air-conditioned, fully furnished, bright  class room. David is from Canada and he was so friendly and made us really comfortable.

           

             David handled the morning session up to 12:20pm. The session included getting to know each other at first where we go near the board and introduce ourselves and answering the audiences’ questions.  He gave us the 5 weeks’ time table and guided us through it for a while. Later he made us in to two groups; a group he’ll be training for the coming two weeks and the next group will get the training of Helen (another tutor) for the same amount of time. After two weeks we will switch the tutors. Anu and I are in the group of Helen and the rest of us in David’s. Helen will train us how to deal with the advanced learners and David with basic ones.

            David explained the necessity of learning students’ needs before you go and take and English lesson for them. He explained ways to get that done before we start our teaching practices in the coming days. He said tomorrow we’ll get to see how David and Helen teach students as they’ll be teaching by having us as ‘observers’. This is a great idea to make us prepare for our lessons in the coming days.

       I had brought lunch from ‘home’ (I’ll be calling the house I’m staying ‘home’ from now on). So we had it at the lunch time, which was from 12:30 to 1:30.

           The afternoon session was by Helen, another tutor, and it was all about describing all the stuff we will have to do as the course progresses. With her sense of humor we were enjoying every words she would say  in her pure British accent (She's from England by the way). She explained the complete modules of the course and what we are expected to do. She said she’ll be giving us a French class tomorrow in order to make us realize what a student feels in a foreign language learning class.  Later, we were asked to talk to IELTS students at CILA to know their needs by learning English. We also had to find out their language backgrounds. I talked to a group of 5 or 6 students and finished my task. The first day is OOWVA!

Looking forward to the guided observation session and the French class tomorrow!

                                              

                                         à demain!