Blue & Yellow Post

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

Posted by Liz Mead in : TESOL , trackback

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.

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