Jennifer Patience - TEFL course diary

Arriving at the school in the morning there’s an extra sense of pressure if it’s your teaching practice day. Our input sessions start at 9.30 but the school is open earlier and some of us have found ourselves there at 7am.

By the end of the course we’ll have had 6 hours of observed teaching practice. How this is split up can vary from course to course. For us we have two weeks of teaching elementary level students - 3 x 40 minutes and 1 x 60 minutes - and then two weeks of intermediate level, same breakdown of lessons.

As we are only 5, it works out that for the first week Mikka, David and I teach on Tuesday & Thursday while Val & Prun teach on Wednesday and Friday. If we were 6, it would work out quite evenly, but as it stands we get the added bonus of an extra teaching session. And the great thing about that is, that it’s not assessed or observed so the pressure is off and you can just relax and enjoy the lesson.

Anyway today there are three of us teaching, so the heat is on to produce a detailed plan and be super organised as we have our second observed TP.

We’ve started to get into a routine, a lot of it based on who is teaching that afternoon and who is not. During our 30 minute morning break we rush down to the CELTA room and get straight back into our lesson plans and preparation. One of us - usually someone not teaching that day - takes charge of ordering the lunch, collecting the money and then heading down to the admin office to cajole someone to call up and place the order for us. The kettle goes on, teas and coffees are made and before you know it, it’s time to go back upstairs for the second session. At 12, when it’s lunch time, the not-teaching-that-afternoon’ers arrange the classroom - make sure the chairs are out and it’s tidy, while those teaching at 1 are putting all the documentation together - lesson plans, handouts etc and making sure they have all the necessary equipment. So far not a single minute has been wasted. Right up until 1pm when all the students are patiently waiting in the classroom, we are making last minute notes, practising what we’ll say or touching up the lesson plan.

In our first morning session we also watched a DVD of a teacher using the text-based teaching method, hence the TV.

David getting the students to change places in class - always a good tip to energise them, especially if they’ve been sitting in the same chair for 2 hours.

Feedback session: Those of us that taught had to fill in a self -assessment form to give to Ellen before we dissected the lessons together.

Ellen writing out her assessments of our lessons. This is the really useful stuff - we get an overall assessment highlighting the positive and negative aspects of our lesson, but also an almost minute by minute stream of consciousness written on our lesson plans - commenting on timing, concept checks, whether we met our ‘targets’ etc.

Wednesday and a morning session with Ellen on ways of presenting new language. This morning we were looking at using a situation as the context for introducing or eliciting the target language structure. Ellen always starts off her sessions with demonstrations, i.e. getting us to be the ’students’ and experience the method through her teaching. Afterwards we all discuss what we did, how we responded and reacted and analyse what she did in the class to get us to reach those conclusions.

There are a number of teaching models out there for us to get to grips with and this one falls under the PPP method. Presentation - Practice - Production. Basically put, teacher presents the language, students practice the language and then they produce the language.

We were also introduced to the mantra of MPF: Meaning - Pronunciation - Form. When introducing new vocabulary or structures to students. This is going to be very important I think! First you establish that the student understands the meaning of the new piece of vocabulary. You can do this through visuals or mime or realia (real objects). Then work on the pronunciation. Use yourself as the demonstration model - enunciate clearly and give the students time to practice. Finally, you provide a written form of the word or structure - usually on the white board. This last bit for me is what I have to remember. Anyone that knows me in the classroom, knows I love the whiteboard so I’m going to have to work really hard to restrain myself from not rushing to the board before establishing the Meaning & Pronunciation….

Our mornings are split up into two, so after 90 minutes we have a half hour break and then it’s back with Robin for a session on ways of teaching vocabulary. We were given an interesting handout of 10 criteria to consider when you say you “know” a word:

1 - you can recognise it in its written form

2 - you can recognise it in its spoken form

3 - you can pronounce it correctly

…….. there are 7 more. A huge pat on the back to any of you that can guess what they are!

