After spending an amazing three and a half years in France, my husband and I have come back to Australia to make the most of the beach, the sunshine and the family. As I wasn’t initially doing any teaching work, (I took some time off and then tried some call centre work for a few weeks), my blogging and Linkedin activities were on hold for a few months. I missed teaching and having the opportunity to get to know students and see them develop from day to day and week to week., but was delighted to get a phone call from the PIBT at the beginning of the month inviting me to come and teach. So I can happily say that I am back in action and looking forward to being able to share my new teaching and learning experiences with you.
My new position at the Perth Institute of Technology (PIBT) at Edith Cowan university
Let me begin by telling you how much I love my new job! The staff are all lovely and we even have morning tea on Fridays. The Mt Lawley campus is really beautiful at this time of year and I can have my lunch outside at a picnic table underneath the blossom trees. My class is also a real pleasure to teach and because I see them for 14 hours a week, I really have the opportunity to get to know them. This means that my classes can be adapted to what they need and what they respond best to. The other great thing that has struck me, as compared to my students at the business school in France who only had a few hours contact time per week, is the progress that I see from week to week. These students are preparing for an IELTS exam which they need in order to be able to take various courses at Edith Cowan university. One of the most important skills that they will need for both the test and their tertiary study, and the fact that they have sufficient time to write in class means that I can give them the feedback they need.
Another great thing about teaching English to international students in Australia is that, rather than having a monolingual class like I did in France, I’ve got a real mix of nationalities and backgrounds, (Indian, Vietnamese, Saudi and Chinese). Although students do sometimes speak their L1 during class in small groups, most of the time they have no choice but to communicate English during the class. The mix does bring with it a new set of challenges though. Having taught exclusively native French speakers who tended to make all the same kinds of mistakes, this is a whole new ball game. There are different aspects of pronunciation to work on for each group and the majority of students who don’t use the same alphabet in their first language, which can mean that handwriting, capital letters and spelling aren’t always a strong point. My project this weekend is to dive into Michael Swan’s Learner English: A Teacher’s Guide to Interfererence and Other Problems and try to get a better idea of what I’m dealing with.
More happy news – A new Australian on the way
In other news, I’m delighted to announce that my husband and I have our first baby on the way! Baby will be coming late February, in the heat of the Australian summer. With a Kiwi mum and a French dad, this little Aussie is going to have a lot of travelling and language learning to do! I’ve been reading quite a bit about bilingualism in children and I suppose that this will be something that I’ll be researching more and blogging about in the future. With everything I read, I become more and more amazed at how clever kids are and how well they can take on information to adapt to new situations. I’m almost inclined to organize a Chinese au pair who will speak only Chinese to baby so he doesn’t need to work anywhere near as hard as I do to learn the language as an adult. Anyway, I’ll keep you posted!
ESL Teaching Tales 