Suzanne Furstner Foundation Scholarship 2009: Shortlist Announced
Monday, 23rd November 2009
Cactus is thrilled to announce Rosette Nagimesi as one of the shortlisted entries for the 2009 Suzanne Furstner Foundation Scholarship.
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.
Tags: scholarship, sff2009, suzanne furstner scholarship, tefl, english
Posted by Michelle Curtis 2009-11 under Cactus TEFL, Cactus News,
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