Thinking About English Before Bede

This is just a little reflection of the week's lessons and how my intentions at the beginning of the week succeeded or failed. This week was a bit of an awkward one in that Mon/Tues I covered a couple classes for a co-teacher, then Wed I started a new afternoon job teaching business English to adults. I must say, after Monday, teaching my old students for one class was outstanding! Unfortunately I didn't think to record the class until it was about finished. I didn't have a lessons plan as I was just filling in, but I had one of the best sessions with the university students I have ever had. It helped that they were actually excited to have me back in the classroom, and they were really great, despite their proficiency level, about helping me to talk very little. That made me feel a lot better after the morning class was a bit of a nightmare. Tuesday was all around better in that I kept my morning class pretty motivated to speak up, and they did a fairly decent job at discussing the reading material and footage for the week. The next evening class was not as great as monday, I think b/c there were more students in the class, but still a pretty solid discussion. Uni on Wed/Thurs was smooth enough, although some students kept coming in late, but the challenge of the week has been learning the new business classes.Speaking class is straightforward enough, except I feel the book for class is bland, and the class is only 50 minutes, so not really enough time for 14 students to discuss a lot in depth. The real challenge for that class will be how i set up lessons, and incorporating enough useful material and activity to keep them interested. Writing will be simple. Today was solid b/c I we talked about some introduction questions, then they interviewed each other in English for a writing assignment. It is refreshing to give group or pair work and actually hear them speaking L2 to each other. So as long as my brain doesn't fall apart from commuting to COEX  everyday, these classes will help a lot in evaluating my teaching in multiple environments.

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