Monday, September 24, 2007

Tedious Endless School and Learning

The most important thing I learned in class today: I'm not the only person who really isn't enjoying TESL.

You might think that a Theatre major would love to sit around in a class and talk about feelings and life experiences and debate whether or not the verb "to love" is an action verb on the basis of one's own comprehension of the word love. The truth is I do not. When it comes to school I enjoy concrete ideas, or at least discussions of abstract ideas within an academic context. Otherwise I'm left saying, as any English prof will... "SO WHAT?" So what's the point?

OK great, when you were growing up in another country and had to learn English you struggled with the grammar. That's a good experience to bring to the class, but now let's get critical about it. WHY? HOW did you learn it? WHAT would you do differently? Don't just tell me about your suffering, let's talk about it in a context that is applicable to the course. OK, so your niece said something cute the other day and that kind of loosely relates to First Language Aquisition theories... HOW? I am beginning to understand why a lot of companies will hire you on to go to Japan and give you crash courses in TEFL in two weeks.

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