Claudia Beukmann - TEFL course diary

For the module of the ‘Practice of TESOL’ I have to read Jeremy Harmer’s ‘The Practice of English Language Teaching’ 2001.

It is by far more interesting than the title suggests.
Admittedly, I had a slow start, but I got really interested when he was talking about no fixed solutions and a cultural bias in the Teaching methodology.
From my own experience I found out in Japan, that many suggestions just didn’t work with my students, or that I just couldn’t do what the teacher’s books were suggesting, because it went against local tradition or social rule.

At the time I was unsure but when I talked to other teachers, they had the same problems, and we just left it there. We changed what we had to.

Lately also there are coursebooks specifically made for one area to fit the social circumstances and traditional teaching methods. They had been very helpful.

Now, Harmer explains in general the difficulties with cultural differences, and that they can even exist within one country, for example within a different social strata.

What he mainly stresses is the need of openness and flexibility of the teacher and the awareness of possible cultural problems.

In most of the chapters I read so far ( I am in Chapter 8 now) the topic comes back again and again.

I saw some problems of cultural differences already when I was in Germany and had English at school, both with a native speaker as well as with a German English teacher.

When I taught later myself in Japan, I had a culture shock myself, as most of the teaching in Japan is based on reproducing as exactly as possible what the teacher taught. No initiative or individual thinking is required for most parts.

To get students over the age of 8 to give their personal opinion on something was nearly impossible, and quite a few students froze for the rest of the lesson.

So I am glad that there is a book now, maybe more than one, that tells people about this problem. I felt very much left out in the cold rain, when I had to modify those teacher’s books for the diverse coursebooks that I used over the years.

Hopefully there will be cultural hints for teachers new to an area found in future TBs, and alternatives of teaching ideas.

Over the weekend I definitely wanted to do at least 2 test papers for the TESOL course.
But after the cold I had last week I just didn’t feel up to it. Which means again about one week lost.
At least I finished the test on ‘Language Awareness’. That one was fairly simple, giving a description of Word Classes and asking me in what order I would teach phrases of suggestions that were given.
I am now in the second part of an 8 part course for TESOL (TM). I had a slow start, but I hope it will get better soon.

The first modules were about ‘Practical Phonics’ (a subject I am not exactly fond of!), Practice of Teaching (writing content cards of a book called ‘The English Teacher’s Handbook’), ‘How to Learn’ lessons (2 modules and quite interesting to do).

I still have a lingering headache, so I use the excuse to dodge the Phonics test - again, today.
But tomorrow I really have to get down to it. Otherwise I will take again too long.

What I am trying to finish today is one or two chapters of my textbook.
For the moment it is ‘The practice of Language Teaching’ by J. Harmer. 2001.

It reads fairly easily, but making notes takes time. But I found out that if I don’t make notes it becomes difficult to find the places again to answer the questions in the exercises or the tests.

Okay, back to work!
- No, not work. It is already time to pick up my children from the schoolbus. Yikes. When will I find time to do something for the TESOL course?