Cactus Language Training Blog
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Cactus launches new evening courses in Greenwich
- Monday, 7th December, 2009
The school, a well-established English language and teacher training centre, enjoys a very accessible location on Greenwich High Road and offers a comfortable and effective learning environment.
Low-level courses (beginner and elementary) will be offered in Chinese (Mandarin), French, German, Italian and Spanish, with courses commencing on 19th January, 20th April and 20th July 2010.
Prices start at £179, although Early Bird discounts are available for anyone who books 30 days before the start of the course.
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Suzanne Furstner Foundation Scholarship 2009: Shortlist Announced
- Monday, 23rd November, 2009
The entries were assessed by a panel of three judges against the following criteria: content and structure, originality, language and accuracy, relevance to the scholarship theme and overall impression. All of those shortlisted have won a Cactus Online TEFL Course.
You can read an anonymous entry in full below. To read the winning and other shortlisted entries please click here.
Six weeks in Italy
They say that the best things in life are free, and ambitious graduate Hayley Pearce is hoping to uncover the truth in this old saying by winning the Suzanne Furstner 2009 Scholarship. It will allow her to begin the career of her dreams and the most exciting adventure imaginable.
The scholarship, if awarded to her, will give her the opportunity to complete a four week TEFL course and a two week Italian language course. And where better to do this than Italy itself? It-magazine goes to catch up with the aspirational young would-be teacher in Vespa, a bar located in South Manchester which would scarcely raise an eyebrow if it was plucked out of the ground, transported over Europe and placed somewhere in the middle of Naples.
When we find Hayley, she is sipping an espresso and watching the world go by, seemingly deep in thought. No doubt day dreaming that she is sitting somewhere in Italy drinking espresso with fellow TEFL course students and about to go to a lesson…
As soon as she sees us she greets us with an enthusiastic ‘ciao!’, giving us a friendly smile and standing up to shake our hand and kiss us on each cheek. That’s the Italian way. Clearly she is adopting little snippets of the culture already and she doesn’t even live there. Yet.
But she has set her sights and pinned her hopes on her aspirations to move there. She knows it won’t be all fun and games but that it will be an amazing experience all the same.
‘Often the things you learn the most from aren’t enjoyable from start to finish. I know there’ll be some stressful times but I’ve got the gumption to see it through.’
The TEFL course makes for an intense and challenging four weeks but she knows she’s got what it takes to soar to success. ‘I won’t stop until I achieve what I want’, she tells us, looking us in the eye so we can sense her strikingly determined and clear-headed attitude. ‘I know I need to remain focussed and if it ever emotionally or physically tires me out I’ll just keep thinking about why I want to do it.’
So why does she want to do it?
‘Teaching’s my chosen career path; it’s my ideal job. I am a great communicator and a confident and enthusiastic person. I love helping people. Using my skills and qualities in order to do so gives me great pleasure. To be able to do this as a job would be absolutely phenomenal. Having completed a degree in English Language, I have an excellent command of English grammar and written and verbal communication and I would like to use my skills and knowledge in this area to teach others. Living and teaching abroad appeals to me because the idea of taking on the challenge of teaching English to non-native speakers is extremely exciting and I know it will be highly rewarding. It will be an invaluable experience, both personally and professionally. Also I’m young and adventurous and have no intentions of settling down just yet!
And what’s her big plan?
‘After I have finished my course, I would like to stay in Italy to teach for a while. Then in the long-term I can see myself living in Spain or Germany, and I would also love to teach in South America or South East Asia. That’s the beauty of TEFL courses like CELTA and CertTESOL. They are recognised internationally. Once you’ve passed, you can place yourself anywhere in the world and apply your enthusiasm and skills to teaching different people in different countries. When I am travelling I’m at my most free and able to think the most positively. I’m happy, productive and full of life. Not that I’m not all those things at home of course, but I thrive in unfamiliar environments. I want to stand on my own two feet in a new country.’
We know she is more than capable of standing on her own two feet. This young woman, despite having her sights set so high, has them firmly placed on the ground. She explains how she is fully aware of how hard she has to work to get there, and how she intends to apply all of her strength, ambition and drive both during the course, and beyond it.
