Learning Experience
My worst and best learning experience goes back to 2005, when I was attending an FCE course. It actually started from day one, when our teacher walked in and he didn’t say a word. He spent the first few minutes going through the course book, and then he started mumbling for a while. I could sense that he was rather a bit upset.
The classroom was almost full and everyone was very excited, and eager to start immediately. However, Mr. X was in no hurry at all, it was like we didn’t exist. While he was flipping pages back and forth, the students started talking to each other, of course being in a multilingual class I could hear all different languages, for a moment I thought I was in one of London’s busy coffee shops.
Eventually, he put his papers a side and headed towards the whiteboard, wrote the date and the lesson aim, took a deep breath and welcomed everyone. His introduction was very detailed information about his achievements. It was all teacher talk as though he just wanted to fill in the time. It would have been better to listen to a radio programme than his long life story.
During the first break there was an atmosphere of confusion. I personally questioned my ability, and I thought I wasn’t up to the challenge but soon I found out that almost everyone had a similar negative attitude. It was hard to understand what had happened during the first hour, and what the point was. In addition, I completely lost interest but for personal reasons I wanted to see the end of this drama.
The second hour wasn’t any different from the first one. It was clear that the teacher had not planned his lesson and probably he had walked in relying on his experience, he had no clear objective, activities were unrelated, numerous grammar topics were hopelessly explained, and soon after that he was challenged, the lesson was hijacked by the students and the situation led to a disastrous classroom management.
Unlike my teacher, I had a clear ambition “I wanted to become an
The classroom was almost full and everyone was very excited, and eager to start immediately. However, Mr. X was in no hurry at all, it was like we didn’t exist. While he was flipping pages back and forth, the students started talking to each other, of course being in a multilingual class I could hear all different languages, for a moment I thought I was in one of London’s busy coffee shops.
Eventually, he put his papers a side and headed towards the whiteboard, wrote the date and the lesson aim, took a deep breath and welcomed everyone. His introduction was very detailed information about his achievements. It was all teacher talk as though he just wanted to fill in the time. It would have been better to listen to a radio programme than his long life story.
During the first break there was an atmosphere of confusion. I personally questioned my ability, and I thought I wasn’t up to the challenge but soon I found out that almost everyone had a similar negative attitude. It was hard to understand what had happened during the first hour, and what the point was. In addition, I completely lost interest but for personal reasons I wanted to see the end of this drama.
The second hour wasn’t any different from the first one. It was clear that the teacher had not planned his lesson and probably he had walked in relying on his experience, he had no clear objective, activities were unrelated, numerous grammar topics were hopelessly explained, and soon after that he was challenged, the lesson was hijacked by the students and the situation led to a disastrous classroom management.
Unlike my teacher, I had a clear ambition “I wanted to become an