4 posts tagged “esl”
After a fruitless week of searching for work in teaching English as a second language, rather than throwing in the towel completely, I've decided to take another qualification. Despite almost 5 years experience teaching English, employers don't want to take me on with out formal recognition of my ability as a teacher.
I've been accepted in to the Cambridge Certificate in English Language Teaching to Adults, otherwise known as CELTA, offered at The Australian TESOL Training Centre in Brisbane. It's considered an entry qualification for teaching English professionally, and here in Australia it's very hard to find a job without it. TESOL stands for teaching English to speakers of other languages.
Australian English schools of repute are accredited by a body known as NEAS, which is itself an acronym within an acronym, The National ELT Accreditation Scheme, ELT meaning English Language Teaching. If I can just get my head around the acronyms then I might have a chance of understanding the course.
By all accounts the four week full time intensive course is very hard work, there won't be time for much else except study and teaching preparation. The course starts Saturday week and finishes the first Friday of April. There should be enough time after that to find a job and an apartment before June when C and the kids come over.
When I first considered a job teaching English in Japan I had a vague idea of what learning a foreign language might be like. My experience of learning a language at school in Australia was disjointed at best, and was centred around standardised classroom texts and didactic teaching methods. Subsequently I didn't learn much of the Japanese, Italian, French, German, Latin or Ancient Greek I was taught.
I was fortunate however to have been educated in a school where most of the students spoke a second language at home, so I knew even then that bilingualism was a reality for many people. When I made the commitment to go to Japan, I also committed myself to learning the language, and studying martial arts over a two to five year period. My best chance of learning the language centred around being immersed in the culture, and using it to accomplish tasks of an everyday nature.
When I arrived in Japan, I enrolled in survival Japanese courses offered at the local international centre and took my notes home and practised phrases every day. I also mastered hiragana and katakana early on because I wanted to be able to read. Towards the end of my first year I moved to a rural town, from a prefectural capital, and my opportunities for engagement with the locals grew. I was beginning to feel more confident in my language ability.
Being a language learner gave me a much greater appreciation of what my students needed in the classroom. Everyone learns differently, and made sense for me to approach language acquisition from a learners perspective. I took the Japanese Language Proficiency Test in my second year, and sat it each year following. Studying for the test helped me understand the different modalities of language learning. Doing the past exams helped me to understand my weaknesses and better prepared me for what was ahead. I was constantly on the lookout for different learning techniques. Language learning itself, became my hobby.
When I met my then future wife in 2004 all of our communication was in Japanese. As we grew together as a couple my language needs changed, I was now required to understand things with a degree of subtlety that I hadn't had before. Speech was infused with nuance, and although the potential for miscommunication was high, I credit my wife's patience and understanding with my current language ability. We now have two children, a boy and girl aged 2 years old and 3 months respectively. They will be joining me in Australia in June.
I have come to the realisation that language learning is not separate from cultural experience. Language learning doesn't happen in a vacuum, it must be connected with and through people to what you want to achieve as an individual. Just as the motivation for learning a language must come from within, so too should the approach. Language learners are individuals first, and approaches to language learning should be centred around individuals.
This one came for free. (crossposted from 43things)
From the students today, one a junior high boy and the other girl just out of university and into her first job. I set them up in a role play, deciding what to take on a picnic. To the girl, “you are going somewhere quiet and peaceful to view cherry blossoms”. To the boy, “You are going with your friends and you want to play loud music on your guitar”. To both “Decide what you are going to take to the cherry blossom viewing party”.
The boy accepting that taking the guitar was a foregone conclusion launched into the fray with “We should take a seat”, “and what do we need that for” came the reply from the girl. “When I play guitar I need something to sit on”. “Well you can take the seat but we don`t need the guitar” quipped the girl.
I had to laugh, politely and professionally of course, but I honestly felt like crying, it was well timed and delivered with just the right touch.
We know you never slack off at work, but if you did, what would you do?
I`d take my clients out for coffee, speak broken English and mix it up with a little Japanese just to show them that I am human and not just a conversational corrections machine. You see, I am an ESL instructor at a school in Japan with a strict socialisation policy.
Of course there are others who get away with this, but I prefer to draw a clean line between business and pleasure. It would have been much easier from the start to have friends who speak my language well, but then I would never found the support I`ve needed to learn theirs. There are always other native speakers of English to talk around here if I need to, but I won`t always be surrounded by Japanese.
