My Second British Council Experience

Some Reflections

This is the second time I come to the British Council. The first was when I came last October to take the CELTA. I’m here now for two months to do summer school.

I got an offer to come and work at the British Council for either one or two months. This offer came at a time I was trying to start my own business in language teaching in collaboration with a friend and a public service association. We were in the beginning and we needed all the efforts to build our success. At the same time, working at the British Council is a good chance to gain experience and learn more about teaching and running courses. I consulted with my friend and he recommended that I go because we needed this experience. And I did.

Summer school involves working with children (Young Learners), but I had an adults class as well. I took it as a perfect combination to gain a lot of experience in a very short time.

YL classes have been more enjoyable and comparatively easier to do. Although my CELTA training was mainly about teaching adults, many aspects of teaching could be transferred to YL classes. Support was given in terms of lesson planning and teaching materials. We had a set of pre-written lesson plans to use as well as authentic materials for classroom use. All we needed to do is go and teach. Sometimes we had to make decisions about materials and adapt the lesson plans to suit our students.

It was my first time to teach a whole course based on authentic materials. It was the first time to do so at the British Council as well. This has been useful to my experience as a teacher because it helped me develop my potentials. It allowed me to be more in touch with learners' needs as there were no coursebook restrictions.

In my adult class, I have been trying to hone my skills a little more. From a teacher development standpoint, this is acceptable and appreciated. However, I seem to have failed, so far at least, to establish a balance between what I do as a teacher and what the learners actually need. I can see that my teaching style now, for the most part, is up to standard. I have already started improving my CELTA action points with regard to allocating appropriate timings to activities. I still need to develop my ability to predict problems and work out solutions for them beforehand.

What I learned so far from this experience is that there are no considerable boundaries between teaching children and teaching adults. Teaching is much the same in both contexts. It is just a matter of preference which age group you, the teacher, want to work with for your career. I also noticed that some Egyptian learners, adults in particular, cannot yet dislodge the idea that language development is all about vocabulary and grammar. Some adult learners would still prefer a fount-of-knowledge teacher who spoon-feeds them the language. Those learners haven’t yet recognised that their learning is their own responsibility. As a teacher who believes in learner-centred language education, I think that my greatest challenge is to try to convince those learners of the value of being independent and of the importance of developing language skills as well as knowledge.

I still have four weeks to do in summer school. I intend to make the most out of them on my way to reach my full potential in teaching. It’s just a good beginning.