We asked her why the course would be beneficial to her.
‘Are you joking? It would be so much more than beneficial. The prospect of being able to combine living in Italy for six weeks with the opportunity to develop teaching skills is so exciting. It would be an absolute dream. The course would mark the beginning of what will hopefully become a very long and fruitful career in teaching. With the knowledge of the Italian language under my belt coupled with the skills and qualities gained and enhanced during the TEFL course, I will be well equipped to begin teaching English in Italy. This experience would then pave the way for me to teach English in other countries, applying what I have learnt to classrooms in other parts of the world. Later in life, if and when I want to return to England, I would like to continue to work in TEFL, perhaps a more ‘behind the scenes’ job, but not before I have lived and worked in every continent. I have very big ambitions.’
You don’t say! We then started talking about Italy and why she was so excited to be beginning her TEFL journey there.
‘Italy has so much to offer. It is historically fascinating and is such an important and influential country, especially in the domains of fashion, fine art and food. I am also eager to improve my Italian, and Italy would obviously be the most perfect setting for Italian language lessons. TEFL is currently on the rise in Italy and many schools are looking to recruit even fairly inexperienced teachers. Therefore, I feel it would be an ideal place to be when I am looking for my first job. The scholarship would open up such an amazing opportunity for so many reasons.
‘Immersing myself in other cultures has always been a wonderful and enlightening experience for me, and I see this as a chance to both gain new skills and experience in TEFL and to absorb as much about the Italian way of life, its culture and its people as is humanly possible!’
When in Rome…
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Suzanne Furstner Foundation Scholarship 2009: Shortlist Announced
- Monday, 23rd November, 2009
The entries were assessed by a panel of three judges against the following criteria: content and structure, originality, language and accuracy, relevance to the scholarship theme and overall impression. All of those shortlisted have won a Cactus Online TEFL Course.
You can read Sara’s entry in full below. To read the winning and other shortlisted entries please click here.
Sara Harllee
Six weeks in Italy
As I look out over my balcony at this magnificent country, I reflect of the magic that has been the past six weeks. I reflect over my many experiences here, my new compendium of teaching knowledge and wisdom, the wonderful people I have met, and my new language, Italian. I have fit in seamlessly here in Italy, the native language flowing off my tongue, and I cannot envision a better journey. Even my CELTA teaching sessions, which I approached with great trepidation, went fantastically and formed the perfect foundation for my future classes. Words simply do not do justice to beauty, passion, and perfection I have known here in Italy.
My eyes come back to focus as I am now choking with laughter. The lack of sleep and general state of brewing expectation has, once again, produced mental sappiness of a horrifying degree. After completing my voodoo dance of normalcy, and laughing until my stomach hurts, I grab my mug of tea, stare past my bedroom curtain, which bravely tries to pretend it is a door, and try to focus my mind again. However, I am distracted by the hysterical realities that I have a curtain masquerading as a door, my salvaged computer desk would cramp a midget, my bed creaks like a dying duck, and my computer screen is out of focus…again.
I sit here and wonder if I have lost my mind. I comfort myself with the encouraging thought that I won’t know it if I really have. Please do not ask why this is comforting. Comfort is just something one has to take as it comes. Shifting from the non-profit arts industry to teaching is enough to make my head spin. It is a good thing I like carnival rides, or life might not seem like so much fun. I think of my linguistics, articulation, and speech classes in college and the sorrow I felt when I could not find a plausible excuse to explain why I wanted to major in linguistics. I think of the elementary teaching classes I have taken, which brings up dreadful memories that are best left in the past. I think most importantly about how much I love people, languages, different cultures, and different places, and how, for the first time, I have found a place where these loves make sense and are celebrated. Well, they are at least tolerated and laughed about with good humor, which is almost as good. I would much rather laugh than make sense anyways.
