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.)

great
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