1st English Workshop – written 27th June 2011

Ok, so I just ran my first English workshop this afternoon. I’m a bit unsure on how I did.  It was so difficult to do with a wide range of English levels amongst the 6 people in the room.  Overall, I think I kept calm enough considering it was my first time doing anything practical like that, but I’m definitely glad that Yves, the boss, was there!!! When I struggled to explain a concept, he stepped in (phew!).

The young people in the workshop at the moment are those who are planning on going on Leonardo placements in September.  These will be in Ireland, Germany and possible Italy.  These placements will last for 10 weeks and they will almost undoubtedly need to use English.  The range of levels of English is upper beginner to higher intermediate and I have not yet figured out how to include everybody in the exercises with either somebody not understanding and getting lost because the English is too difficult or somebody becoming bored because it is too easy.  It is a difficult balance to achieve!

In the planning that I had done for the workshop, I hadn’t allowed enough time for each exercise and had tried to include far too much, so therefore I had to adapt it massively as I went along.  I managed to cover a lot of vocabulary work, including how to give advice and the 100 most common words.  I will look at developing a more efficient way of explaining “You should…” and “You really ought to…” etc… things like that that I’ve realised are very difficult concepts to explain!!! You just take them for granted when they are your first language!  Also, I feel I dived in too soon with some mind-boggling stuff, so I need to get the group going a bit more next time maybe with some more games and fun stuff…. A bit more talking etc.

I am pleased of the fact that I managed to include everyone in the exercises with everybody talking… So that was definitely a good point. Also, they said at the end that it had been interesting; must be a good sign!? I just hope that they weren’t just saying that because they felt they should! J

Just around the corner from the office :-)

In all, I’m glad that I have my first workshop out of the way so that now I have more of an idea of what levels people are at and how is best to interact with them. I have also learned how important order of activities is! I’m going to start using some more games in between the more tedious activities and will try and stimulate a little bit more conversation in the room (they were all fairly quiet!). I’m relieved but hoping to improve on my delivery next time. Despite this, all in all what a great opportunity to practise delivering English workshops in this environment. It is all such interesting yet challenging work, always keeping me on my toes!