CELTA at ECC, Bangkok

So this is the place where I took my CELTA (previous post here). Like I said before, it's a very intensive course, but it's also the most enjoyable thing I've done in years. So if you're interested in taking the course and don't know which centre to go to, the centre at Thailand is quite a good choice. One reason is its relatively low course fee. Another is that it's in Thailand! And yes, the Thais are really wonderful people. I think there are some things that could be improved such as the limited number of computers available (so bring your own laptop!), but overall, it was a very good experience. Your mileage will vary of course as the teacher trainers aren't always the same. But I think all of them have valuable insights to offer, even if they don't always tell you the same things. If you're thinking of doing a part-time course, don't. Do the full-on, full-time version instead.

Also, how much you get out of the course also depends on the classmates you get. I was lucky that the trainees in this batch were 'above and beyond the call of duty' helpful, gracious, and classy, so I got the chance to learn heaps from them. (Congrats to Alice, Bianca, and Lenore for getting As!) Remember to help one another as much as possible since everyone is in this together. In case you're stressing out so much by the third week that you're about to burst into tears, read Barry's words of wisdom and try to get some perspective...

I think the key to a good time doing the CELTA is to have an open mind, a quick adaptability to new ideas and methodologies that might initially seem so psychobable-esque (I still have my doubts on misguided discovery, arghhh!), an eagerness to critique the good, the bad, and the ugly aspects of your lessons, and accepting that it's one month of intensive work, with little time to rest, perhaps only a few hours on Saturday afternoon and night, but that's about it. Of course, those who work faster or more effectively will have much more free time than that.

Also, there should be no distractions, which is why it's probably a good thing to leave your country/ family/friends/spouse behind and do this course in an overseas country. Under no circumstances should you attempt a CELTA romance, please! (How did that happen?!) If you already have some teaching experience under your belt, that's great. If you don't, the course is still very much doable, but before you start the course, you may want to get yourself the Parrot and Harmer books and study them to get the basics first. (They are available at the library at ECC too.) I thought I knew my grammar, but during the course, I realised how little I understood the nuances and subtleties of supposedly 'simple' language points.

So, if you're thinking of doing this course, all the best! But first, you need to get through the pre-interview (chat) task. I took two weeks slowly doing that. You might have an easier time than me. Click the pictures below and you'll get larger ones...


Richard welcomes you to ECC!

The nice view from ECC




My group mates Richard, Lenore, Alice, and Jas.





Intermediate class


Elementary class


Pre-Intermediate class

On the last day, the school held a party for the students. They're really cool... Here's Kathleen, Jas and Andrew.

Bianca in the middle

Gary, Ashleigh, Kirsten


Steven's mobbed by enthusiatic learners of English.

Sylvie and Steven

Jerome





Laurence, Bianca, Alice


Barry, Lalita, Jas and Dan




Accommodation
This is the A-One Inn, a nice place that costs about 13,000 baht per month for a single bed room. The double bed rooms cost the same amount, but I was too lazy to move. WIFI in the room is available at 100 baht per day.





The view from my window. From right to left, Pisces, Reno Hotel, and the National Stadium BTS station.
This is Soi Kasem San 1, quite a few guesthouses can be found on this Soi. I'll probably still stay at the A-One if I return here in the future.

What I find remarkable about this place is that one usually thinks that Bangkok is a very crowded place, and yet, it feels so quiet in places like Pisces and Sorn's where Lenore and I sometimes had breakfast or dinner. This is Pisces, a nice, quaint place just across the soi from A-One.


Sorn's is 10m away from Pisces. They serve Western breakfast and excellent fried rice and curry. The menu has cute chilli icons that grade the spiciness of things, with one icon meaning 'not for the fainted heart [sic]', and five icons representing 'for the adventurous' or something...



My last breakfast there, this cost 75 baht (SGD3, USD1.8)


Read the entire entry.

Update (!): Here's someone who's just done the CELTA in Vietnam. Fred Shannon talks about his ECC experience last year. Another blog has an upcoming series 'one month of CELTA at International House, London'. Mel did the CELTA in Beijing. More background information from Dave's ESL Cafe: here, here, and here.

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AIDS Statistics

I haven't read the Straits Times in the last month as I neither had the time nor the inclination to do so. I decided to start again this morning, and to my horror, the first thing that greeted me was an article on gays and what Dr. Balaji thought about them. Now, I've written about this issue before, and now, the exact same dodgy thing has happened yet again!

1 in 25 gay men here may have HIV

ABOUT one in 25 gay men in Singapore is HIV-positive, said Dr Balaji Sadasivan yesterday. Researchers came to that conclusion based on the data gleaned from the anonymous human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) testing clinic at Kelantan Lane. [1]

However, the Senior Minister of State for Health was quick to point out that the data used to come up with the figure is far from perfect. Dr Balaji explained: 'There are many, many questions about this data. 'Is this representative of all gays? Or is it representative of a sample of gays? We can't answer this question unless we do more detailed studies which may invade into people's privacy.'[2]

Action for Aids (AFA), a non-governmental organisation which runs the anonymous testing clinic, also has no idea how accurate the figure cited by Dr Balaji may be. AFA's programme manager Abdul Hamid Hassan said the figure could be an overestimate, or an underestimate. [3]

Assuming that the newspaper hasn't misquoted him, here's the rub. First, at [1], Dr. Balaji states as fact the 1 in 25 statistic based on experts' opinions. Then at [2], he implies that there isn't much basis in the number that's arrived at, and once again, to not believe what he's just said. It's really weird...

