Day 8

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Teachers sometimes get it wrong. There is probably no situation other than teaching a class of pre-intermediate students that I'd get confused between "Town Hall" and "Council House".

Where else but a classroom would I consistently misteach the intonation of the bizarrely appropriate sentence "You're doing it wrong"? And be corrected by the student-teacher who usually comes to me for advice?

And sometimes teachers contradict each other. Today there were five of us teaching the same class for twenty minutes each about phrasal verbs. I taught that couples or friends who "fall out" break off contact with each other, one that "a falling out" is just an argument, and one that "to fall out" suggested a severing of communications, but didn't absolutely entail it.

Strangely, although most of the ten learners had trouble with "get on with", they all already knew the meaning of "get off with". Hmmm.

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Three things I've learned recently:

(1) Sitting and staring at a computer screen while exhausted, trying to force your brain to switch back on and write a lesson plan...doesn't work. And doing it for three hours doesn't work either.

(2) Going to bed before midnight and sleeping six hours, on the other hand, is a good way to get it done in half an hour.

(3) Strong coffee makes me wide awake in that twitchy way that makes people think I'm on cocaine. Coffee is really useful right now.

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How many words can you write analysing fragments like "have to show" and "out of season"?

I'll let you know when I've written them.

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