Feb 9 (Tuesday)

Two trainees arrived late to the first hour. One had lost track of the time and the other was stuck in the subway. I appreciated the extra time spent with the other two, though, as we got to talk a lot more personally about the nature of the course and becoming a CELE teacher. I was very encouraged today to see one of my favourite ex-trainees downstairs and to hear that he had been invited to join the CELE crew.

Before beginning the 5-7 class, I let the trainees know what I would be giving so that they weren't coming completely blind to the class. It will be easier when we start actually doing lesson plans. I so like teaching that I hope I won't feel too jealous when they are teaching and not me!! It's a hard thing to give a class to others to teach.

The free writing today was "Who is the person who has most influenced you?" I didn't point it out to them, but it was using the language point we were going to examine later. Some sts shared and it was nice to hear two males talking about the positive influence their fathers have been on them.

We also worked a little on collocations, particularly as the Tunoumi pages had revealed some rather interesting misuses of common phrases. I had four or five to give, but in the end only dealt with two: Have a happy day (and its variations) as compared to Have a funny day; and To have a heavy burden lifted off your back (and its variations) as compared to To have a heavy package fall off your back. The trainees later commented on the way I wrote them on the board. I don't think the teaching of collocations is very well-known despite much investigation into corpus studies and the positive results of teaching popular chunks.

I need to be aware too that just because I've taught level 6 before, I still need to make sure I check what is being taught beforehand, particularly when it's a grammar lesson; as there were just a few times when I wasn't sure of what was coming up next or how I was going to explain it best. I'm not sure if it noted - the trainees didn't mention it.

The game that we did at the end of the lesson in order to practice Relative Clauses was a very useful one and it showed that they had captured well the concept. There were just a very few mistakes, but they were corrected by the sts.

After the class, the trainees talked about specific aspects they had chosen to observe. They were: error correction; use of materials; students' questions; and giving feedback to students. It became clear that they need more in order to flesh out the true issues in observing these aspects, as their observations were fairly basic; for example, that I used various materials. But there could have been deeper analysis such as Why I used a particular material at a particular time; how effective they were; what else could have been used instead; how authentic were they etc.

I will be photocopying more tasks from Wajnryb's book for Thursday which hopefully will help them "indagar más".

M expressed some angst about the teaching methods he's been employed in and how they don't seem to be adequate for the CELE group. I assured him we'll do some microteaching beforehand in order to see each trainee's style and help them. The aim is always to help ... I hope this becomes clear to each one in time.