(This piazza is, incidentally, called Piazza Dante. I get alot of grief about Dante here because on our first day, we played a 'getting to know you' game where the teacher trainer had picked one fact about each of us from our application forms, and we had to find out which fact fitted which person. For me she put 'Knows alot about Dante'...ooh the shame!! I try to play up to it by referencing Dante at every possible opportunity.)
So I've completed my first full week of CELTA!! it's Saturday morning here, lovely and sunny, and I'm in the study centre, ostensibly researching language learning approaches for dyslexic people, but really spending my time uploading photos. Some things don't change.
I'm still really enjoying the teaching, but we've also had the chance for some nights out, particularly last friday which was rather spectacular, encompassing most of Rome: Campo di Fiori in the Centro Storico, Trastevere, and Testaccio (the bit where all the clubs are...it's very well organised here!) and most delightfully, a club called 'BumBum':
It was somewhat depressing coming back to school on Monday after such a glorious 4-day weekend of fun and sun, but the course is so busy and we're working with such a fun group of people that you don't have time to feel bored and discontented. The TEFL techniques are all about engaging students, pairwork, speaking, games etc, so it can be quite a laugh. The 9 of us trainees all get on really well, and our lessons can be hilarious - we spend alot of time testing out techniques together, and the grammar work especially does not tend to be as easy as you might expect for native speakers! most of the intermediate students can name tenses quicker than we can.
I seem to accidentally specialise in teaching ridiculous random words to my students - so far we've had 'vaulting horse' (called a 'pommelhorse' in the US I understand), 'stag-do' and 'hen-night'. Oh yes, I'm preparing these guys for the real world alright. On Thursday I had a lesson on double-meanings and attempted to explain the joke
'When is a door not a door?
When it's ajar.'
The other trainees were in hysterics at the back as I explained first 'ajar' and then 'a jar' (they keep NOT knowing words I assume they will know, even though they have alot of unexpected vocabulary - the other day a guy asked about the word 'Thug', pronouncing it in a hilarious Italian accent like 'tooog', and then asked 'Is it like rogue?' ha, nice Dickensian vocab).
One guy in our group, Antonio, is an actor and does great lessons with the students - lots of jumping around and role plays and so on, which is great to watch. We have approximately 10 students, most of them about my age, although there are some older ones as well. As the course only costs them 100 Euros, they don't tend to take it too seriously and skip lessons/show up late all the time, which is a nightmare for a new teacher trying to plan. We're currently taking the upper-intermediate students who have a really good knowledge of English, so we can have quite in-depth discussions and so on, but next week we'll have to swap to the beginner group which is composed of alot of Sudanese asylum seekers who speak almost no english - very different challenge!
For one of our assignments we have to do a study of a particular student's learning style, and in a nice professional and mature way, I have developed a crush on my student, an Italian called Iacopo - he's so cute. He's hoping to go to London College of Communication next year to take an MA in Photography, and I've been helping him to email the college and find out if his qualifications are eligible. The other trainees keep finding me talking to him in the corridors and asking 'How many interviews does the boy need?!?' He's great at English but he's also dyslexic and finds it hard to study grammar and break down words or sentences, which is really good for my essay! lots to write about.
I've been trying to crack on with the job-hunting and actually had an interview at a language school on thursday evening. It felt like a bit of a farce to me as I'm not even qualified yet, but apparently there is a shortage of teachers and they might consider me even with NO experience. Unfortunately they gave me a grammar test, one of the questions being 'explain the difference between 'who' and 'that'' which I literally didn't have a clue about (apparently it's something to do with clauses) so I may have crashed and burned. Anyway, I'll crack on as I'm determined to stay in Italy - I love it here. (But I do miss you all very much...thanks for texting me everybody who has, I apologise if you have huge phone bills...I dread to think what mine will be like! I'll look into getting an Italian sim card soon).
I love this statue
Just something bizarre that I walked past last sunday!!
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