Reduce, re-use, recycle

Until I started teaching full time I never truly realised all of the work that goes on behind the scenes in order to make a (good) lesson happen. I knew that teachers needed to prepare the lessons that they were teaching and I got a little experience of it when I was on my CELTA course but when the full time work hits....it's a bit different to say the least.

I teach about 19 hours a week for my school and have a couple of private students who have lessons as and when our schedules allow. We'll call it an average of 20 hours of teachin a week. Each of those lessons needs to be prepared and planned. Preparation time for a lesson varies quite a lot depending on what material you are using. The actual structuring of the lesson takes perhaps half an hour as you figure out the stages of teaching the subject or grammar point that you're covering. This is fairly easy to break into chunks as you deal with introducing the material, getting the students to use it in positive and negative sentences (e.g. I like football/I don't like football), then move on to question forms and more independent use, perhaps in a conversational setting or game.

What can really take up your time and make the job a lot harder is the preparation of the associated teaching material. This can include creating exercises, board games, flashcards, picture cards, finding writing extracts, making sure you have the recordings ready for a listening exercise etc etc. This is where lessons can suck up your time and make you feel like you're buried in paperwork. I try to make a dent in everything on Friday so I can have the weekend off but I often have to pop into Class at least for a little bit to finalise things.

My 'friend' paperwork. How do I hate thee? Let me count the ways ;-)


Now there are very good reasons to do all of the work associated with planning lessons. It's true that you can go into a lesson with nothing more than yourself, some pens and paper/whiteboard and teach a great lesson, but it's not easy. You have to be on top of absolutely everything that can come up, be ready with great examples to teach vocabulary or clear up points, have a perfect sense of reading your students' comfort and be able to time things so you finish at the end of the lesson having nicely cleared up all of the points you taught. I've done it once or twice (as has, I'm sure, every teacher), but it's a lot more stressful than when you have things planned and ready ahead of time.

So how do you go about reducing the time you need to spend on preparing lessons to a more manageable figure, especially with a full schedule and wanting to fit some kind of social life in there?



By stealing the oft-repeated environmentally targeted slogan for use as a teacher. You save time, and sometimes your sanity, by reducing, re-using and recycling your material.

It was suggested at that start by other teachers that I will benefit a lot by recycling and re-using lesson materials. It's amazing to find out how much variety can be created by using the exact same set of materials for different levels and subjects.

Let's look at an example that I actually used in several lessons. It was a set of flashcards with pictures of people doing activities (jobs and hobbies). I used this set to teach five tenses: Present continuous (He is dancing, they are cooking etc.), Present simple (he dances, they cook), past simple and continuous ("Yesterday?" "Aha, they were dancing) and present perfect (this week they have danced three times).

Of course I varied the activities using the cards from simple memory games for the lower levels up to more complex question forming and expanded sentences for the higher levels. One game that stands out in my mind is Pexeso, or memory pairs. You have two sets of the same cards, put them face down in two groups and then the students must match pairs. It can be very simple: Turn card 1 - "He is dancing." Card 2 - "He is not dancing. He is running." to make pairs or you can scale it up for questions. One student I teach in a 1 on 1 setting played this game with me using present perfect where he had to supply the appropriate time phrases to make it work e.g. Card 1 - "He has danced twice this week already. Has this person (card 2) danced this week too?" Card 2 - "No they haven't danced, they have eaten this morning though."

Sometimes it's a bit more complicated than that but I can't deny that following the old environmental credo is very helpful for my current career. It also fits nicely into the sharing ethic of Class and you will always find teachers swapping material, lesson plans, ideas and tips in the staff room (in between running to and from lessons of course).

All the best for the holiday season.

Pete :-)

A day in the life of an EFL teacher.

Hi everyone,

I was thinking the other day that what we do as ELF teachers is quite different to what many people do for their jobs so it might be interesting to hear about what a day in my teaching life is like. So here is the story of my day on Monday. This isn't quite a typical day as I've been helping to cover for a teacher who was on holiday but it gives you a feel for what I do.