Language is a door to other worlds, places and people. It is also a door that can stub your toe or slam in your face when used incorrectly, so please open with care and be sure not to smack anyone on the other side. Teaching English as a second language thrills me to a level so deep I begin to doubt my sanity. The prospect of learning the nitty-gritty of pronouns and gerunds, the ins and outs of how my deliciously botched native language is learned, and why so many people hate grammar is exhilarating. Of course, I must first deflate my dreamy bubble of ecstasy and find a real way to make this happen. I have thought out a plan and decided that maybe, given the current economy, saving for thirty years in order to afford a quality TEFL education program is not too much to bear. By that point, I will be so old perhaps a CELTA program will give me a senior’s discount. Another option is to sell off the belongings I have left, given that I have already sold much in an attempt to get myself closer to TEFL certification and free myself from unnecessary items that would burden travel. Of course, when I consider the chances that anyone would want what I have left, I think I would have a better chance of sailing the Atlantic on a goat. But, like the crazy life paths that brought me to the TEFL industry in the first place, an equally crazy path brought me to the Cactus TEFL website, and so, in a mad dash of hope, my mind turns to Italy.
Italy. It is the country that now holds my glimmer of possibility and potential, adventurous confetti burst in the future. It could also be the best behind kicking of a lifetime, but those things often are the same and I have found both equally enjoyable. Of course, the first things that come to mind are the Rick Steves films I have drooled over, pizza made with whole fish slapped onto giant pieces of bread, crazed students mumbling teaching techniques, nights of frantic lesson planning, and bedrooms with real doors. I am excited by the mere fact that Italian is similar enough to Spanish that I know when someone is saying they are in love. Of course, unless someone pledges his or her undying love to me or I am asked to be a new TV Love Doctor sensation, this will not come in very handy. At times my mind turns to imagining the different ways I can get lost walking from my lodgings to the learning center, of which I have counted twenty so far, how long I can go without sleep, and if I can make as many fantastic language blunders as I did with Spanish, some of which would either make your toes curl or come in handy in a brothel. I think of the amazing people I would be bound to meet, the stories to last a lifetime, and the tools to teach someone right; I think of all the crazy, wonderful, and embarrassment inducing things that make life’s journeys worth the while. Lastly, I think of my life, curtain and all, and the career path I am fighting to make a reality. And I hope that, maybe, through some weird twist of fate, Italy will get me there.
Once again, my out of focus computer screen brings me back home. Staring with blurry eyes down the hall, I realize I do not know how the future will play itself out, if I will ever see Italy, or if my backside will ever cease being numb after the hours in my highly un-ergonomic chair. I also realize, in a moment of frightening clarity, that drinking too much tea has a rather undeniable effect, which is something I think is most handy to remember in a classroom situation. However, I know that regardless of what it takes, whether a thirty-year wait or on the back of a goat, I will find my way to teach English as a second language, legally of course. And hopefully, in the end, I will find that somewhere along this journey there is some magic left for me.
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Suzanne Furstner Foundation Scholarship 2009: Shortlist Announced
- Monday, 23rd November, 2009
The entries were assessed by a panel of three judges against the following criteria: content and structure, originality, language and accuracy, relevance to the scholarship theme and overall impression. All of those shortlisted have won a Cactus Online TEFL Course.
You can read Rosette’s entry in full below. To read the winning and other shortlisted entries please click here.
Rosette Nagimesi
Six weeks in Italy
The strange thing about language is that you can never fully understand it unless you totally immerse yourself in the culture from which it sprung. Some aspects are just impossible to describe in a text book; like the hand gestures that give significance to certain words, or the way in which the same phrase can be intoned differently to mean different things, or even the small sounds that seem innocuous but carry a wealth of meaning. This realization hit me during my first week in Florence, Italy.
As part of a TEFL scholarship I’d won, I was here for six weeks, two of which would be spent learning Italian. The opportunity meant so much that for the first time in a long while, I could say the words, ‘carpe diem’ with as much conviction as they required.
Pulling my gaze away from the window, I donned my jacket and headed for the door. My lessons began in an hour and I was actually looking forward to them. Class here was nothing like anything I had ever experienced before; it had very little to do with speculation and everything to do with practice.
I stepped onto the cobbled street and breathed in the cool morning air, all the while marvelling at the power of fate. Only a month ago, my days had basically entailed filing and typing. Of course the thought of doing that for the rest of my life terrified me but I had absolutely no clue how to go about changing my life. How I went from an uneventful existence to one fuelled by a passion for language, one that let me earn my living doing something I love, totally eluded me.
