The Newbie Days of Teaching EFL (Day 2)

I often spend a great deal of time preparing for things, and in order to feel prepared I overprepare. As I’ve gotten older, I’ve tried to prepare myself not to overprepare in preparation for the task, but as you can see, it’s getting complicated.

Having recently overprepared every lesson to death on a four-week CELTA course, I thought I was more than ready to start out in the big wide world of EFL teaching. Granted, my confidence with error correction is in its early stages, and sometimes I apparently forgot to teach the target language amidst the excitement of delivering an otherwise creative and engaging 60minutes. However, let that not deter me, for in a rather unexpected twist of fate I discovered that my very small local library stocks about ten books on the subject of teaching English, and darn it wouldn’t you know, two of them are those recommended as “further reading” for the CELTA course. If only I’d given the library a chance before I’d started the CELTA; although having said that, I suspect they make more sense to me now because they are consolidating what I managed to keep my weary eyes and ears open for on the intensive course.

The first book is ‘Teach EFL’ by David Riddell (“It answers all those questions new language teachers have”), and the second is “Learning to Teach English” by Peter Watkins. Having “Delta” written into the publisher’s name has got to be a winner hasn’t it!

Both of these books are keeping me sane on my faltering journey into a new new world. One that uses a whole other set of skills than the one of not blinking at a computer screen for hours in a day. That’s right, I used to work in IT.

Of all the skills, speaking turns out to be the one that I must have either missed or dozed off to in an afternoon class. I knew about reading for gist and for detail even before I began the CELTA, but the subskills of speaking for fluency and for accuracy bounced up from the pages of David Riddell’s eye-opener and slapped me in the face.

Setting out on my personal journey of teaching one-to-one online then, I have already begun to overprepare my lesson plans for the practise of speaking (yes, with separate activites focused for fluency or accuracy —thanks Riddell). I wanted to feel totally confident and justified before I started enlightening students for cash. (Ha! when have I ever felt totally confident?) This is when I began to recognise my old habit of overpreparing in order to feel prepared for whatever it is I’m preparing for, and well yes, you get it.

Yesterday, I had enough. I kicked my own arse into some action. I messaged a few potential students, and I got responses. I prepared some speaking skill activities and some questions for the upcoming Skype meetings. I was anticipating issues, but as it usually turns out, you never know what issues until you are in the issue. For me today, it was the issue of ‘not knowing how to keep a conversation going’. This is made doubly hard when the student does not have a great grasp of English. Add to that, the inability to use gestures to imply meaning — because there’s no video picture (as pre-chosen by the student), and if I’m barely able to decipher the student’s words, well I’m up for a challenge.

I didn’t think I’d ever feel the need to make a search on the Internet for “how to keep a conversation going”, but that is what I sought. Luckily, it seems that lots of other teachers struggle with the same conundrum, so here’s one of many video links I found that explains how to keep yourself floating in this pickle— it’s also an extremely useful lesson for the student (ha! something else to talk about!)

The other unexpected feature that already popped up from my two initial days of greeting global English-speaking wannabes, is that you get to hear the craziest titbits of information. The fact that you’re thinking “Jees! I’m pretty sure I didn’t understand this person at all, yet I’m repeating back the words that they just said, in the hope they confirm it, and don’t think I’m a total weirdo” just helps towards the relief and incredulity when the student does indeed confirm that “my grandmother walks 8km every day to sell mushrooms”.

I must use my overprepared lesson plan on myself in order to practise my own conversational skills, if only for the purpose of finding out more random titbits. I’ll try again tomorrow and let you know.