Week two’s life lesson: you’re not identifiable as a qualified teacher unless you wear a scarf.

This week has comprised of a lot of exam assistance, revision, and practise. I have been working one-to-one with a lot of students for their Pearson’s oral examinations. It’s interesting to me how little focus is placed on speech, within lessons. The school I am working at is great and incredibly attentive to each of their students abilities and needs. However, it seems that speech is often neglected within the curriculum they follow. In the lessons I have observed and engaged with, students seem to be primarily completing writing activities for grammar and verb phrases. As a consequence, when the students are faced with a proposed practice oral exam, they appear perturbed and reluctant to participate. Undoubtedly, the English in this school is taught well, as even 1 ESO students are practising at a B2 level. However, the little speech they practise is hindering their ability to apply their English knowledge orally. I respectfully mentioned this to my tutor, and suggested that I would like to focus on speech production with the students. She understood my findings, and further explained that speech examinations are relatively new; with the final Cambridge and other institutionalised examinations at the end of BACH being only focused on reading and writing, speech production is often overlooked. Nevertheless, she was encouraging that I spent some time with the students to focus on their speech production. Therefore, soon I will begin planning lessons for this: to increase their speech confidence and capabilities - hopefully that will be the result, anyway!