Yesterday we were given Assignment 1 which involves working with one of the students on a more personal basis. So the teaching practice sessions this afternoon were useful also for observing the students and deciding which of them we wanted to work with. Today Val and Prun were up, each teaching a 40 minute lesson.

Val teaching her first lesson

The students affectionately nicknamed Prun, “strong man”!

Our sessions from now on start at 9.30am. In the morning we will have two input sessions and the afternoon will be teaching practice followed by feedback and a lesson planning session for the next day. Also today we will be given the first of our 4 Assignments.

Today’s input sessions are led by Robin and we cover Classroom Management and Learning Styles. The learning styles session is interesting as we get to take our own little “test” to find out whether we are primarily Auditory (through listening) learners, Visual (through seeing) learners or Kinaesthetic (by doing) learners. I thought I would be a visual learner for sure, not just as my background is in visual arts - I know I don’t fully register things (like instructions) if I don’t see them written down, but surprisingly I score highest of all on the Kinaesthetic scale. I wonder if our teaching styles are reflected also through this learning style. I don’t feel comfortable with a “lecturing” style of teaching and could never sustain that through an entire lesson. I do like to make lessons visually interesting, or to have students “doing something” - like matching cards, or sticking things into books or handouts.

It’s useful also for use to be aware of this as Assignment 1 is to focus on a particular student, assess their needs and prepare materials and a lesson accordingly.

The afternoon is my first teaching practice session and I’m up first for 40 minutes, followed by David and then Mikka.

David’s first lesson with the Elementary students.

Mikka’s first lesson with the elementary students.

Post-teaching feedback session.

After the teaching practice we have a feedback session. It’s a bit unnerving and a new experience to analyse your own lesson but it’s actually quite a liberating thing to do. It also helps that we are a small group and have created a good rapport already, so it’s easy as well as useful to be critical with each other without taking anything personally.

First one over though, so that’s a huge relief!

Well, so there are five us on the course. We all turned up at around 9am at the Language Link school on Dai Co Viet street about 1km south of Hoan Kiem Lake. We have two tutors, Ellen from the USA and Robin from England and to kick everything off we played an ice-breaker introductory activity: on a sticker write an anagram of your name and three numbers that have a significance for you in some way. Then, mingle and try to guess the name and meaning of your partner’s numbers. It was a good way to start off. Not being so many of us, it’s quite easy to remember everyone’s names and we had a chance to get to one another fairly quickly. My fellow course mates are Valerie (from San Fransisco), Mikka (from New York), David (from Australia) and Pronsius (from Ireland).

We went through a bit of course administration. Filling in feedback forms, getting our CELTA folders - with the CELTA 5: a very important booklet which we keep a record of all of our teaching practice (TP) sessions, observation sessions and progress reports. The folder is what the CELTA assessor will use to grade us on.

Because we’re only 5, we’ll stay together and for the first two weeks will have elementary students for our TP. The morning sessions we will have input on various aspects of teaching: language analysis, lesson planning etc and the afternoons are where we will put it into practice. Three of us will teach each day and two will observe. Because it doesn’t round up to 6, we will also each take an extra TP, but it will be unassessed - so good for extra practice without the stress of preparing the lesson plan or being observed.

We had a quick tour of the school and saw our workroom on the 5th floor, which is pretty nice. There are 4 computers and lockers and it’s great that we have lots of space. The teacher’s room on the 2nd floor is full of teaching books and materials. Our input sessions and TP takes place on the 6th floor and on the 4th floor is Robin and Ellen’s office. So lots of going up and down stairs, or taking the lift, but it’s all pretty much self contained and easy to get around. We can make tea and coffee and play on the whiteboard in our room, so who could want for any more!

