Trains

Are you listening to music again Antonio??! !

I've spent most of today on trains and most of them have been late...making me think of your delays between Sant'Arsenio and Turin! I visited the external examiner for our MA in English Language Teaching at York St John. The weather has been beautiful today; calm, warm and sunny, so it was nice to go on a bit of a trip, despite the delayed, overcrowded trains....

Yesterday, I met the students I'm teaching for the next four weeks. They are university teachers from China and I had planned a classroom research programme for them, focussing on the way English teachers correct students' oral errors.

In the first class we talked about words we associate with 'research' and one of the teachers said 'wash'. 'Wash???', I said, thinking I had misheard. 'Yes, wash', he said, 'wash the test tubes in the lab after the students have done an experiment.' Of the five teachers on the programme, I eventually discovered that only one teaches English. The others teach Chemistry (hence the washing the test tubes), Engineering and Accounting. Tomorrow I'll meet them again, abandon the classroom research programme I'd planned and try to decide what to do instead. Oh dear....

See you tomorrow.

Rachel

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