Teaching, well it’s been over a week and I haven’t talked about this yet. Let’s start with the English Teaching course first. It was tough for me, I’d never really learnt anything about English grammar, just used it but didn’t understand it. Now I can recognise loads of grammar forms, tenses, you name it, I’ve now taught it. The course was very intensive and more stressful than I could imagine. It was also quite weird being taught by a Czech about your own language.
My first lesson was the worst. On the teaching course, you spend hours preparing a lesson. My first lesson I had 2 minutes to find the page and then I was off in front of students looking at me and hoping to learn something.
When Czechs ask for a teacher from an English Speaking country, they are usually at a higher level. Beginners lessons are normally 75% in Czech, because of explanations.
Anything from Intermediate level upwards can be completely in English, but you have to slow down and keep it simple. I’ve taught Elementary students, but it’s tough explaining grammar. Quite often these students will tire of a native speaker and ask for a change. Don’t despair, it’s nothing personal, it’s tough for them at this level to speak nothing but English at this stage.
Teaching can be very rewarding, a real ego boost when they laugh at your jokes, or better still when you can see they’ve picked something up.
I gotta tell you now. Czech women are gorgeous, they’re taller, slimmer, dress better and prettier than anything you could dream about. Temptations are everywhere. Some are like filmstars, but beware, if you’ve got a class of both male and female, don’t fall into the trap of neglecting the guys. They’re the ones who’ll help you out, telling you the best places to get your car fixed, where the best pubs are etc. They’ll be your mates, the girls will go back home to their husbands and boyfriends. If you’re not professional about this, you’ll lose students, it’s as simple as that. But, the girls are nice to look at and tell jokes
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