The course I'm taking is intense. One month long, five days a week, 10:00 to 6:00 not including prep. time for teaching. We are being observed, evaluated and graded on our lesson plans, teaching techniques and so much more. OUR instructors are really excellent and I've already learned half a notebook full of new information, at least.
Yesterday we learned about phonemes, dipthongs and monophthongs as we will be teaching new sounds to our students. We all have to teach for 45 minutes tomorrow to Czech students ranging in age from 18 to 60 plus. The school classrooms come complete with white boards, CD players and other props to use in the field of language acquisition. Lesson planning is more intense since all lessons need to have four or five different activities. It's going to be very challenging, to say the least but this is stuff that will serve me well in the teaching field regardless of where I am or who I'm teaching.
One really valuable class for us was when our teacher, Terry, spoke to us only in Czech for 45 mins. He was teaching us how to purchase bread, cheese and meat at the store. The conversation was fairly simple but the pronunciation of the Czech words was the most difficult aspect of the learning process. Obviously the point of the whole exercise was to put us in the shoes of our students and share what we were feeling. It also taught us some basic survival Czech. Well, I would write more but I have to go plan my lessons. : ) Na Shledanou!
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