It seems that I'm being quiet regular ;-) Last time I wrote was March 2009.

Well, but it was a really busy year for me. So let me cut a long story short and write few sentences/paragraphs about my teaching and learning experiences.

As you read my last post you noticed I was in Spain and was going to participate in a "Teacher axillary scheme". Ie. all Erasmus students were allowed to come to a specified school and work as an English lector together with a local teacher. But as it often happens, you have to prepare your own lessons, or stand in front of a class and repeat some phrases or read out some texts. I won't wrote a whole story about being a "cd player" ;-) but I want to say something about teaching English in Spain.

To my surprise, pronunciation of some colegio was far better than my university tutors. But still one can hear inserted "e" in front of word that begins with "s": so we have "[e]sport, [e]school" and so on. That's not the only problem. I tried to correct them (even the teacher, but...). One of them (oh, I owe you that: I was working with three lovely teachers) actually explained to me and the class why they have a lot of problems with pronunciation. As the matter of fact, Spanish language has less sounds than letters. Plus, there are strong habits that are difficult to overcome even for Spaniards who have been speaking English for several years.

Teaching per se. It is normal that every teacher has its own style, methods and tricks. I now nothing about teaching techniques of one of my ladies, as she told me to take class on my own. So I had 14-18 yo pupils as well as young adults from vocational school (hospitality & hotel management). Fortunately, I had this wonderful opportunity of exchanging some ideas and tips with the two other teachers. Maybe this will sound immodest but the told me that they catch some good ideas from me and "revived" as being a teacher for several years now destroyed their keenness. I used a lot of language, grammar games. It not only helps you to socialize with pupils.

You probably know my view on being a teacher. Although I won't never say never and I really enjoyed teaching in Spain I will not be a teacher in Poland.

Few thoughts on learning

After I had come back form Spain I flew to China for 3 weeks to learn Chinese at Yangtze Normal University. My stay there only proved my feelings that the best way to learn a language is to be in a country where the language is spoken. I do really want to spend some time in UK or Australia.

I've been learning German for over 2 years. I ceased unfortunately during my stay in Spain (well I had some classes though). Having spent five months in Spain (without any previous knowledge of Spanish) I can speak Spanish fairly enough to communicate and have a wonderful chat. Italian- the same story. 

So my final tip would be: try to go to a country where the language you are learning is spoken. If you cannot afford it try not only to learn that language at school, but read some newspapers (on-line) watch news services and listen to radio. It keeps you up-to-date with the culture and current affairs!