So Monday. It's a full day of teaching that started with a 7am lesson and ran through to 7.30pm.


Here we are with an early morning start. This is the view looking east on the tram line along Ružinovska. You have to love that first haze of light at 6.30am.



Herlianska is my closest stop. Thankfully I only have to go along the line for about five minutes until it reaches the final stop. The company I teach at is just a few minutes walk from the little circular track section where the trams turn around. On the cards for today is additional practise for the students on the different uses of Past Simple (PS) and Present Perfect Simple (PPS). It can be a tough subject for students and I hope they're awake enough to take it all in.




Here's my company. They make cabling systems for datacentres and it's quite interesting to hear them discuss the new things they're working on and so on. I got a good history of the company in this lesson too. We worked through an article on the history of computers that they had to correct using PS or PPS, then I made them come up with a few statements about the history of their company. They did so admirably and I ended up leaving the lesson smiling broadly, which is the kind of incentive you need when it's 8am and you've only finished one of your nine lessons.






I had to post a couple of pictures of the underside of the main highway. The company is right next to it and you end with a bizzare concrete tunnel effect. It's particularly spooky when I first arrive, it's mostly empty of cars, there is little light, winter's chill in the air and sometimes some fog.




It's about 8.15am and I'm back on the tram. I just ride a few stops back to where I get on so I can transfer to a bus that goes to Aupark, a major shopping center. Across the highway opposite to Aupark is the Digital Park, where a number of businesses reside, including Lenovo, my teaching home for the next six hours.




Here's one of the conference rooms. I taught in this room from 1pm to 4.20pm on Monday afternoon and spent the morning (9am to 12.20pm) in a conference room in the other Digital Park building complex.

Today's lesson was a soft spot for me because it was primarily produced by me. We works as a team of teachers for Lenovo but each of us takes charge of planning one of the two lessons each week, then we discuss and get ideas to flesh out the skeleton at our meeting each Friday.



We had a request from students to review the tenses in English so they can see what they know and don't know. Most of the people we work with in the company have a decent level of English but we still have to work on finding a balance so that our lower level students get lots of practice but our higher students, many of whom have lived in the UK or US, can be challenged.

I spent six hours teaching the overview of the tenses on Monday. The lesson was primarily focused on teaching how to form the different tenses and what grammar was involved in that rather than trying to teach the uses of each. It was a big enough task even to practise and drill the forms let alone trying to teach much more. I told my students that if I could teach them all of the English tenses and uses of those tenses in one hour I'd be rich since I could charge 500 Euros a day and teach fluent English to people in a week.

Still, the lesson was a nice balance. The lower level students got to really spend some time putting together the forms and using the past participles for irregular verbs, which always throw people and higher students got to argue about the other tenses and get some time on the ones they don't know. Sometimes it got quite heated as the students would refute any use of those tenses and so I'd need to give them a situation where none of the other tenses fit. That is quite a challenge when you're doing it on the spot. Thankfully, with the number of times I taught the lesson, I got the hang of it by the end.

I also learned a lot about tenses and grammar for myself, which is one of the great things about EFL teaching.



Leaving the busy office area of Lenovo. My highlight was when one of my students said as she was we were about to end the class that she had figured out the use of the Future Perfect Continuous (a very tough tense for many learners). Go ahead, said I, hoping she had picked up on what we'd discussed as a group.

"My birthday is in April," she announced.
"Ok," said I, "how old will you be?"
"The same as the last ten plus years. In May I will have been having my twenty-fifth birthday for over ten years."

Priceless :-)

It's an example you can bet I'll be stealing for when I next teach this tense.



The shorter winter nights mean I get to see Aupark all lit up.



Looking back at Lenovo from the footbridge. One of my classrooms is right behind the O in the sign and on clear days it gives a great view over the city.



