I’m taking the Introduction to Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages (TESOL) course at ECC Siam Square. ECC also offers the prestigious CELTA, an intensive four week course that will qualify you to teach anywhere in the world. But, since I have never taught before, I decided to take the two week intro course. It is also a third of the cost.

The TESOL is very introductory, and we spend most of our time discussing concepts in groups, rather than being taught. I think they’re trying to demonstrate the kind of active teaching that we should be doing, but that doesn’t allow much material to be presented.

It is sort of interesting, though. In all my previous experience, lessons have always been very passive affairs that I usually slept through. But they stress involving the students at all stages, engaging their interest, eliciting rather than just giving words, and asking comprehension checking questions. It sounds good in theory, but I wonder how it will work in practice.

I assumed I would find out during the three teaching practices, which I also assumed would be full lessons to Thai students. But we’re actually going to teach our fellow classmates, and only in three 15 minute chunks. I won’t even be nervous, since I’ve gotten to know everyone over the last week. My first teaching practice is on Monday. It’s a vocabulary lesson, and in an effort to make it more realistic, since everyone speaks English, we have to teach five words of a foreign language. So I’ll give Thai a shot.

The TESOL’s a good introduction, but I don’t think I will be ready to teach after taking it. I may take the CELTA in January.

The Candle Festival

Happy boat maker

The festival of Loy Krathong. took place last night, and I was once again impressed by the nocturnal nature of the Thais. On this night, happy couples buy two lotus-shaped boats, containing flowers and candles, and set them out to drift. If the boats stay together, so will they. Again, figuring Khao San Road would be a good place to start, I caught a bus, which got stuck in bad traffic, so I didn’t get over to that part of town until 10. I saw a huge mass of people around the Golden Mount Temple, so I hopped off to see what was up. The sidewalk was lined with vendors selling beautiful floats, snacks, food, clothes, and about anything else you could want.

After extraditing myself from the crush of people, I moseyed on over to Khao San Road, which was packed with Thais again. Not as crowded as last week, but still, much fuller than usual. I met up with Australian Duncan and Northern Irish Ruairi from class at Gulliver’s Tavern, which I had actually never been in before. There were lots of friendly Thai females. I thought they were a little too friendly, if you catch my drift. I was too cynical, and they kept telling me to “stop being so serious.” Words to live by in the Land of Smiles.