Now, it's very reasonable to say that any research involves lots of uncertainty and flaws. But was there any need at all to state something one knows is not accurate in the first place? There's absolutely no value-add in that, with the possible exception that it allows the excuse to conduct more studies which 'might invade people's privacy'.

I think AFA's Hassan was probably shaking his head when asked to comment on this [3]. He probably got the whole thing right, the actual figure is either lower, or higher. I'm more interested in this: does Dr. Balaji know what on earth he's talking about?! Then again, he might just have been misquoted by the newspapers... or not.

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For Chieifidler

I received the awful news from Angela yesterday morning that Chieifidler of Idledays.net had passed away from a rare blood disorder.

The first time I met her was during the Bloggers.sg volunteers briefing at PS; she was one of the volunteer coordinators. The next two occasions were on the Blogcon itself, and then at Hideout a few days later. In that short time (plus reading her archived blog entries), I've known her to be one of those rare sensible, measured, 'the voice of reason' person. She was always so nice, both in emails and in real life. The last thing she did for me was to help take a picture of Hyperger and me, and as we left the Blogcon, she was so happy to be able to take home a Lexmark printer to do a review.

Another thing I remembered was the time she did the 'experimenting with blogging styles' posts. One of the styles she did was an angst-filled 'why me?!' style, and the entry included a song that she wrote. I thought to myself, hmm there are quite interesting lyrics here. So I tried singing and playing the song on the piano for about an hour using the chord sequence she included. It was the most fun thing I've done in a long time.

She was probably around my age, and even though we know life is fleeting, sometimes we just don't want to believe it. Thanks for the memories, Chieifidler. You will be missed...

More at tomorrow.sg .

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Bangkok Calling

It's 7.30pm and I'm in my room at the A-One Inn preparing for next Tuesday's lesson. The language point is 'future intentions' (I'm going to...,I'm planning to..., I'd like to..., I'll be...) If you have suitable lesson plans or ideas, shout.

Constant stress for the past three weeks, but I can safely say it's probably the most enjoyable, but stressful, 'academic experience' I've had so far in my almost 20 years of schooling. The rumours are true; the CELTA (see last entry) is one heck of a formidable course. I thought the folks at ECC were joking when they included a health warning in the application form. I can now see the necessity of this disclaimer.
The course started on Week 1, Day 0, a Sunday. (In this course, like being in a casino without a clock to be seen anywhere, dates and deadlines are all referred to as Week X Day Y, for added dramatic effect.) With a quick orientation out of the way, we were given instructions on the teaching points for Monday. Yes, with no formal teaching experience (as in the case of yours truly), we had to give a 15-minute lesson the next day. For Tuesday, this was ramped up by 100%; the next lesson was 35 minutes. The lessons progressively increased to 40 minutes, and now it's up to 55 minutes. I never thought this would ever happen, but by the end of Wednesday, I was quite sure that 10 days had already passed. I've never been so refreshingly stressed in my life before (with the possible exception of Basic Training in the army).

Bang, bang, bang! Life was lived in 30-minute intervals. You didn't know what was going to happen in the next hour because you're forced to react to whatever happened next, and there was very little time to respond to a completely new problem that you're ill-equipped to handle. And that, I thought, was what made the thing so interesting because I realised early on that this was not some flaw of the course. It was by pure design that the course was structured this way.

The good thing is that all of us want to do well, not just to pass the course, but because there are people who are actually learning something from our lessons. They're really great. We have Thais as well as Cambodians, Japanese, Burmese, Vietnamese, Sri Lankan... students, and it's fun to watch them get something out of our lessons.

Also, I'm pretty lucky to be in my teaching group (there are groups of 5, 5, and 6). Maybe it's due to the close knit nature of any activity involving boot-camp mentality that folks stick together, the guys in my group are perhaps the best classmates I've ever worked with. Alice (inspiring teacher, really), Bianca (solid, gets the job done with minimal fuss and zen calmness), Jas (possesses a rare 'warmth' delivering lessons), Lenore (non-native Dutch speaker who stays two doors away from mine and will mostly likely top the class, a tour de force in class, and all-around great gal), Richard (a special fliend who'll take care of you for flee, and who's improved so much since Day 1!). Everyone is extremely helpful and supportive. The rest from the other groups are wonderful too. Like the other day, I chatted with Gary and he found out that I haven't read The Alchemist before. Two days later, he went to a bookstore and bought me a copy. He's really nice...

So, I've one more lesson to go next week, and will write a debrief entry for future visitors from GoogleLand. Anyway, on Week 2 Day 1, I took a risk and decided to use poetry as the main focus of a task-based lesson. The first half sort of flopped (because The Poison Tree I chose as my first poem was just too 'deceptively simple', and most of the learners didn't understand it), but I managed to save the ship from sinking further by using a second 'simpler' poem, and by the end of the lesson, most had written some lines of their own poems, which was quite wonderful even though some later told me they didn't like it hahaa. Still, maybe reciting a good poem or two in the class is worth the effort anyway. Here's the second poem; Gary read it to me, he does it sooo well...

Dreams

Hold fast to dreams
ksdfFor if dreams die
Life is a broken-winged bird
ksdfThat cannot fly.

Hold fast to dreams
ksdfFor when dreams go
Life is a barren field
ksdfFrozen with snow.

~Langston Hughes

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