After finishing at Lenovo I hopped back on the buss to Class , picked up some material I'd left there and headed off to teach my private students. I teach a husband and a wife one after the other (they are different levels) and it's a good challenge. I'm particularly happy with the wife as she has gone from someone who claimed that she couldn't speak any English to someone who can hold a good conversation, is rounding off her knowledge of the fundamentals of English and has had her confidence with the language improve tenfold.

At 7.30 I say goodbye to the couple and head back home to spend some time with my wonderful girlfriend. It was a long day but I enjoyed it.

I hope you found the tale of an EFL day entertaining to read. If not, I hope you liked the pictures. If you didn't like any of it and still made it this far, then I salute your tenacity, if not your taste ;-)

All the best,

Pete

Moderate your language!

Hello everyone.

I have consistently been surprised by how much my mind must be switched on in this new career I've taken up. In my past work experience I'd never really had to concern myself with being so focused on exactly what I was doing while I was working. Perhaps that says more about the work I was doing than me per se, but now I'm enjoying the challenge of moderating my language.

By that I do not mean avoiding invectives, as we were all probably told a few times in our youth. Instead I'm talking about actually controlling the level and quantity of English that you use. As a native speaker of the language, it took me starting this work and having to study English daily before I realised just how complex, grammatically speaking, we make conversations without even considering it.

Let's take my first paragraph in this post as an example. As far as tenses go, I used Present Perfect, Past Perfect, Past Continuous, Present Simple and Present Continuous. That's five tenses in five lines and those lines also contain a scattering of modals and even a touch of Latin. Scary stuff!



When you start to teach people English, particularly at lower levels, it quickly hits you that you must make a real conscious effort to control the words and phrases that you use. I think my biggest reminder moment recently was speaking to a reasonably good low level student about past activities and all was going well. I asked if she went to Austria this summer on holiday and she replied in the negative. Without thinking I then asked her if she had ever been to Austria on holiday....and got a worried and confused expression from her. It seems that she has not experienced the have you ever present perfect before and so as far as she was concerned I might as well have spoken French to her for those few words.

Needless to say I quickly rephrased the question so that she understood and we could continue talking but it resonated with me and I try to keep it in mind whenever I'm teaching. This kind of language awareness is a cornerstone of the EFL profession and what we all do at Class but it's not yet a fully natural skill for me. I'm still learning but I enjoy the challenge and it makes me examine my own language closely on a daily basis.

For those of you who don't teach, I would simply offer the advice to think about what you are saying if you ever run into a non-native speaker who you need to communicate with. Be it a tourist, family friend or any other person, make sure that you really consider the kind of language you are using. Keep your phrases simple if the person is struggling and try not to add more complex language or grammar to explain your point (one of my big weaknesses, I'm an explainer by heart).


Control your language or moderator 'kitteh' will be on the case

Reading and country hopping - Amazon Kindle review

Books are wonderful things and reading is one of my greatest pleasures. My sister and I used to spend hours upon hours reading at home, in the car, on the bus, in bed, at school and even at the dinner table from time to time. Now the latter was undoubtedly bad manners but I think that our parents just loved that we were so interested in the written word. My interest in reading has not waned as I've gotten older but the time available for it has shrunk a bit with all of those wonderful adult things like jobs, commuting, housework, cooking and relationships.

Moving from the United States back to England, taking a CELTA course and then moving on to Slovakia is quite an endeavor, especially when one is limited to just two bags for all of one's possessions. With the exception of a 1936 copy of Homer's Odyssey from my grandmother, I didn't have space for any books in my luggage. In response to this, some of my family members pitched in to get my an Amazon Kindle E-Reader so I could have a lot of books contained within a single slim package.

For those who are interested in the technical aspects of the Kindle, I have the Kindle 3 Keyboard model with 3G wifi. I believe they now have a touchscreen version and I know that Amazon is steaming ahead on all fronts with a Kindle Fire tablet that looks set to rival Apple's Ipad. While the latter is not an E-reader per se, Amazon will undoubtedly offer all of its Kindle books on the Fire. This means you have several products to choose from if you're interested in reading books on an Amazon reader.

