Wednesday 10 June 2009

How can it possibly be two weeks????

... since I last blogged? Where did the time go? Well, let's see, there was the "teaching" assignment I did last week at the lycée in Royan. Four hours of trying to get French kids to practise their English over two days passed the week on nicely! I'm talking about all the internet research on the TEFL websites to try and put together lesson plans. Loads of good material there, too much to trawl through really! Do you want to know what went down the best of all the stuff I got together? Well, I'll tell you, horoscopes. I printed off the horoscopes from the Daily Mirror website each morning and let them read their own out loud, and then those of their nearest and dearest. They absolutely loved it!

Second best was the pictures I hastily tore out of a magazine and got them to describe. Worst bit? I had the bright idea of spending 40 minutes or so on a current news article. Not a good week for news - the French plane crash, followed by the trial of the morons who murdered the French students, and if that's not current enough, there's always the snubbing of the queen about the 65th anniversary of the D-Day landings! I erred on the side of safe and decided on the Britain's Got Talent programme and Susan Boyle. Blank faces all round! They sort of recognised Simon Cowell! Talent competition - what's that? I bravely continued for about 5 minutes in this vein before deciding to .... move swiftly on ....

On the whole, they were lovely teenagers (16 - 18 years old, as it turned out!). They were a bit slow to warm up but once you got them talking, it was difficult to shut them up. Would I like to become a teacher? Not a chance! I stressed over this ordeal (sorry, meant to say assignment) to a point where I could hardly sleep nights! I felt like I'd survived an ordeal when it was over!

I now have to report back to the teacher (in French) about how it all went! Now that's a doddle!

1 comment:

Lesley said...

Well done you (loud applause) !!!!!