I recently wrote about my experience going through the curriculum training with Gavin at the Smith School of English Tsuruhashi a couple of weeks ago. It was a bit of a refresher course in terms of the routines and whole new experience with regard to the new items and all the expanded material. Last Saturday, I got a chance to put some experience into practice.
I was a bit surprised to see that some of the students had not yet been introduced to the curriculum (new or old). I opted to go with the pre-intermediate shopping routine for a red level student. From what I could tell from her lesson reports, she seemed to be the type that could carry on decent conversation. I noticed a lot of lesson comments marked free-conversation about shopping, so the shopping routine seemed appropriate.
So, as I started coaching the routine, she seemed a bit surprised with this approach, but soon enough she was whipping along. She liked this new structure because it helped point out some of the small mistakes she often made while talking about her shopping experiences and quickly helped her correct them. In just one lesson using curriculum, she was already feeling more confident and fluent. And that’s the whole point. And it was so easy to coach.
For the previous 6 months or so she was just skating along, perhaps feeling ok about her chance to converse freely, but somehow feeling a bit empty or doubting herself because of the fact that she wasn’t getting better. She’s feeling great now and ready to do some shopping…
Mike out
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