I also got the leather cover that includes a light for reading at night.


For me, there are three main things about the Kindle that stand out:
- The E-ink screen
- The wireless download of books
- The batter life.

The screen is the first part that will stand out when you get to try a Kindle. It is (on my model) black and white and is of the E-ink type. This screen produces really solid images that are crisp and clear to read, but don't change quickly enough for video or the like. In other words, it's ideal for an E-reader. I've frequently forgotten that I'm not reading a printed book when I use the screen. The words show up clearly, are easy to read (plus you can change font size) and there is no eyestrain so far. Now I'll admit that my longest reading stint was about six hours in one go when I was sucked into the gripping tales of Jules Verne so it's possible your eyes might get tired after more than that.....but then again you'd probably be tired of reading a regular book too. Pages are turned courtesy of two little buttons on the side of the Kindle. There is a forward and backward button on each side so it doesn't matter which hand(s) you hold it in when reading. The changing of a page isn't instant but is very fast. The E-Ink display basically winks and then shows the new page. It's about as fast as an average wink too, so no complaints from me.

The wireless downloading of books is something that I've really come to appreciate. Thus far I've managed to avoid spending any cash on the books by downloading classic literature that is available in the Kindle Store for free. The store is easy to navigate with the keyboard and little directional pad and once you've chosen a book to buy, it is downloaded and ready for use within thirty seconds or so. This is the part that blows me away and I imagine trying to explain to my grandmother, who loves books, that I can choose a new book, search for it, download it and then start reading it within thirty seconds even when I'm sitting in a small village in Southern Slovakia. I'm a big fan of the connection speed and you can also turn off the wireless if you want to save on battery.....

....but you probably won't need to. The battery life on the Kindle is measured not it hours or days, but weeks. I think I've charged my Kindle three times since I got it in June, so it's averaging a month between charges with quite active reading. Battery life is not something to complain about methinks.




So does the Kindle replace books? I don't think so. There is still something special about leafing through pages and seeing your books lined up on the shelves. And who can forget the wonderful smell of a new (or old) book when you flip through the pages?

On the other hand, I think what we're seeing here is the start of a move towards electronic reading in the same way that email has taken over from letter writing. It will never replace it simply because it is different but I think the advantages are there and will continue to grow as the technology improves.

In the end, I'm very happy with my Kindle. I am enjoying using it, I love being able to jump back to the exact page I was reading without losing my place, I like the convenience of downloading books wherever I am and I like the ease of use in general. If nothing else, it inspired me to read all of the following books and that can't be bad no matter what.

Since I got my Kindle I've read:
- Aesop's Fables
- Alice's Adventures in Wonderland
- Through the Looking Glass
- Heart of Darkness
- The Satyricon
- The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde
- Dracula
- The Art of War
- A Journey to the Centre of the Earth
- Twenty Thousand Leagues under the sea
- Around the world in 80 days
- The Importance of Being Earnest

You can't argue with classic literature available for free download ;-)

Pete

Public Transport in Bratislava

***Please note, I've got a more updated (March 2012) and in depth post about public transport in Bratislava which you can find on this blog here. Thanks.***



Hi everyone,

One nice thing that I really like about living in Bratislava is the profusion of public transport options available. I was living in Frederick, Md for the last year or so and I think that wasn't a bad spot for public transport options. That said, the system here is much more befitting a capital city and it makes my non-driving life here a lot easier.

Basically speaking, the day to day public transport is covered by three options: the electric trams, the electric trolley buses and the regular buses.

A tram. I like seeing all of their tracks around the city.


Electric trolley bus. Now this is a great way to electrify transport within a city.


