Online Diary: TEFL in Playa del Carmen from our 2008 Scholarship winner (2)
Monday, 2nd March 2009
Georgina Newcombe, winner of the Suzanne Furstner Scholarship 08, reports back on week 1 of her CELTA course in Playa del Carmen...
White sand, blue sea, brown pelicans and red Americans. Welcome to Carmen del Playa.
Having been inside a classroom most hours of the day, I have thus far only seen the beach twice in daylight. I spend my days at school, and the nights hunched beside a lamp devising lesson plans. Unfortunately, one can’t acquire a tan from an eighty Watt bulb, so I’ll no doubt return to London the same bluish-white colour I left it. Having said that, the walk to and from school every day in Mexican sunshine is no less than glorious. It’s a landscape of white churches, building sites – this is rumoured to be the fastest-growing town in the world – street vendors and luxury hotels. Thoughts of the Northern Line are far behind me.
My fellow CELTA students are a varied bunch, originating from Mexico City, California, Tennessee, Ireland, Australia, and Birmingham, England. The latter is horribly self-conscious of his native intonation, which has proved more contagious than the common cold amongst our pupils. I reassure him this is merely testament to his pedagogic prowess: after all, it’s no mean feat to teach a born-and-bred Mexican to speak with a broad Brummie accent. I imagine it spreading amongst the locals: tourists bemused to find entire Yucatan communities talking like Jasper Carrot. Apparently the passing of accent from teacher to student is not uncommon. Once upon a time, English learners spoke with a generic Trans-Atlantic twang gleaned from blockbuster movies, song lyrics and soap operas. All that has changed with the increasingly global community, scores of language teachers choosing to work in ever more far-flung locations. I’ve heard tales of Colombians speaking like Cornish fisherman, Alaskans with a strong Scottish brogue. The students here seem smitten with my common-or-garden English accent. Apparently, the way I pronounce the word ‘particularly’ is especially wonderful. Sounds bizarre, but repeat it enough times and you’ll see it involves a rather glorious flapping of the tongue construed as melodic to the foreign ear.
I’m teaching Elementary English at the moment. Far from being easier than teaching a higher level, this brings more problems than you might think. For example, they don’t yet understand the future tense, so you can’t say anything along the lines of ‘We will’, as it would only confuse them. One solution is to employ only imperatives, but it’s hard to simplify your language without regressing to a sort of ‘me Tarzan, you Jane’ vocabulary. When teaching students with such a limited knowledge of English, it’s surprising and delightful when they say something you would never expect them to know. A reference to grey hair as ‘salt and pepper’, for example, or the mention of fish fingers. At such times I become very excited in a pseudo-parental, ‘baby’s first word’ kind of way, and have to restrain myself for fear of looking a fool.
I still have four weeks until I start my Spanish classes. Until then, I remain in a state of communicative ignorance, punctuated by exclamations of ‘Hola!’ for the cleaners and reception staff. I am growing increasingly tired of this word, as no doubt so are they, and would love to be able to say something more substantial. I learnt the word for sweetcorn tonight from a Mexican woman in the kitchen, and can now say the equivalent of ‘sweetcorn very good.’ I told her this three times in as many minutes; quite frankly, I felt like an imbecile. Of course, there are ways of learning a language other than through formal lessons. It can be methodical, as with books and CDs, or incremental, involving everything from sub-titles on TV programmes, to road signs, telephone directories, and instructions for using the microwave. I’ve learnt a few phrases through fevered exchanges of mime with the residence manager, who, unless I’m much mistaken, has taken to avoiding me in the hallway. I also find myself gazing at food packaging as I consume its contents, which is more effective than you might imagine, so that although I would be unable to make even the most rudimentary small-talk with a local, I am now fully conversant in the ingredients of pecan flavoured yoghurt.
Apart from the language barrier, there is no real culture shock involved with Playa del Carmen. Catering for the American tourists, it has a Subway, Walmart and Johnny Rocket. I’d packed all manner of equipment I suspected might be hard to find in Mexico, only to find an Office World just round the corner. There are occasional surprises – not least, a local obsession with Kelloggs’ All Bran, which manifests itself in everything from All Bran bars to All Bran milkshakes, seven different varieties of All Bran cereal, and All Bran granules for chicken. All that’s missing is an All Bran airways, credit card, and home contents insurance. Is this a sad sign of Mexico’s Americanisation, or merely testament to the benefits of high fibre cereal?
In reality, the real culture shock can be found amongst the CELTA students themselves. For example, arranging to meet someone at ‘half two’ caused no end of confusion amongst my American friends. What was this strange English expression, ‘half two’? The Floridian initially mistook it for German, whilst the Californian was adamant it meant twenty past two, though he couldn’t justify why. The other morning, when I mentioned I’d had a lovely lie-in, the Floridian almost jumped out of his seat. ‘You had a lion?’ The most exotic animals you’ll find in my London box-room are an annual infestation of Harlequin ladybirds, and a small weevil which lives in a tea-bag. They may walk alligators on leads in Florida, but it would never catch on in Muswell Hill.
Tags: 4-week tefl course or equivalent, tesol, suzanne furstner scholarship, sff2008, tefl
Posted by Georgina Newcombe 2009-03 under Teaching Languages, Blogs,
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