The Sheffield College

French speaking students at Manchester United FC

In the world of work today, the policy of last in, first out is now becoming very commonplace, especially for self employed professionals and, at A+ English, I was unfortunate to experience this myself - along with another teacher who was much younger than me.

Having really looked forward to getting up early in the morning and going to work again on a regular basis, I was very disappointed when the funding for the Libyan and Saudi Arabian students was withdrawn from A+ by their respective Embassies and I was back in the ranks of the unemployed. 

Old Trafford Stadium

Before too long I was back at work and my next job at the Sheffield College was most memorable for the classroom management and field trip leader skills that I acquired, more than the English teaching experience itself. Along with a handful of other teachers, I was responsible for 60 students who had come to Sheffield with the French FM Sports Etudes academy - from France and from very many of their former colonies in West Africa, South America, the Caribbean and the Middle East.

          

Old Trafford Stadium

During the initial tour of Sheffield city centre, despite also being accompanied by their French group leaders, they showed a lack of discipline when, without permission, they all broke away from the group upon their first sight of the mobile phones and trainers. In the classroom too, it was obvious that many of the students were more interested in playing football than learning English; however, by the end of the 4 weeks, they had improved considerably. 

Although textbooks were available for my lessons, I also prepared a glossary of terms used in football, in both English and French, which I gave to them for reference but, for conversation practice in the classroom, I used a much more comprehensive list of vocabulary in English only. Having enjoyed playing football myself at school, and supporting one of the top clubs in the English Premier League, Chelsea, I found that I was never short of ideas to discuss with my students in the lessons.

Industrial scale grow lamps at Old Trafford

A+ English

English Language Services

It took me a good couple of weeks to get my bearings back, when I returned to the UK from Paraguay; in the southern hemisphere, when you look at the night sky, you see a completely different set of stars and the sun appears to go the ‘wrong way’. 

When I came back to my senses, I still found that I was living in Rotherham and so I had to look further afield again. Having obtained an internationally recognised English teaching qualification that would probably get me a job at a private language academy anywhere in the world, it was easy enough to find work with A+ English in Sheffield.

I was taken on without any kind of contract, as a self employed teacher, joining a small pool of English teachers who supplemented a couple of permanent members of staff. Initially, I just taught a few lessons a week but, before long, I was teaching for over 20 hours a week, with students of different levels. The students were mainly Saudi Arabians and Libyans, but there were Swiss, Italians and Japanese too.

During the mornings, the classes were rotated between different teachers, to give the students an opportunity to have variety in their lessons. A syllabus of sorts was maintained by using a standard textbook and related audio cassettes and, at the end of the day, the teachers would swap notes to ensure that the grammar etc. would not be repeated in the next lesson with the students.

When sitting in on the lesson in Paraguay, where the teacher relied solely on a standard textbook and a whiteboard, I observed that both the teacher and the teenaged students seemed to be very bored with this methodology and, being in this position at A+ English with adult students, I felt exactly the same myself.

In the afternoons, however, the teachers were allowed much more freedom of choice and, although I don’t profess to have had any formal training or knowledge of this, I did my best to help my students with the IELTS – and these lessons were much more productive for everyone involved. 

English Language Services

Postcards from Paraguay

A Sunset at San Bernardino

“You’ll come back in a body bag” were just a few of the encouraging words that were said to me by my friends, when I announced that I was going to Paraguay for 3 weeks after I had finished my TESOL course. Finishing Paradise with Serpents on the flight across the Atlantic Ocean from Frankfurt to São Paulo, I did feel a certain amount of trepidation, because the author had painted a very black picture of the place and it was too late to change my mind.

The Iguassu Falls as seen from Argentina

However, when I finally arrived at Asunción airport, the warm welcome that I received from Sara soon dispelled any fears that I had. I could easily write a novelita about my time in Paraguay, especially since I eventually spent seven weeks there and not three as originally planned, but this is a story about my experience of teaching English and not an account of my  private life.

The Iguassu Falls as seen from Brazil

Throughout 2007, I had been thinking about languages, both teaching English and learning Spanish, and my friendship with Sara really gave this a boost. Life in Rotherham had turned into a vicious circle and it had become increasingly difficult to see a way out and when, after a few months of getting to know each other, Sara suggested I go there, I jumped at the chance.

