22/2/2012

Today wasn't very eventful.  Met with Luis, my Teaching Development teacher, at 10.  So we meet with him for 40 minutes once a week.  He has us write a "diario" about our experiences teaching and goes over them with us.  He not only discusses our teaching experience with us, but he goes over our grammatical errors as well. He is so thorough with his explanations I already learned a lot just from going over one essay.  He pointed out some "Spanglish" errors I made.  Such as, "La primera cosa", which means the first thing.  Cosa means thing, and Americans use it a lot - the last thing, the most important thing, the best thing.  But that's a poor translation that is common, and instead I should say, "Lo primero".  This is actually the topic we're learning about in his class right now.  How to teach students that some things aren't directly translatable.  In my methodology class we're learning about that too, and the different methods used to teach a foreign language.  It's actually really interesting.  There is controversy about how much the learner's native language should be used.  In some methods they don't use the native language at all - others they focus a lot on translation skills.  We also learned about "The Silent Way".  It's this crazy method where the teacher does not speak.  They have a poster with a bunch of little colored rectangles, each representing a color.  The teacher will point to a sound, and say it, and the class will repeat it.  Little by little the teacher adds more sounds, until eventually the students know them all.  From there only the teacher is completely silent.  He'll point from color to color and the class will sound it out and make words, and then he'll show them an object or a picture to go with the word.  It's obviously not a common method.. but it was interesting to read about.  Very odd.  Seems very time consuming.  My methodology class, which was my least favorite at first is actually my favorite right now.  I've learned a lot more already than I did in my education class at Framingham during the fall.  Plus it's geared towards language teachers.  So after my meeting with Luis, I went to cooking class.  We're learning about how the three main religions of Spain - Catholicism, Islam, and Judaism.  My teacher told us we're all the convents that sell pastries and marmalade are in Sevilla, so Kirsten and I are going to go check them out.  After class I came home and had lunch.  Senora made a rice dish with artichoke, carrots, peas, and a yellowish sauce similar to that of paella.  As with all of her cooking - it was delicious.  After lunch I went to the park to read a little bit.  So where I go in the park there's a little circle area with a fountain in the middle, and four benches in the corners.  So I was sitting on a tile bench directly in the sun reading, and got a little tired so I decided to lay down.  Next thing I know I'm waking up about 40 minutes later.  It's just so nice there!  The tile bench isn't the most comfortable but it's really nice being in the warm sun.  I fell back asleep for probably another half hour, then went to class.  Flamenco class wasn't as boring today.  We were reading an expert from a book, and we'd read it paragraph by paragraph picking it apart.  Was more entertaining than taking notes.  After lunch today I got up from my chair and my lower back near my hip hurt really bad.  When I walk there's a sharp pain.  No idea what I did.  Maybe my body decided to give up on me because I've been eating too much.  I stretched and it felt better until I left class tonight.  I got up and it hurt.  Again I stretched and it was a little better, but then after dinner it hurt me, and it still does.  I just hope it's feeling better tomorrow when I have to deal with the little kids!!