prawnchopSuey
Gold Member
Hola chica,
I wrote you a big long post this morning and then the internet went spaz and I lost it all when refreshing the page. Grrr.
I'll try and summarise!!
Firstly, AMAZING loss, well done. And I also noticed that you would be dropping below the magic 30 so a massive congratulations - I think that's such a milestone along the way
I worked as an English language assistant Oct 2004 - July 2005 (Makes me feel so old ) in Thonon-les-Bains, which is on Lake Geneva, right on the Swiss border really.
I chose to be a primary language assistant (hence I worked until July not April...), which meant that I was the only English teacher in the two schools I taught in. As a result I was responsible for planning the whole curriculum for the year and all lesson planning / resource preparation, which was quite a lot of work for 'just 12 hours'! Bear in mind that student teachers in the UK only teach for 12 hours a week but are still working long long hours with all the prep and marking!
Having said that, assistantships in secondary schools and sixth forms seem a lot easier as you are purely assisting so generally just do small group sessions practising speaking and listening. A girl I knew who worked in a Lycée (6th form) only saw the same group of students once a fortnight so she prepared one lesson and repeated it with each group for two weeks! Whereas I had 18 lessons to prepare per week (and had to make worksheets etc. as well as I had to teach reading and writing skills too...), she prepared less than 18 lessons in the whole year!
I found it to be a great experience though, and probably more rewarding than older students would have been, but there wasn't as much time as expected for du vin, du pain et du boursin
I would definitely recommend an assistantship or work placement over an Erasmus year, because at the start of the 4th year, I found that other people on my course who had 'studied' for the year had really not improved their language skills much at all!! They had been placed on modules at their destination university with all the other international students and so made friends with and lived with people from all over, not France. The result of that is that everybody invariably ends up speaking English together, as for most Europeans, English is their second language and French / Spanish will be their 3rd or 4th!
It's probably a lot easier to make friends and find your feet in a new place doing Erasmus though.... There's pros and cons for both
If you have any questions or whatever, fire away and I'll try to help / advise.
Oh, a film you should try and see too is 'L'auberge espagnol'.. It's a French film about a French guy who goes to spend a year in Barcelona as an Erasmus student and lives in a crazy international house (most of the film is in English as a result of what I was saying before...). It's really good and has Roman Duris in it too who is not bad on the eyes!
Right, I'll move on now... think this is even longer than the post I lost this morning
I wrote you a big long post this morning and then the internet went spaz and I lost it all when refreshing the page. Grrr.
I'll try and summarise!!
Firstly, AMAZING loss, well done. And I also noticed that you would be dropping below the magic 30 so a massive congratulations - I think that's such a milestone along the way
I worked as an English language assistant Oct 2004 - July 2005 (Makes me feel so old
) in Thonon-les-Bains, which is on Lake Geneva, right on the Swiss border really. I chose to be a primary language assistant (hence I worked until July not April...), which meant that I was the only English teacher in the two schools I taught in. As a result I was responsible for planning the whole curriculum for the year and all lesson planning / resource preparation, which was quite a lot of work for 'just 12 hours'! Bear in mind that student teachers in the UK only teach for 12 hours a week but are still working long long hours with all the prep and marking!
Having said that, assistantships in secondary schools and sixth forms seem a lot easier as you are purely assisting so generally just do small group sessions practising speaking and listening. A girl I knew who worked in a Lycée (6th form) only saw the same group of students once a fortnight so she prepared one lesson and repeated it with each group for two weeks! Whereas I had 18 lessons to prepare per week (and had to make worksheets etc. as well as I had to teach reading and writing skills too...), she prepared less than 18 lessons in the whole year!
I found it to be a great experience though, and probably more rewarding than older students would have been, but there wasn't as much time as expected for du vin, du pain et du boursin
I would definitely recommend an assistantship or work placement over an Erasmus year, because at the start of the 4th year, I found that other people on my course who had 'studied' for the year had really not improved their language skills much at all!! They had been placed on modules at their destination university with all the other international students and so made friends with and lived with people from all over, not France. The result of that is that everybody invariably ends up speaking English together, as for most Europeans, English is their second language and French / Spanish will be their 3rd or 4th!
It's probably a lot easier to make friends and find your feet in a new place doing Erasmus though.... There's pros and cons for both
If you have any questions or whatever, fire away and I'll try to help / advise.
Oh, a film you should try and see too is 'L'auberge espagnol'.. It's a French film about a French guy who goes to spend a year in Barcelona as an Erasmus student and lives in a crazy international house (most of the film is in English as a result of what I was saying before...). It's really good and has Roman Duris in it too who is not bad on the eyes!
Right, I'll move on now... think this is even longer than the post I lost this morning