The situation really had seemed hopeless; I had no savings and the nearest TEFL centre was a country away. God only knew how long it would take for me to get a certificate. Defeat was a thought away when I came across the Suzanne Furstner Foundation Annual scholarship with its unbelievably generous offer. Quickly, I’d fulfilled the requirements, submitted them and waited with bated breath. A month later, here I was.
I stopped by a café for some stuffed croissants and coffee. From where I sat, I could see the city come alive; people in sober clothes rushing to work, tourists in whatever they pleased, taking pictures of everything, and students like me, walking and talking amongst themselves. Sounds of conversation and laughter filled the air and even the waiters smiled whenever they caught my eye. Clearly, the ‘Fiorentini’ were a cheerful lot. I wondered if Italians in other parts were equally jovial. The first rays of sun bathed everything in yellow, making me loath to leave, but I had to get to class.
Ours was a group of six; Alain, Sebastian, Marian, Isaac, Clara and I. We came from different continents, had different backgrounds and varying levels of experience. Our only bond was a shared aspiration to become English teachers. This was enough to render all else inconsequential. At first, the notion that we needed to be taught how to teach English had seemed hilarious; each one of us had spoken it all our lives, how difficult could it be?
As time went on, we saw just how complex it could get when dealing with people who had had little to no previous exposure to the language. In any case, by the end of the first week, no one was laughing.
The morning was spent learning everything, from black board usage, to grammar and pronunciation. To help things sink in better, each lesson ended in an assignment. These were to be demonstrated in front of the class the next day just so we’d ensure that what seemed to work in theory, could actually work in practice.
After class, Marian, Sebastian and I made our way to the cafeteria. The three of us had made a pact to practice our Italian right from the start, so each day after class, we switched language, unashamed to make mistakes and determined to keep practicing until the number of times we looked into our phrase books reduced significantly.
We sat, placed our orders and looked through the lesson plans we’d prepared for our afternoon classes. At some point, Marian began to worry that she’d prepared too many lessons. We quickly laid her fears to rest by reminding her that she didn’t have to rush through all of them at once. After all, it was better to be over prepared than under prepared. While we ate, we swapped stories of home and family and after lunch, we headed for our respective classes.
My class was made up of six intermediate students. I’d been teaching them for three days and things were going well. I remembered my first day as a teacher. Naturally, I’d been nervous but the fact that my previous days had been spent preparing for that moment fortified me. I knew that these students were here because they loved English and that compelled me to make sure that they had an enjoyable learning experience.
That afternoon, after the self introductions, I began the class by teaching them a song. We got off to a shaky start but by the fifth attempt, every one was singing boisterously and those who couldn’t compete, compensated by thumping their desks heartily. When order finally returned, we went through the song slowly, pronouncing everything and translating new words. By the end of the class, though I’d only managed to teach one lesson and introduce a second, I was confident in the knowledge that now, the students would be more receptive to my teaching and also trust me enough to let me know what they needed from me.
For four weeks, I spent my mornings learning and my afternoons, teaching. The cyclic relay of information allowed me to channel the tactics that helped me understand my lessons, and use them to teach my students in a way that they would understand theirs. I endeavoured to use taught and self invented methods to make sure that neither I nor my students walked away from our respective classes empty handed. With each passing day, my confidence grew and so did my conviction that I would be a great TEFL trainer.
On the last day of my teaching practice, the students surprised me with an invitation to a farewell drink. The best-spoken of them, Giovanni, made a speech that made my eyes tear. At the end, under the influence of many sweet drinks, we all hugged each other and promised to keep in touch. It pleased me that a language had been taught, a gap bridged, and perhaps, most importantly, friends made.
The next couple of weeks were spent learning Italian. I didn’t have much of a problem with this because I’d been practicing for a while. Better yet, my knowledge of French helped me make sense of the language rules that might have confused a novice. To give us a more in depth learning experience, our instructor, Ms. De Luca, did not restrict us to the classroom. She took us on trips almost every afternoon.
