Archive for April, 2008

Today was a lovely, warm and bright spring day. Many of
devoted teachers (most presumably, those without
summer houses by the lake as myself LOL) gathered
at ILS for a conference.

Each session was 45min long with 4 topics to choose
from. Refreshments were served in between, which was
really a big plus!

The first session I went to was about using songs. We
had so much fun and the activities were really very
practical (in terms of application, not sure about the
end result). I really liked the ideas but the amount
of preparation time is really demotivating

Next, I went to an ESP workshop. The lecturers
shared their experience with aviation English,
the name of which gives me creeps! Makes one
really thing well before going in for ESP. That said,
it was an interesting workshop.

My third one was kinaesthetic activities. The lecturer
demonstrated several handy activities for which they
need sticky balls and rods, respectively. She said the
ball could be obtained from a certain shop but I did not
manage to get them. I will try next time. I also had to
order rods online from UK because Amazon.com has a limit
on countries toys can be sent to (makes me really say
*Americans* again with eyes upward). Amazon.de did not
have the rods themselves, perhaps, it is even wiser than
just make people log in to delete their shopping cart content
continuously. Deutch gemacht, eh?

The fourth session was about marking IELTS. I do not
want to do this exam preparation course because it
is highly time consuming and not very economically
beneficial as for a freelancer. However, it was really
interesting, the one minus was seeing that people with
poor English got 6 out of 9!

Tomorrow I will be actively using myself as an interpreter
for a project about stone sculptures. I volunteered
(I am surprised myself that I did!) to help meet
several foreign artists at the airport because the
organisators speak very little English. Then, I will
be working Monday-Wednesday and leave for
our extended weekend to Poland.

Not bad for one day.

Lately I have been spending a considerable abount of money
on books. It seems that the inflation will eat it anyway, so
better equip my library with handy material. At the moment I am
looking for a good Legal English coursebook.

There will be many teacher development conferences in April
and May. I intend to go to as many as I can, even if I
have to cancel my lessons. That’s the best thing in being
self-employed!

I just could not NOT express my appreciation for this particular
cartoon. For more of the same author and no less
meaningfull for everyday teacher’s life, please
visit http://www.langwichscool.com

Today I was supposed to have one class in-company
that was resheduled because they couldn’t make it
last Wednesday. So, when I came as agreed, there
was no-one there. I waited for some time thinking
they might be in the traffic jam but it turned out
that they weren’t going to come and somebody was
suppposed to call me about that. Naturally, no-one did!

That just pissed me off so badly! I could have gone
to my office and done some lesson planning or
just visited my grandparents, etc. Such misunderstandings
are a terrible lack of respect for other people’s time
and effort.