Day 6

Day 6: 01/06/09

So Andy and I slept in again, but this time it was a bad thing. Classes started at 8:45. We know the walk only takes five minutes but we left at 8:41. And we entered the classroom at 8:47. That says how far away our flat is from the school... but still. We probably should've been there early. After all, to be early is to be on time!
The day started with Mila teaching again and we started with the different types of certificates that students can pass in order to be proficient in English. The Cambridge exam system has many different levels and I'm not going to bother telling them to you. If you want, you can just look it up online. I don't want to type them all out. But basically it goes from Beginner to Advanced and then Proficient. Our teacher, the one telling us all about the English language is very proficient if that gives you an idea.
We were taught a basic teaching style: WPPPW: Warm up/ Presentation/ Practice/ Production/ and Wrap up.
After a short break, we went into grammar and verbs. Surprisingly, I was interested because for one thing, I was never taught the English grammar very well. I mean good. In high school Spanish we covered Spanish irregular verbs and all the tenses but it was different and interesting to see and think about English irregular verbs like bring and brought rather than open and opened; the latter being a regular verb. And then we went into all kinds of verbs including auxiliary, modal, dynamic and stative. All stuff I never knew before. Verb tenses I kinda knew from Spanish. (Is that sad or what? I had to take a foreign language in order to get a grasp on my own language!) Tenses like present perfect, past simple, etc etc...
Class ended around two I think and then Andy, Amanda, Loli, and I grabbed some lunch at a cafeteria. Again, a cheap place suggested by the native Czechs training us to speak our own language. Hardly anyone there spoke a word of English so I just grabbed a sub sandwich for 28 crowns, or $1.15 or so. Everyone else pointed and waved and eventually got what they wanted.
Tomorrow, I, as well as others, get a chance to actually teach one on one. It will be in front of everyone else for peer criticism, but we're all rookies without a clue so it shouldn't be too bad.

Funny, I didn't take any pictures today....

Comments

Kolby said…
it sounds like you are enjoying it... man that sounds like such a good idea to do after highschool. take a year off. live in europe. cheap living... wow. sounds fun... USA misses you.
January 9, 2009 at 1:20 AM
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