We visited the country side along the river Arno and struck up conversations with the locals. It excited us to think that what had seemed so incomprehensible on day one made so much sense now. Our major triumph, though, came from realizing that the words we spoke made sense to the natives and prompted proper responses. At the Galleria degli Uffizi, we had a lovely time commenting on the art pieces in Italian. We sat in the street side cafés and placed our orders, relying on each other, rather than our phrase books, for correction. At every turn, we found something to comment on or someone to speak to, ensuring that our practice was endless. This helped us learn a lot in the short time that we had left.
At the end of our six weeks, the entire class, together with Mr. Robins and Ms. De Luca, had a farewell dinner at which everyone made a speech. Some opted to write theirs down in simple but perfect Italian while the bolder, more spontaneous ones chose to speak off the cuff. The latter group’s speeches were peppered with numerous English interjections and these, when coupled with Ms. De Luca’s comically pained expressions, kept us bent over with laughter. The night ended in lots of dancing and when it was all over, we bundled into a taxi and went home.
As I sat in my room, on my last night in that beautiful city, it occurred to me that I already missed it. Staying was not an option though; there was still too much to experience and plenty more students to teach. More than an English teacher, I was an emissary and it was my duty to unite the people everywhere using the tool I wielded best. That tool was language.
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Suzanne Furstner Foundation Scholarship 2009: Shortlist Announced
- Monday, 23rd November, 2009
The entries were assessed by a panel of three judges against the following criteria: content and structure, originality, language and accuracy, relevance to the scholarship theme and overall impression. All of those shortlisted have won a Cactus Online TEFL Course.
You can read Truly’s entry in full below. To read the winning and other shortlisted entries please click here.
Truly Camies
Six weeks in Italy
Student: Angelo Mastroianni
Teacher: Mr Longbottom
Teacher’s ReportI have had the pleasure of teaching your surprisingly competent son, Angelo, in a number of different subjects over the last three years and I will have to be honest, I am simply flabbergasted with the progress he has made with not only academic achievements, but with his continuous attempts at undermining me as a teacher. It must strike you as quite bizarre that a teacher would be so bold as to mention this in a school report but then you would be right. This is actually my final day at Scholars High due to moving abroad and as such, I feel that Angelo’s final school report should be full, consistent and paralleled with his behaviour, which is quite simply a combination of troublemaking and sheer brilliance. He is admired by his peers, swooned over by the female portion of the school; teachers and students alike and is insistent on hindering me in any way, shape or form using magnificent front and cunning that a fox would be envious of.
In the first year, his entrepreneurial attempts at setting up businesses in the playground impressed me greatly. Business opportunities seemed to be favourable to those students in his closest circle of friends or to those that had been introduced to him. This is something that reflects the nature of the Italian culture; something I find quite admirable. His healthy rivalry with competitors of the year above is commendable and yet shrewd, to say the least. He has a bright mind and has proven such in outright illegal acts of selling and distributing snacks and drinks outside of class; honing in on opportunities that present themselves in the form of pupils with large appetites, having left swimming lessons and drinks to those pupils just finishing sports. From what I have gathered, he treats his working peers like they were his own family and distributes his earnings in a very diplomatic way; those that sell more, earn more. Of course, I have caught him on a number of occasions, skiving his Italian lessons to aid in such a cause, for which I have scolded him. Language lessons, albeit his native language are of utmost importance in the realm of business and may teach him a thing or two he probably believes he knows already. I have had many a conversation with Angelo about the differences within cultures and the significance of learning and understanding one another, especially within your own nationality.
As you may already know, each of the last three years, he and a number of students have visited parts of Italy on the annual two week residential trip in order to soak up the history and identify cultural differences between the two countries. Angelo, whose name belies his devilish charm, was asked to note his experiences in a diary as were the other students. This exercise is designed to give the students a chance to reflect on their understanding of the culture and the language as well as capture their ability to summarise and describe their thoughts on their experiences in another country. Your son never failed in expressing his love for his home country as he described Italy beautifully. Following his second trip, he did however, fail to recognise that introducing the national football team into his argument as to why Italy was better than England, was just not appropriate, given that the inequality of football teams does not denote an inequality of countries. An excerpt I have already highlighted with him personally, I feel I must share with you:
“The English footballers are much better dressed than the public. Some of the English men like my teacher actually wear socks and sandals and think they are un tipo!”
