Training week 2

We are greeted once more by our tutor, Emma. As she writes up the plan for the morning, it is clear that we are going to have another pacy, stimulating day. We start with English vocabulary, its complexities and quirks and soon realize that it is not only difficult for a beginner to learn English, in many aspects it can prove tricky for those of us who speak it as a first language as well!

We moved on to learn how to use different techniques to help teach the meaning of vocabulary, such as pictures, objects, mime and examples. It becomes clear that we must think hard about how we elicit answers from our students. Then we considered how language is different depending on whether you are reading it or listening to it and for example, the importance of punctuation or intonation in defining meaning.

In the afternoon, we prepared our first lesson plan. Examples were given, reading a letter sent from the hospital and calling the emergency services, and then we were split into 3 groups and asked to work together to plan our first lesson. The subject is introducing yourself and the local neighbourhood and we will be teaching this lesson to real students next week. By the time we left at 2.30pm, we had a good idea of how the lesson would be structured and what teaching materials would be at our disposal, but further work would have to be done at home to complete it.

Being allocated groups we were told to get in to pairs and prepare lessons for entry 1 students. These students didn't know much English and so it was a challenge for us to teach them some useful words and sentences. We taught them about directions and how to read maps of Kingston. It was a very challenging yet valuable experience. I think it made me more confident to speak up in front of people that I don't know; and these skills are really good especially if you want to go in to long term teaching like me. The students that we were teaching were very friendly too and so our experience of teaching a group of 8 people was not as scary as we first thought it would be.