Presently Perfect

Hello again!
A few more photos to view while I tell you what's been happening for the past month.

What it feels like earning a CELTA certificate!

Having just emerged from an intensive month long TEFL course ( Teaching English as a Foreign Language) at Norwich, I am now the proud, albeit, exhausted owner of a CELTA (Certificate in English Language Teaching for Adults). It was a tough, demanding four weeks bu

Jo and Carole, our CELTA tutors

a hug from Carole, one of our CELTA tutors, for trainee Sue, at the end of the course

t with the encouraging support of both the tutors and my fellow trainees, we pulled through. All the publicity for CELTA courses point out that it can be intensive and quite stressful at times and now I know why! We had to teach grammar on only our second day of the course and to real foreign students of mixed nationalities and abilities. Talk about hitting the ground running!

Some of the brilliant, wonderful, foreign students I had the pleasure to teach on my CELTA course. L to R front: Keiko, (Japan) Anne Cecille (Nice France), Jozeph, Marianne and Balent from Hungary.

Johanna and Eden - two more of the students I taught on the course

But my fellow trainees, tutors (and the foreign students I taught), were brilliant, funny and very supportive and we all plan to stay in touch. There were four Russian trainee teachers on the course, who we came to adopt as our 'family'. We had such fun, a lot of laughs and we're going to miss them, but I'm sure we'll see them again in the future.

Homeless in Oxford City Centre.

somebody's granny

The rather embarrassing aspect of the course was that the Russian girls were far more advanced in English grammar than we native speakers! It was quite something when in class one

cat in a tight spot

day, we English trainees had to pair up with one of the Russian trainees. There were eleven of us in the class and knowing how good the Russians were at grammar, it often became like a game of cartoon artist in Covent Garden

musical chairs at the January sales -each English trainee rushing to grab a Russian and sticking to them like glue with the unfortunate few of us being left stranded with a native speaker. There just aren't enough Russians to go round I say! But as with most English native speakers.

my good friend Sue, enjoying her ice cream in Paris during my cycle trip

w

tortoiseshell butterfly

we leave it all behind in school, and although we intrinsically know the meaning and how to use it, we lose the ability to analyse it. Whereas, foreigners who have learnt to speak English, will have excellent grammar, as they've had to study it to understand the language. Either way, it's a strange sight to see an English class dominated by struggling native speakers, being directed in the grammatical art of English language by foreigners!

Stormy weather - Northern Ireland

woods in Suffolk

So, what of the future? Well, having emerged from the minefield of phrasal, modals, collocations past simples and perfect tenses, I am now in a position to start reorganising my world cycle trip and to try to continue on my journey. With my degree and a CELTA certificate in my hands, I will be able to work anywhere in the world, doing a fantastically rewarding job and I hope to be able to travel as soon as I can regroup and get going again. Organising this will take a little time and so I hope to either get work teaching in England for the summer and/or do some voluntary teaching to get some experience before setting off. Timescale? I hope to be working in Seville in Spain by next winter.

But before all that, I'm off to various parts of the country to catch up and enjoy some socialising with some of my friends. How do I feel? - Presently perfect.

Bye for now.
Deborah
(C) all photographs and text in Paintsandpedalsworldbybike is the copyright of Deborah Anne Brady; all rights reserved 2012