This was highly inappropriate; I not only found this offensive in the fact he referred specifically to my personal attire but also because he knew I would have to look the phrase ‘un tipo’ up for translation before any punishment could be exchanged for such insolence.This is not the first time that he has personally insulted me, for example, he has often insisted that I am unlucky because I wear a peacock feather in my hat. This hat is one of my most prized possessions and on the one occasion where I can relax in the sunshine, I wear this hat in order to shield my eyes – every time I have worn this hat on our school trips, I have caught Angelo gesticulating at me by making a horn sign with his index and little fingers, which is just unacceptable behaviour! This has been copied and encouraged by a number of other students and sometimes used in protest; I have also caught students making this same gesture with their hands behind my back after I have set them homework to complete. I once asked him why he considered the peacock feathered hat an unlucky omen and he explained that I bear ‘The Evil Eye’. This of course was a nonsensical though clear (and also intriguing) derivative of the rumour that one of my colleagues made me aware of - the rumour being that I am the ‘long bottom with the evil eye’, which I originally thought may have been to do with my ability to catch students doing things they oughtn’t be doing using well developed observational skills. Upon further interrogation, your bafflingly brilliant son informed me quite nonchalantly, that the ‘Mano Cornufo’ or “Horned Hand” is widely accepted as a preventative method against ‘The Evil Eye’ curse, in not only Italy, but in Mexico, Eastern Europe and even China. How absolutely absurd! I can only conclude that this act of defiance has been generated and encouraged by Angelo himself within school and as creative as they are, these reasons do not justify his behaviour.
When I do challenge his reasons for bad behaviour, whether real or imaginary, he will argue his case with great passion and feels he must be louder than me in order to win. Angelo has advised me that he believes arguing is a lot healthier than brewing resentment. In the last and thankfully final year teaching Angelo, your son caused me to lose my temper in a most bizarre way. In our third trip to Italy, we visited some of the most beautiful masterpieces in Rome, including the Coliseum, outside of which were actors, posing as real life gladiators. The gladiators, looking marvellous in their authentic costumes; lifelike sandals, and even sporting lifelike weapons such as tridents and swords, had clearly grown used to groups of schoolchildren swarming around them with fascination. Angelo, being somewhat surprisingly well behaved on this trip, impressed his peers and myself by talking to one of the gladiators in his native tongue… Before I knew it, the gladiator had tackled me at my waist, pinning me to the ground, all whilst wearing a huge grin on his face. I was astonished, let alone bewildered! It was not until the laughter from our group died down, that one of the students were able to point out that the trident that this particular gladiator had adorned was no longer in its rightful place on the actor’s belt. The article had in fact, made its way into the pocket of my blazer, which I had previously removed and draped over my arm earlier for fear of melting in the afternoon heat. Angelo, taking all this in his stride, smiled upon us - two adult men grappling on the floor - then redeemed himself by calmly speaking a few foreign words. As quickly as I’d found myself there, my normal stance was resumed. Within a few short moments, I found myself with my jaw on the floor as the actor/gladiator took back his trident, grinned and walked off. Now I still, to this day, do not know what was said to the costumed actor, but I do know that such an incident would never have occurred had it not been for your mischievous son.
However, even after all of this, even after I consider him the absolute bane of my life,
I actually commend and admire him; I wish him the best in his future endeavours as he really is one of the most capable young men I have ever taught. After sharing six weeks in Italy with him over three long and painful years, conversely, he has taught me a thing or two about life and how one must make the most of it. I hasten to add, that because of my experience with such a student, I have decided to learn Italian and to do so, I have applied to work as a TEFL tutor in a school in Alghero, Italy, where I can teach obedient adults rather than mischievous children but also so that I may learn Italian for my own future good, if ever I teach a student as exasperating and as exceptional as your son again. Thank you.