Just a regular bus. A nice one though ;-)


The ticketing system here is different to what I'm used to. You have to buy a ticket (or tickets) from a vending machine available at most bus stops before you get on the bus. Luckily I didn't get caught when I first got here and rode the bus while looking for the ticket machine aboard as being ticketless carries a 50 euro fine. Once you have your ticket you must get it punched by the little machines aboard, which mark the time.

The time is the key thing here since these tickets are not sold with a fixed destination, but rather a duration of validity. For 70c you get a 15 minute ticket and you can ride any bus on any route as long as the journey is completed within the time limit. The next step up is the 90c ticket for 60 minutes on the bus and you can chop and change buses if you need to within the time limit. It's a very nice system and much more to my liking than the tickets where you have to buy for a specific location, especially if you find out that it's not the exact place you need to be.

One bonus of my employer is that I get a bus pass paid for by them while I work there. We teach English in many different places around the city and it's a rare week when you're not jumping on a bus to some place or other. I'm much happier not having to worry about having the right length of bus ticket or missing a bus because I need to buy a ticket before getting on if it arrives when I'm using the ticket vending machine.

Aother thing that is a lot of fun with the buses here is that many of them are of the bendy / accordion type where there is a hinged section in the middle. It helps on the big commuter routes because you nearly double the capacity of the bus and it's actually something of a fun ride to stand in the middle part of the bus when it's cornering....yes I'm still a kid at heart.

Of course, it is not a perfect system here and buses do run late, break down or not even show up at all from time to time. It's not so bad for me now since the weather is nice and my teaching schedule doesn't have me changing locations too much but I'm sure there will be a time or two when I get frustrated and annoyed. Waiting for a bus that's late in the middle of winter will be less fun too I'm sure.

Thanks for reading everyone and look out for more posts soon. I'll be moving towards the teaching side of things as soon as I have time to put my thoughts together and make sure I'm ready for all of my lessons first.

Pete

Chilly!

Such humility from those learning English.

While there are no sharks in Bratislava, I have noticed a great deal of humility from my students as well as other Slovaks who are learning English. Indeed, it is something that I first came across in Australia while I was backpacking around the world at ages nineteen and twenty. I have been apologised to numerous times by those who do not have English as a first language for their poor English, which is usually anything but poor, as they communicate with me.

Now perhaps this is not unreasonable to expect in Australia, but I have received the same treatment at least a dozen times in the few weeks I've been in Slovakia. The language here is Slovak, not English and I feel constantly pre-empted as I am the one who should be apologising for my extremely limited command of their language.

There is no denying that English is an extremely important language for global trade, diplomacy, communication, improving work prospects, travel and the online world. What is so interesting is how humble learners of English tend to be (in my experience) when conversing with a native speaker and how much humility and respect it instills in me.

I suppose it is because, to them, I have a native command of the language that so many people want to learn. It's quite amazing to realise how many advantages we have in the world that, certainly I, take for granted.

So to those who are learning English and have shown such humility and have been so nice to me I just want to say.....

Bratislava - a city of architectural juxtaposition.

First of all, my apologies for a big delay between posts. I've been ensconced in the three summer camp trips for the language school and neither boredom nor free time are to be found in any measure ;-)

In the time I've spent in Bratislava as a newcomer though, I have noticed a real divergence in architecture that is fascinating. Essentially I've seen three broad styles of buildings and that they occur in such close proximity and are frequently intermixed is fascinating.

The first style is the old-European architecture that I've seen before in cities like Paris, Salzburg and Barcelona. It's very elegant, beautiful and really makes you recognise the history that has happened in each place. The old town in Bratislava has a lot of this architecture and it makes a day in the city really enjoyable.

Some of the Old Town buildings

One of the oldest streets in the city near Katedrála svätého Martina (St. Martin's Cathedral)


Another major style of the city is what I would consider stylistic remnants of the communist era of the former Czechoslovakia. The style is quite imposing, heavy on the concrete and very powerfully built. A good amount of the apartment blocks here are of the Panelák style, derived from the Slovak panelový dom (panel house) and consist of large units of pre-fabricated and pre-stressed concrete panels. While they can look quite forbidding from outside, the apartments inside are (to my limited experience) nice places and according to Wikipedia are predominantly inhabited by the middle classes.

