My First Lesson

We all have bad lessons from time to time, and I've certainly had my share of truly dreadful ones. My top five would definitely include my first lesson on the CTEFLA course (shaking like a leaf) and the last one (when I was told it would have to be perfect or else I'd fail the course ... and it was even worse than the first one). I'd also have to include my first lesson with teenagers, having taught adults confidently for seven years, I was totally unprepared for their lack of interest in my lesson). And my first - and last - lesson with little kiddies. That's one I've blanked completely from my memory. Never again. Ooooh no.

And then there was my first lesson with lawyers. (Apologies if you've heard my story before - I guess I'm a bit hung up on it). I'd been asked to write a legal English course for the British Council to prepare students for a new exam, TOLES Advanced. For lesson 1, I'd created a Starter Unit, a kind of get-to-know-you, get-to-know-the-exam lesson. So there I was, facing a pack of 12 highly intelligent and demanding students who had paid a lot of money to learn from me ... A recipe for disaster.

One of my exercises involved students working in pairs to come up with examples of legal English vocabulary - the idea being that they could share their expertise with each other and I'd facilitate it and it'd all be nice and collaborative. A five-minute throwaway activity.