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Suzanne Furstner Foundation Scholarship 2009: Winner Announced
- Monday, 23rd November, 2009
The prestigious prize will allow Tatty to jet off to a location of her choice in Italy and embark upon a four-week TEFL (Teaching English as a Foreign Language) qualification and a two-week Italian language course. The prize also includes accommodation and return travel to the UK.
As part of the selection process, candidates were asked to complete a scholarship assignment entitled ‘’Six weeks in Italy”, interpreted in any way they chose. In addition to this creative writing project, candidates were also required to complete a short language awareness task to assess their grammar skills ahead of taking a TEFL qualification.
The entries were assessed by a panel of three judges against the following criteria: content and structure, originality, language and accuracy, relevance to the scholarship theme and overall impression.
“I can’t tell you the feeling I had when I saw my name on the Cactus website saying I’d won the Suzanne Furstner Scholarship. I thought it was a mistake!” comments Tatty. “Winning this competition feels like rounding a bend on a river and seeing a whole new vista stretching out ahead. It’s all so exciting and new. I’d taken the decision to study TEFL in 2010 after years working as a journalist and in the arts, when I saw the scholarship. Winning this chance to study TEFL in Italy is such an amazing treat. Wow. Ohgollygeemy. Here’s a big thank you to all at Cactus. You’ve just opened a giant door of opportunity for me. Wine and fabulous hams are on me.”
Jenny Johnson, Head of Cactus TEFL, commented: “Competition for the scholarship was fierce this year and we received dozens of excellent entries. Tatty’s assignment stood out due to her understanding of what’s required to be a great teacher and her creative flair. We are delighted to be able to offer her this prize which will kick-start her career as an English teacher, and wish her every success for the future.”
Tatty’s winning entry can be read in full below. To read the other shortlisted entries please click here.
Tatty Scott
Six Weeks in Italy: No Hexes on Italy
I first knew for certain that I wanted to teach English in Italy when I was sitting in a field in Northumberland surrounded by horses. During the summer a friend of a friend was visiting the county from London and to get into the spirit of the local history she was taking part in the annual Flodden ride-out, a commemorative cavalcade from Coldstream to the hills above the infamous bloodied battle fields. Now usually I like to keep a safe distance from horses. They’re big with strong legs and ferocious teeth and unpredictable minds of their own. I don’t want to feed Dobbin an apple let alone sit on him. However, this friend of a friend was a TEFL teacher in London and as I had just completed a TEFL weekend taster and was building up the confidence to swap my career in arts management for a new professional route teaching English abroad, my friend said this would be an odd but perfect opportunity to meet and greet and find out more, especially over the civil niceties of a picnic in the summer sunshine. So I quashed my fears, roasted chicken legs, and schlepped up to the ridge to wait.
At a little after 1.30 pm we were joined in our roped enclosure by 200 slavering horses, my friend’s friend, and two of her friends who happened to both be former CELTA teachers. Between chicken legs and the snorting cavalry the conversation went from saddle sores to our luck with the weather to the life of a TEFL teacher. I asked questions and passed round apples and listened. The three teachers had taught across Europe at one time or another and reckoned they could spot a learner’s native country at 20 paces. It could be their attitude to learning or even their ‘tell’. Each country, they told me, has a distinct pronunciation idiosyncrasy that imbues the students’ spoken English and is often the hardest thing to change.
Then one of the group began a eulogy to her stay in Italy. She’d taught in the country for two years and as she gushed about her students and her apartment and of the long hot summers riding around on her Vespa, it took me back to my own travels in Italy nearly 20 years ago, to my own long hot summers and experiences with students and riding around on Vespas. How different her visits had been to mine and how much more purposeful and orderly.
‘When I am an old woman I shall wear purple
With a red hat that doesn’t go and doesn’t suit me…’When I was in my late teens my father worked in shipping and lived in Arenzano near Genoa, where pesto comes from, (did you know pesto comes from the Italian for ‘to crush’? Think of pestle…) and latterly further south in the town of Lucca, Puccini’s birthplace and sometimes host location for the Miss Transvestite Pageant. Trips to see him were a self-indulgent teenage blur of laziness and yoga in the sun followed by nights of drinking and dancing in open air night clubs partying hard with the holidaying Milanese.