One of the theatres in the city.

Petržalka apartments and shops. An example of panelák building

Two apartment blocks of divergent styles right next to one another in the Old Town.


The final style that I've noted is one that I've been told is growing in Bratislava and shows the modernisation and development that is ongoing. There is a real growth in the more modern styles of architecture with bright colours, renovation of the panelák facades to match the interiors and the typical glass and steel construction that you find in many financial and shopping districts in the world.

The view from the language school where I am working.

Colourful panelák buildings on display in Petržalka.


So there end my brief observations on the buildings in this new city that I'm experiencing. Quite frankly I find the mix of styles exhilarating to walk through as I'm always looking twice and seeing new things as I go places. That freshness of perspective is something I've been missing for a while and I'm glad to be in a new place to get it back again.

Thankyou for reading and for anyone who knows the city more than I do, please get in touch as I'd love to hear other perspectives on this fascinating city.

Pete :-)

So why Slovakia?

So I'm asked this question a lot and it's a reasonable one.

Many people aren't entirely sure where Slovakia is, so perhaps a bit of geography is in order. The Slovak republic is one half of the former Czechoslovakia and has been an independent nation since 1993. It borders five countries: Austria to the west, the Czech Republic to the north-west, Poland to the North, Ukraine to the east and Hungary to the south. From the capital city of Bratislava, where I'll be working, you can get to each of four the countries within a couple of hours and it takes about eight or nine hours to make it to Ukraine in the east. Having spent the last couple of years living in America, having this kind of international freedom and variety of cultures so close to one another is really exciting to me.




I decided to make the move to a teaching career in EFL because I needed to find work that interested me, see more of the world and experience new cultures and people. I have to thank several friends in America for starting this desire in me. Courtney sparked the idea of rekindling my travelling side, Tim got me hooked up with the job in Bratislava, my best friend Emily has always been behind me and was even more so on this change in my life, Megan was really helpful with giving me ideas and everyone else I know has been nothing but supportive of me. My family were also so great to me while I was in England taking my CELTA training course for teaching.

I got the idea of Slovakia from a good friend of mine, Tim, who I met in Washington DC through a mutual hobby. His wife is Slovak and he taught at the language school in Bratislava where I'm now working. It was thanks to his contacts and recommendation that I got the position where I am now.

I've long been interested in the different cultures in Europe as it has so many countries packed in next to one another. A huge amount of world history has happened here and it's fascinating to be able to visit places where momentous events occurred and get a feel for them in person.

Already I've come to love the sound of the (very difficult to learn) language, the people here, the fascinating blend of medieval and communist-esque architecture in Bratislava, the challenge of learning a language while teaching one, and the sheer excitement and novelty of experiencing a new culture.

So that's the short story of why I am in Slovakia for at least one year :-)

More thoughts and experiences still to come.

Pete

Another reason for Slovakia is the beer and the Bryndzové Halušky

Welcome :-)

Hi,

For those who don't know me, I'm Pete. I'm an Englishman who has bounced around the world in various places and recently took up the challenge of teaching English as a Foreign Language (EFL) in Bratislava, Slovakia. The profession really resonates with me, is challenging and will give me a good chance to do the travelling and world exploration that I really want to do.

I've only been in Bratislava for two days so far but I will be using this blog as a way to chronicle my teaching experience as well as give some impression of what it is like to live in and learn about a new culture.

So there's the brief introduction. I will post more in the coming days as I get the time to absorb everythings that is happening and that I'm seeing. I have many pictures to upload already and I look forward to sharing everything with people.

All the best,

Pete

PS: I'm reading Bram Stoker's Dracula at the moment. It really resonates a lot more when you know the Western Carpathians are just a few dozen kms away. Perhaps a visit to Transylvánia will be in order while I'm here.