CELTA Experience (Day 17)

The class today looked different. Instead of setting the chairs around the table as usual, the chairs were organized in a horse shoe shape today. Ang guess what? We had a Hungarian lesson today. Never had I though about learning Hungarian in my life. I was excited actually during the class by following every single thing that the teacher, Zsofi, said, explained, and instructed. No wonder I understood everything fast. Anyways, I actually just guessed. Haha. 

Having this Hungarian class for zero background or experience of students showed us how it felt like teaching English for beginner students. Trust me, it's tough. Oh, I still remember a few stuffs. 

Szia. Siti vagyok. Mi a neved? .... vagyok. Hodg vadg? Jol vagyok. koszi. Es te? Enis, koszi. Szia. Szia. 

I might've made a lot of spelling mistakes here and there. Well, that's what we learned today. I can't imagine how hard it is teaching English for beginner students. But wait, I think I've got experience. Maybe I can share in a different post later. 

In the afternoon, we had a chance to meet the CELTA Assessor Alastair Douglas (I wrote his name down and Googled him). Nothing much to talk about. We shared how our experience has been going so far and if we have any comments or concerns to share. Everything was great anyways!

I was not too busy in the afternoon because I had no TP today. Carys, George and Ethan had their TP today. Well, as usual, I observed their teaching and took some important notes. I don't want to tell every single thing that I wrote from each of their lesson, but I'd just like to share some important notes I got from the feedback session after the TP. 

- In teaching, it's important to think about the distribution of students in grouping.

- Natural language, especially the weak form or sound of some words, needs to be emphasized.

- Make students notice the grammar focus of the lesson.

- In showing the answers of vocabulary practice or any practice, show the whole sentence to tell the context of its use. 

- Overall, the steps would be Doing the task > Checking > Meaning > Drilling > Form > Practice.

- Always give a task every time we ask students to watch a video, or listen to an audio, or to look at a picture.

- In revealing the answers on the board, do it one by one so students are focused and don't get distracted by other numbers.

- In writing lesson, make all stages clear. Planning (take notes, with who, for how long). Writing (what to write, for how long).

- In the freer practice stage in every lesson, many things might happen (micro stages), and that's why it's important to write everything in nice and clear detail. 

CELTA Experience (Day 20)

 I had a mixed feeling today. I was excited CELTA is over, but I was sad for not seeing all of my CELTA fellows and tutors. 

We started the morning session today Teacher Wellbeing by looking back our journey in the last 4 weeks attending CELTA. I could see that most of us had ups and downs with more or less similar reasons like assignments, TP, changing level of the class to teach. Anyways, we're all relieved that we had been through this together. 

Teacher Wellbeing still sounds a bit new to me maybe because I don't read much about it or attend any seminars on this topic. Despite the fact that it's really important to take care of teacher wellbeing, unfortunately I can still see that in my surrounding in Indonesia it's forgotten and neglected. It's like teachers are super humans with super powers who can do anything without any help or support from their surroundings. 

It's interesting to have the Job Hunting session after that. We had a look at some job opportunities abroad one of which is in Vietnam, the one interested me the most. We though about what makes a CV good and even had a job interview role play with some possible questions asked by the interviewer when we apply for a job as a teacher of English. 

We had some group photos and I received an award as The World's Greatest Human. I was surprised. 

Sayonara, amazing people! I'll see you in another part of the world at another time!

 

CELTA Experience (Day 19)

 Nothing much to do today. I had an English class to observe. It's an Upper-Intermediate class with around 17 students and most of the them are Japanese. Only one student is Polish. The teacher was fun. She started the class by reviewing the previous lesson about British art. And, the topic of today was 'Taking a Break'. Students had a discussion in pairs about holidays in their country and what they usually do to spend their holidays. Oh, I joined one of the pairs. It's interesting to find that as far as I observed, Japanese students are quite shy in class to speak, but the teacher was great in encouraging them to share ideas. 

After the observation, I had an input session on 'Teaching in different context' and it was particularly teaching one-to-one and business class. Well, it's surprising to find that teaching one-to-one class has more challenges than its advantages. But anyways, I 've learned a few lessons from there, one of which is measuring progress, and I guess I can take those lessons  into my consideration in teaching more one-to-one classes in the future. 

Today is Ethan and Carys's TP8, their last TP. George and I observed them and took some notes during the whole lesson. Before students left the class, we invited students to take a group photo for our memory. Just like what we did yesterday, we share 1 thing that we liked today, 1 thing that we'd steal from them, and what has improved since the first TP. Personally, I find how each of us has been progressing from TP1 to TP8 really amazing. Well, we're all done now. Congratulations for all us! YEAY!

(Jin, Anna, Fatih, Ekin, Maria 1, Maria 2, Mauro)

CELTA Experience (Day 18)

I was super busy this morning because I needed to finish my lesson plan for my last Teaching Practice (TP) today, TP8. Yeay! I did start planning the lesson last night, but there were some parts of it which were not completed yet. 

Coincidently, I didn't have to reach the campus at English Language Teaching Center (ELTC) at 9:30 am as usual, so I could take a remote interpretation assignment for two hours for Asian Football Confederation. 

It wasn't too busy today since we had only one input session 'Teaching in different context', and it turned out to be about teaching English exams, one of which is IELTS (International English Language Testing System). I've had some experience in both taking and teaching the exam to share with my CELTA colleagues. It's interesting how the Tutor delivered the lesson by assigning to have a look at the real IELTS exam paper to be analyzed and discussed guided by some questions. 

For TP8, I did it today with George. He taught a lesson about going to space and it was very interesting. Students were all excited and engaged in the discussion. After him, I started my lesson by playing a guessing game briefly. Overall, my lesson today is about making speculations about what happened in the past (must/may/might/can't have + past participle). As always, I did my best at all stages of the lesson. In the Freer Practice stage, I had Students practice the Target Language by using dice to be rolled and some pictures to be described. 

Unlike the previous TPs where we also talked about what to work on in the next TP, this time we talked about how George and I have improved from TP1 to TP8. I received a lot of positive feedback from the Tutor and Colleagues. Also, I was thrilled for passing my 4th Assignment Language Skill Related Assignment. It wasn't an easy one. 

Congratulations for me!