One guy just doesn’t get it. If you just follow the procedures they are teaching us, you will pass the course. A lot of people on internet forums complain about this, and say the course is too rigid. Our instructor is actually giving people a lot of leeway to do what they want. But he does want to be sure we do a few key things. Today one guy just totally did his own thing. He was supposed to be doing a reading lesson. His reading was a horoscope, and the students spent about 2 minutes reading their own horoscopes. Obviously, not enough time was devoted to the focus of the lesson, and we all could tell.

During feedback, the instructors are really good at getting us to say what we did wrong, instead of jumping right into criticisms. But this guy just didn’t get what he did wrong, no matter how much prodding he got. He won’t accept feedback. My attitude is “I don’t know anything, and I want to know what I did wrong so I can fix it.” His attitude seems to be “I already know what I’m doing, so I’m not going to listen to anyone.” I guess all he wants is the certificate. I want to actually learn something. We all agreed his lesson was poor.

Since all this had to be explained in detail, the feedback session was long, and I had to go right to my observation at 6 pm. This time it was at ECC, the same place I’m studying. It was a competent lesson, but it wasn’t inspiring like the one at British Council. Ironically, while ECC is the best place in Thailand to study teaching, it is one of the worst places to teach, and hence, one of the worst places to study English. With the observation, it was another 12 hour day.