A view of the Trinidad Jesuit Mission

My touristic adventures were organised before I arrived in Paraguay and much of my stay was spent investigating work as an English teacher.

Having friends in high places helps and I was introduced to the English language schools in Asunción. At one, I was invited to sit in on a typical lesson in English given to a class of teenagers, where the teacher used a textbook and, at the Anglo, I was given the chance to teach a lawyer from CONMEBOL.

An offer of employment

Everyday, for a couple of weeks, I took the bus to go and visit my student in his house. Standing at the bus stop, with the midday winter sun blazing down on my head, I remembered that when my friends had said that it was extremely difficult for gringos to live in Paraguay, because of the heat, I knew that it was true.

Although I have fantastic memories of my short stay and still have my offer of employment from the Anglo school, should I return, I can’t see when I will go back to Paraguay; however, despite the pessimism of my friends, I am still very much alive and I am proud to say that I put my money where my mouth is and, on the last leg of the journey home, I took a prize winning photograph.

Newton's Colours

One to One Lessons

A diagram of the articulators used to pronounce the letters b and v

One of the most rewarding assignments for the Trinity College Certificate in TESOL course at Sheffield Hallam University was my work with César Santin Bejarano, from Ecuador. The main purpose of this exercise was to examine in some depth the linguistic achievements and difficulties of an English learner, by analysing their speaking, writing, reading and listening skills during four meetings, which culminated in a 45 minute one to one lesson.

César Santin Bejarano

I chose César because I had, by this time, decided to do something really different in my life and had booked a flight to Paraguay, and I was interested in learning more about life in South America and the Castillian language that is spoken in most countries there.

During our first informal meeting over coffee, at The Forum in Sheffield, we talked for more than 2 hours and he told me about his background and motivation for learning English. We discussed environmental conservation, climate change, volcanoes, the pronunciation of the letters c, s, z, j, g and v in English and Castillian - in South America and Spain -  and a variety of other topics.

The Bear Pit at Sheffield Botanical Gardens

In the next two lessons, which were recorded, I used an article from The Independent, which described life on the island of Montserrat, to test his reading skills and, for the listening, an extract from Michael Palin’s Full Circle from South America. 

César has interests in the Ecuadorian tourist industry and has qualifications that enabled him to work as a tour guide in the Galapagos Islands, so I had confidence in his ability to understand the material that I had prepared for him.

An exercise for the pronunciation of the letter v

As part of my preparation for this assignment, I undertook research on the problems that Castillian speakers have when learning English, especially with their pronunciation. In our first meeting, César told me that he had problems being understood by his mainly Polish colleagues at work, where he fabricated steel fences. A simple exercise using a cigarette lighter and a short list of similar words for practice worked wonders and César quickly learned how to say 'volcano' with the correct pronunciation of the letter v.

Classroom Practice

Some students from my final class at Sheffield Hallam University

At primary school, I participated willingly in just about everything. I was more than competent in reading, writing and arithmetic, I played various sports skilfully and with vigour and, above all else, I really enjoyed working with my hands – making pots and various dinosaurs out of clay and jewellery out of copper, silver and decorative stones. However, I hated ‘music and movement’ or anything where I had to ‘perform’. 

 

I recall quite vividly one lesson where, one by one, each member of the class had to stand up and sing a few lines from the Christmas Carol – In the Bleak Midwinter. As I waited for my turn, I became more and more terrified but, luckily for me, I didn't have to perform. Whether time had just run out in the lesson or Mr. Smith, my teacher, had just noticed my increasing levels of agitation, I was truly grateful for being exempted from this humiliating experience.

 

My classroom

 

In my professional life, I have since overcome my fear of standing up in front of an audience and speaking and have given many talks to a wide variety of people and, when I had to deliver my practice sessions, I was certainly not lacking in confidence. I certainly made mistakes, mainly because I tried to be original with my lessons rather than just use something ready made from a standard textbook, and sometimes they didn’t work well. However, I recorded each lesson and wanted to learn from my mistakes and, by my last lesson, I thought that I’d got the basics right.

 

I am not any kind of expert in education, but I know how to ‘engage’ my students and, even though I took on board most of the comments made by the various observers who sat in on every lesson and graded my performance, I felt really quite offended when some of my lessons were ‘marked down’ because I had shown too much exuberance.