After a break we had a beginners Vietnamese lesson with Ellen where she taught us some useful phrases. One of the great things about Ellen is that she uses input sessions not just as information sessions, but also as TP sessions - giving us ideas on how to present and practice in the classroom. Without using a word of English, she got us telling and asking about names as well as which country we were from.

After lunch we headed back up to the 6th floor to sit in on Robin’s introductory lesson with our group of elementary students. He was conducting a 1hr lesson (which counts towards our 6 hours of experienced teacher observation) and then we would have 1 hr to meet and get to know them a little before we started teaching. Another reason for us to get to know them as much as we could is that ASSIGNMENT 1 is based around a case study of a student, and we would have to choose one of these students to work with on that.

Over lunch we had planned lots of name games and how we would organise our chats with the students but Robin just got us in the middle of the room with small groups of 3/4 and we had a free chat. The students are lovely. Most of them are university students and they attend Language Link anyway, but signed up for this course for extra practice. For them it is obviously free, as we are using them as English learning guinea pigs. But they seem enthusiastic to speak with us and practice.

After we’d spent time chatting we had our final session of the day - Lesson Planning. David, Mikka and myself were teaching the next day and so we needed to sit down with Ellen and plan out what we would do. For the first part of the course we are given aims and structure for the lesson so we have something to work with. As we get better and more experienced then we should be able to figure that out for ourselves…. Or so the theory goes!

So, finally at around 6pm or so, we headed off. Heads spinning from lots of new information and things to think about for tomorrow. Happy days!

Our CELTA workspace looking spick and span.

Pron, Valerie, David & Mikka. Fresh faced at the beginning of the course…

Ellen’s Vietnamese lesson for us trainees.

Getting ready to observe Robin in action.

Robin in action.

From l-r: Thuy, Huong, Duy, Trung and Canh.

From l-r: Canh, Huyen and Thao.

From l-r: Trang, Phuong and Van.

Yesterday I got an email from Omar at Language Link giving me details of Monday - Day One!!

Turn up at 8.30. We will be able to order in lunch, which sounds ominously like there will be no time to even leave the building. Dress Code: No jeans, shorts, bare shoulders or midriffs.

Here we go!

One of the most famous places to visit in Hanoi is the lake in the southern part of the Old Quarter. Everything seems to converge here - street sellers, cafes, cyclos, tourist shops, tourists…

The legend of the lake goes that in the 15th century Heaven sent the Emperor a magical sword so he could drive the Chinese out of Vietnam. After the war was over, the Emperor visited the lake where he saw a giant golden tortoise swimming. The tortoise grabbed the sword and disappeared to the bottom of the lake restoring the sword to its heavenly owners. The name of the lake Ho Hoan Kiem means Lake of the Restored Sword.

The bridge to the pagoda in Hoan Kiem lake. 

It’s a popular place for wedding couples to take photographs.

It is said that there are still tortoises in the lake. A giant one was found in 1968 and is on display in the nearby pagoda. If you see one swimming in the water it is said to bring good luck. The water is kind of murky though, so I hope tortoises don’t mind that kind of environment.

Looking for tortoises in the lake. 

I made an effort to get up especially early to visit as the Mausoleum containing “Uncle Ho” (not Uncle Mo as I had in my head) is only open mornings until 11am. The Mausoleum complex houses the mausoleum itself, a Ho Chi Minh museum, a pagoda and a house.

To get in to see embalmed Uncle Ho you have to first leave all your bags and belongings at the entrance. If you are wearing shorts or a skirt that is too short they give you a wrap skirt to cover you up. Likewise they don’t like you to wear strappy tops. I was asked to take my camera out of my bag and take it with me which I thought was odd as you aren’t allowed photographs inside, but as our “group” wended its way through the checkpoints, we passed through a security X-Ray and my camera was put in a little carrier bag only to go a further 10 metres to reach a shed where it was to be handed in, in exchange for a token. (They then “truck” your cameras around to the exit door of mausoleum where you collect them.) The actual Mausoleum entrance was another 200 metres around the corner and down the street and we were marched around in crocodile fashion by a number of guards.

