brian symonds's Page

Dear Brian, We missed you this week and are all sorry you withdrew. I think all of us felt overwhelmed and as though we would never make it a week ago, but we are finally beginning to see some progress in our own lessons and feel that there is light at the end of the tunnel. We are apparently not as hopeless of cases as we feared. As intimidating as parts of the curriculum are, I am sure you would-- and hopefully still will -- be a fine English teacher once you spent some time in the field and got your bearings. Remember that even the grammatical issues tend to repeat themselves. I was only able to explain the difference between when you use since/for/and until so quickly at the end of last week's lesson because I have done is so many times before. It is one of those errors that crop up again and again, at all levels, with Northern European ESL students. The first time I tried to explain it in class, I failed so miserably that I spent an entire evening figuring out how to do it better. We all hope you are able to teach in China without the CELTA. Wishing you the best and please let us know how you fare in the Far East, Maria