 

A happy ending

 

If someone wants to criticise the way that I explain a point of grammar, fair enough, but surely the best teachers are those that are enthusiastic, make the students feel comfortable and bring humour and fun into the classroom? OK, I might have been guilty of talking too much or too quickly at times but, when you are faced with a set of students of various nationalities with very different levels of English and whom you have met for the first time, this probably happens to everyone. As budding stand up comedians know only too well, there is nothing worse than stony silence.

Sheffield Hallam University

Sheffield Hallam University

Although my work at the Yorkshire Trust was only temporary, it enabled me to plan ahead for a few months and it really galvanised my ideas about teaching English as a foreign language. In the 9 months since I had been back from Catalonia, I had been researching places in Barcelona where I could obtain a recognised qualification and I could easily see myself living there. As my attempts at speaking Spanish had gone very well, I had also started to learn more of the language, teaching myself, with formal lessons at night school and by making friends on the internet.

A poem by Andrew Motion

Tempting as this idea was, the Trinity College Certificate in TESOL offered by Sheffield Hallam University was much more practical. As well as having a very good reputation in this field, the part time course fitted in well with my work commitments at the Yorkshire Trust and it was a great way to kick off the New Year.

I have to say that, as far as studying is concerned, I have never had to work so hard in all my life. Even though I consider myself to be well organised and a good manager of my time, I hardly had time to do anything else for a period of 5 months and I was glad for the spare time when my work at the Yorkshire Trust finished, despite a loss of income.

I don’t pretend to have an extensive theoretical knowledge of the rules of English grammar and, for me, the experience was a very steep learning curve. Except for a very practical photographic skills development course that I had attended at the Sheffield College, I hadn’t been in an academic environment for nearly 20 years. Back then, I didn’t know much about life and like most people just accepted what I was told but, in the time since, I had developed a mind of my own and was very aware of my own strengths and weaknesses.

Although the course covered a wide range of topics and methodologies, for students of all ages, I knew that if I ever had the opportunity to put the theory into practice, I would not be organising singing, dancing and party games in my classroom - it is just not me. 

I also realised that I would never, ever want to learn Russian either. Even though the 6 hours of being taught solely in Russian was a very valuable lesson, it was a horrible experience - give me the romance languages, Italian and Spanish, any day!

The Yorkshire Trust

The Yorkshire Trust

To be quite honest, my first few weeks at the Yorkshire Trust didn’t involve much teaching work. A paid member of staff, who liaised with all of the partners and funding organisations, took care of the weekly class and I carried out various other duties.

A lot of my time was spent opening and closing the premises, keeping the place clean, tidy and well organised, in addition to undertaking a wide variety of tasks as a receptionist, typist, office administrator and other job descriptions that might be listed under “Jack of all trades”.

Contact details

One particular responsibility was to supervise the use of the ICT Suite. On some days, this was the venue for the formal classes and at other times it was used quietly as a drop in centre by a handful of regular visitors so, once I had switched the computers on, I was very rarely disturbed.

After school, however, the ICT Suite took on a completely different character.This internet access was meant for serous students to do school work, but the reality was that it was mainly a ‘hang out’ for a wide variety of boisterous teenagers, whose life revolved around Bebo.

Like many organisations, the Yorkshire Trust relies on volunteers and I was soon able to train a few of these to carry out the various tasks that I had been doing and concentrate on my teaching work. This had become more important, because the teacher had left to go to another job, leaving me by myself.

I conducted initial interviews, which satisfied government guidelines and, with a whiteboard and photocopies from official manuals that I had found, whilst organising the library, I gave 2 hour lessons on a weekly basis. The students came from all sorts of places and had extremely varied levels of English.

The front entrance

One time, I had to teach the English alphabet and it was not easy. I had to joke that, unless they concentrated, we would have to learn Chinese characters instead. A local takeaway proprietor, who regularly attended the classes, thoroughly agreed with me and everyone burst out in laughter. 

Afghanistan, Iraq, Iran, Palestine and Zimbabwe were all represented, as well as various French speaking countries in Africa, whose names I can’t quite remember. 

Eastwood, the area which the Yorkshire Trust mainly serves, is one of the most deprived areas in Rotherham but it is very rich in language.

I organised 1 to 1 lessons with a few of my students and we had some very good conversations about the various ways that people are treated in their respective countries.