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Week 3 TESOL Log on Deficiencies May 26, 2010

Posted by Liz Mead in : TESOL , 1 comment so far

Captains Log – 3rd week out from port – lost sight of the Isle of Tesol, confirming we packed the right navigation charts!  Checked supplies today, Cook tells me we’re low on fresh fruit. Unless we can pull into one of the Islands, I fear the crew will come down with Scurvy.

3rd week into my TESOL (Teaching English as a second language) course, and I’m noticing – like one would notice a skin condition – my own failings in the classroom.

  1. I have an unsettling emotional reaction to negative feedback
  2. I don’t read carefully
  3. I don’t listen properly and
  4. I use information for humour, sometimes without considering the implications.

I’m getting the impression my condition is fairly skin-deep, and certainly doesn’t bode well for the course I’ve set myself – to being an effective teacher!

As soon as I had the insight it didn’t take me long to slip into my default position of “I give up! I knew I’d never be a teacher!”.

After this rigorous audit and decision making process however I take a deep breath and re-evaluate my options.

I could turn those weaknesses into strength and fix my condition with the very things I think are weaknesses. Who better to understand a learning process that one who doesn’t learn as quickly as others.

I settle on the antidote:

Lift anchor, as I have enough supplies to get back on course.

Week 2 – Tesol and the Pussycat all at sea May 25, 2010

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2nd week at Sea. 

Captain’s Log

We had a rough passage through the PPP straits: Present, Practice and Produce (aka a teaching methodology acquired as part of my TESOL training). I could see the isle of Tesol in the distance. Have taken in a lot of water, when the hull was savaged by a small coral reef of modal auxiliaries, Language Acquisition theoreum and Communicative Teaching methods.

I am to learn the structural rules around this native language of mine: verb tenses, sentence structures, participles, infinitives, gerunds, classifications, categories, types of language and to top it all – a phonetic alphabet!

One good thing about learning something you already instinctively or naturally know (with apologies to Chomsky),  is that the fear is minimised.  It’s like closing the fourth Johari window, consciously rememembering what we unconsciously already know.

At the same time – to rest my weary brain, I’m reading Lear’s biography of Beatrix Potter. She was adept at botanical illustrations, and would have made a brilliant naturalist. She chose, instead, thank God! to illustrate humanity and the natural world for children. Using the sophistication of her thought and language to unravel mysteries for “little rabbits”.

The Potter books by-passed me as a child. I read, instead,  “Breer Rabbit” by her contemporary Joel Chandler Harris, and Edward Lear’s “The Owl and Pussycat”. 

It seems my early reading was done with hindsight – for I sure need them now that I’m all at sea. 

So I close this log – still miles from the Isle of Tesol, but optimistic and hardy, stocked up with Honey, phonemes and pea green boat.

Learning from scratch – Lesson 1 TESOL May 18, 2010

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Just started at a 20 week course learning how to teach. Teach English as a second language that is.

First week had a total immersion in another language for 10 mins. Freaked me out. Great experience though, to see the huge chasm between the learner and teacher if the language is not your own. These things I gleaned:

Will use this blog as a parking space for insights about the process