Presentations 2

Below I wrote about a class I am teaching which is going through a presentation block. Once we finally got into the final, full presentations,things really improved and they have all tried very seriously and done very well. I am pleasantly surprised. Sometimes, I just can't read a class, and this one seems to be one I have trouble with. Even had one woman whom I thought would do horribly---mainly because of nervousness and lower speaking ability than the guys in the class---had actually prepared and delivered one of the best presentations in the group. I was amazed at that, as were the guys in the class.

This job can be rewarding at times and this is one of them. After the last 4 weeks of the presentation block wondering what I was doing wrong, or how I could get it working better, it turned out fine. Better than fine and it was obvious that they had all made progress. At their level (intermediate-high intermediate) progress is not easy to see.

This is the kind of thing that would be nearly impossible to experience at a place like Berlitz where you don't have your own students, you may or may not know the students, you are using material which seems to have been created by committee--a committee which includes nobody with any knowledge of language teaching or SLA, material which you may or may not be familiar with, teaching a class which you MAY have had a full 5 minutes to prepare for. Oh wait. Am I regurgitating Berlitz nightmares again? Gotta stop now.