Despite being an early Saturday morning there were a lot of people there visiting, mostly Vietnamese. Having said that the queue moved quickly. Once you’re inside the building itself you go up and around one flight of stairs, past the uniformed guards every few metres until you reach the inner room where Uncle Ho lies, tastefully lit, with a guard at each corner of his case. Not being allowed to take photographs or linger is the reason the queue moves so fast - you are barely in there for 30 seconds. You have to show respect, by not wearing a hat or putting your hands in your pockets. It was an interesting experience as he is an important political 20th century figure as Lenin & Chairman Mao (who are also embalmed).

Entering the Mausoleum of Ho Chi Minh

You are pretty much escorted down the street by guards and once in the building, it takes maybe a couple of minutes before you are out the other side.

Arrgghhh, it doesn’t help when you are a bit dyslexic with numbers to have to be dealing in the thousands every time you buy something…

Vietnam’s currency is the dong and while you can pay in dollars if you wish, most things are quoted in the local currency. Currently there is around 30,000 dong to the pound and speaking as someone for whom it took a long time to get their head around 2,000 Korean won to the pound and thus being a millionaire every payday, the addition of extra zeros is very difficult. Fortunately the 3X table is an easy one but it still takes a while to process that paying 100,000 in a restaurant is really only around £3 and so there’s no need to gulp in horror at the expense of it all….

The other cool thing is that, like Australia, the newer higher denomination notes here are made of plastic, so a thumbs up for the recycling aspect!

The CELTA course centre in Hanoi doesn’t help you out with finding or recommending accommodation. Fortunately Hanoi is full of hotels and guesthouses that don’t cost the earth so finding somewhere to stay is not really a problem.

The Old Quarter is definitely the most popular place to find a hotel. It’s the tourist centre of the city and every street it seems has at least a couple of hotels on it. I found somewhere to stay in the northern part of the Old Quarter, which now that I know the language school is in the southern part of the city, seems like it’s going to be a good walk every morning and night, but… the hotel owner is really friendly and the room I have is big for one person. I have free internet and breakfast and it feels very safe and secure. The going rate for budget guesthouses seems to be around the $10-15 mark.

The street around the corner from my hotel.
Hang Vai is the street for buying bamboo ladders.

For all the sadness at leaving Korea, I can’t tell you how how happy I am to be out of the cold weather!! Although Hanoi at this time of year (Feb) isn’t entirely shorts and t-shirt weather, it is soooo much warmer than Bundang. When I arrived, the hotel owner was bundled up in jackets and scarves, complaining how cold it was, while I was feeling overdressed in jeans and a fleece. I’m always the first to complain about the cold, so that made a really refreshing change…

So, safely ensconced in a hotel in the old quarter of town; my new home for the next few weeks or so, I set out to explore…

The first thing that hits you (and you have to be careful to make that a non-literal expression) is the traffic . There are just so many people all out and about on the street at the same time. The roads are packed to bursting with motorcycles, bicyles, cyclos, taxis, cars, people. They truly seem to be the life and soul of Hanoi, everything happens on the street… Ground floor houses for the most part are converted into cafes, shop fronts and businesses. A short walk down the road will involve stepping in and out of the road as you try to dodge the mass of parked motorcycles, and the groups of people sociably gathered to talk, eat, or work on the pavements. Crossing the street takes a bit of nerve at first, but when in Rome… do as the Hanoians do and put your best foot forward. There seems to be a kind of give and take on both sides… if you hold your nerve and calmly keep walking, making it clear which direction you’re going in, the traffic accommodates you and neatly manages to swerve around you at the last moment. It helps that there are less cars than motorbikes, as swerving a car out of a pedestrian’s way is going to cause no end of trouble.

You definitely need to develop some kind of 360 degree owl rotating swivel neck to keep an eye on the road…