Teaching English as a Foreign Language

Ah yes, Mui Ne. Before we entered into the pressure of actually being teachers, and a year of noise and pollution in Saigon, this delightful km long stretch of prime Vietnam beach was a welcome time to relax and prepare. Those hanging palm trees and rhythmic waves now seem a thing of the distant past now we have been thrown head first into teaching.
It gets easier I’m told, but a little perspective may help you understand our first weekend. When we were training, we were expected to teach about 45 minutes every other day. We had lectures in the morning and lessons to teach or observe in the afternoon. I would say, trying to get top marks, pass and be seen as a worthy teacher, for those 45 minutes most of the trainee teachers would spend between 1 and 3 hours preparing (maybe more as the panic of how little grammar one actually knows sets in). At the end of the course most of us were confident we could take on a class, shut the door and get on with some about standard lessons.
A gap of maybe three months before this teaching job started has not exactly helped me with my teaching skills. We got back from Mui Ne, and were presented with a list of classes. Each lesson will be 2 hours long and on our first weekend we both had 4 lessons on Saturday, and 4 on Sunday. This with just a Friday to prepare.
Let’s do a quick bit of arithmetic – so I’ll assume my planning skills aren’t as good as they were at end of my course. 3 hours to plan a 45 minute lesson! Well I’ll stick with 3 hours for a 2 hour lesson. So 4 X 3 X 2 = 24. Yes 24 hours of planning and I was setting out to do this at 10am on the Friday. Ah, a little problem.
Basically some corners have been cut, and some points in my lessons have been slightly below par. It was in fact Chaos at times. Children screaming, shouting, fighting and heaven knows what else, while I sift through my scribbled notes, giving a less than confident ‘hmmmmm, hang on guys’ to my young learners.
Phew, Christie and I both made it somehow. And already I feel like I’ve learnt a lot and will do a better job this weekend. Plus I’ve had much more time to plan. I’ve also done a couple of lessons in the week, of which the last one I ended feeling like those teenagers (oh yes, happy happy teenagers) had actually learnt something. Funnily enough, before they learnt something, I had to learn something – let’s be honest, for those people who have never studied languages, who knows what the Third Conditional is? I do now, which is a good job, as apparently I am an English teacher.