Well, I guess the lesson went ok albeit some glitches. I made some mistakes and could have done better in many areas. Actually there were times in which I felt quite demoralised ‘cos some of them looked bored. I was doing some language work, a listening task and some grammar.
I guess my problem is that I have to assert a stronger presence. You know like speak louder and put myself forward more. I suppose I still lack that confidence. I feel quite bad about this lesson ‘cos several times Enrico (my supervising teacher) had to jump in and “rescue” me.
Most of the people were really nice and forgiving of me, the silly student teacher and her bad teaching, but some people in the class were really annoying. These two young men from China, probably in their late teens or early 20s with ugly long dyed hair, clearly didn’t want to be in the class at all. They looked so disinterested in everything and didn’t want to make an effort to participate and made annoying comments in Mandarin obviously thinking that I don’t understand a bloody word. They didn’t return for the second half of the lesson. Just as well!
In the second half of the lesson, we had talk-time where students come up to the front of the class and talked about a topic. The Tibetian and Turkish student both talked about their country and everyone learnt something new about those two countries. It was really interesting.
Talk-time’s good ‘cos it takes the attention away from me! Haha! But really, it’s good just for discussion and for the students to practise speaking.
I managed to show off my lantern to the class but unfortunately we didn’t have time to talk more about the way the festival is celebrated in different countries.
Anyway, now I have to think about how to make the next lesson more interesting and more interactive. One lesson down, four more to go!