Sitting in that Northumberland field at the age of 37, best-forgotten memories came trotting back. Far from the fruitfulness of teaching, my Italian experiences were days of disorder and unencumbered calamity. Of the memories suitable to report here I remembered being at a bar on the beach that very first summer and my growing delight as the vodka tonic I’d ordered was more vodka than tonic. I remembered sitting on a park bench singing toe-curling harmonies after too many of these vodka tonics while Paulo, a doe-eyed musician, was playing me self-composed songs on his guitar. I was too drunk to realise that if I’d shut up he might have kissed me. I remembered racing Cesare, the pool attendant, to lengths of front crawl on the Pineta and how he never forgave me for winning. I remembered a pal coming to visit us one summer and how I crowed about my command of Italian only to order, ‘Due… pieces of pizza please,’ at the hatch of a pizza concession, even holding up two fingers to be super sure the bored waitress had understood me.
The thing is, Italy, you haven’t seen me at my finest hour. Now, though, things are different. I did a degree in Film and English in my mid-20s. I trained as a journalist too and worked for newspapers, magazines, and in PR for seven years. I still freelance these days in between managing arts projects. (See, these days I even manage things.) I’ve travelled the world. I’ve trained as a European tour leader. I’ve been a radio journalist and producer and presenter for the BBC. Yes it was only a local radio station, but still it was the BBC. That’s got to count for something. I write. I write a lot. I’m working on two novels and currently write two blogs – one on astrology, a favourite subject of mine, and one as an agony aunt character. She’s a Parisian barfly who offers her lascivious advice from the bottom of a bottle. It’s not me though. I’m not like that. I’ve taught too. I’ve taught creative writing and PR and arts awards.
‘And I shall spend my pension on brandy and summer gloves…’
My life feels like an on-going adventure and this chance to study a month-long TEFL in Italy will tie together my love of talking and English and writing with my love of travel. Such an intense teacher-training course will show me the holes in my knowledge of the English language – and will also help to fill the gaps. It will give me other useful skills too like classroom management and the ability to stand at the front of a room staring out at a sea of faces and to be able to speak in coherent sentences. And to remember to breathe.
Yes I want to learn how to teach you English but I also want to get back to your beautiful, boot-shaped land so you can teach me Italian. I want to be able to ask for two pieces of pizza and so many other things without having to resort to charades in a country that invented commedia del arte. Of course I want to share comedy words like thingamajig or hooter with you but more than that I want this two-way learning street to be a purposeful adventure.
Italy, what I’m trying to say is, “Please let me back in… Things will be different, better, I promise.”
We can learn English by re-enacting real life in modern day Britain; we could create our own soap opera and base it in a job centre. We can bring English grammar and dialogue to life using real film scripts by famous directors such as the Cohen brothers, “Well, sir, it’s this rug I have. It really tied the room together.” We can examine sentence structure and tenses using dramatic stories about well-known characters – how about, ‘Pooh Invents a New Game and Eeyore Joins In’? We can use these stories to explore English in so many different ways, for example a perfect starting point to help us with vowel sounds Pooh… stew… soup… goo…
And we can learn beauty and vocabulary and how to express the desires of our souls through the poetry of Matthew Arnold, Shakespeare, Jenny Joseph…
‘And satin sandals and say we’ve no money for butter...’
And through these adventures, I hope to help you understand how the spoken word sounds, how the written word looks, and the differences between them. Before you know it you will be laughing and joking and sharing witty banter confidently like urban taxi drivers or dodgy bankers.
Above everything that’s my ambition, to help you become confident in speaking English. According to my friend’s friend’s friend in the field with the horses, the pronunciation ‘tell’ of the Italian student is ‘H’. “They don’t want to pronounce them where they actually are,” she said. “They seem to shift them around and forget them – or place them where they don’t belong so they say things like, ‘I ave a happle.’”
We can address this, you know, and here’s the perfect poet to help us. Please listen and repeat…When I am hungry I shall eat eight hamburgers
With Eeyore by the ancient arches in the evening
And I shall honk my hooter higher than his, my hands
Held high in the air and say we’ve no Euros for oil.
