Baku course reflections 1 by Ola

On the first day of the course we met our trainees. It was a challenge for me to get a group of ten energetic men (in alphabetical order): Adalet, Ahmet, Cem, Emil, Ilkin,Mustafa, Reshad, Rufet, Sarvan and Yakup. They all came rather unprepared (no pens, not notebooks) but we have managed to get them organized! At the end of the course theY ALL produced folders with their handouts and microteaching stuff! 

Their expectations were very concrete: to get an insight into the EFL methodology to become better teachers. I myself also had goals – I wanted to learn the Azeri EFL context and… to have fun :). Teaching and teacher training is a job, but doing it without pleasure is a dreadful thing.      

One of the activities all my trainees enjoyed a lot was called 'It’s a bad line'. I have used it many times with all age groups of students, including adults. It always works! Students sit on the chairs in two rows, each person facing a partner about 2 m away, like this: 

x  o  x  o  x  o  x  o

o  x  o  x  o  x  o  x  

The ‘o’ students have a piece of paper with personal info about a person (name, address, telephone). Their task is to dictate/spell the info to the partner opposite (‘x’) whose task is to write all this down. The only problem is there are other people around who have the same task! Can you imagine the noise? Yes, it is a noisy activity but also fun and you practice spelling. Can you imagine 10 grown up men shouting like crazy to get the message across? I wish I had taken a photo of that activity. 

So, the teachers enjoyed the activity, they also practiced spelling. But what about the noise? Some of the teachers said they would not be allowed to do such an activity with their students because this would mean other teachersconducting their lessons nearby would get upset. They told me noise in the classroom means you are not controlling you students. Well, there is bad noise and there is good noise. If you are in control and know how to install order once the activity is over – that’s good noise! How can learn a language without using it? Even if my trainees decide not to use this activity in the classroom they at least had some fun and learnt at the same time!         

My name is Ola and I’m Polish. I have been teaching English (and Geography) for 25 years. For the last 8 years I have also been engaged in teacher training as a freelancer – mostly in Poland (especially in Geography and bilingual education) but also in the UK (EFL teacher training courses for Pilgrims and Bell). As a professional geographer I like travelling so combining English teacher training with visiting new places is what I like best! So far I have worked with teachers in Uzbekistan, Qatar and now in Azerbaijan as part of the CTS wonderful teacher training team. Thanks a lot for this opportunity, Kristina :).