The third side of the coin…

Each time I take a break from writing here (and let's be honest – there's been significantly more break time than writing time), I always feel the need, upon beginning again, to write some sort of explanation for my absence, accompanied by a new mission statement and pledge to do better. I'm going to break with tradition this time and dispense with the preamble – what's new is that I've moved to Prague for at least a year to work on my thesis and study Czech, meaning that, for the time being anyway, this will be a space to contemplate three contexts - London, Prague and the US – as well as to chronicle my current adventures. In addition to issues of language and human behavior, I'll also take the odd detour in

to fashion and matters artistic.

So, without further ado…

Right now, my life is being dominated by Czech class, specifically Charles University's Letní škola slovanských studíi 2010 (the typing of which reminds me how badly I need to get a Czech keyboard…). As a casual teacher of English, it's fascinating, particularly after my experience teaching summer school at UCL last year, to see the process from the other side of the classroom. I always envied my students at UCL, and elsewhere, who had nothing to do but roll up to class at nine o'clock. No arriving an hour ear

ly to cut out little bits of paper for communication activities, no queuing endlessly for the photocopier or having to maniacally improvise a paperless lesson if the photocopier was broken. My non-stressful student commute is even lovelier than I imaged – I'm living a block from the river, so I leave the house, stroll around the corner, cross Palackého Most and either amble along the river to the Philosophy Faculty (see below) or catch a tram that takes the same route.

As a teacher, I find that I tend freak out before the lesson – I'll change the material five times, convinced it's all horribly boring or patronizing or inappropriate for adult learners or I photocopy two extra grammar activities and a speaking exercise two minutes before class starts in case all else fails – but once I'm actually in front of the class, I calm down rapidly and seem to know what to do without thinking about it. As a student, the stress begins when the class does. I am shocked, daily, but how much I don't understand. I've never had a class entirely in another language before and it amazes me the extent to which I miss things. I don't know how English students cope. In the idiosyncratic and ego-stroking Czech-for-foreigners language leveling system (of which more later – this deserves its own post), I'm considered advanced (about pre-int/int in English levels) and mine is the first level in which students are instructed solely in Czech (unless we are absolutely dying, in which case we can request, in Czech, a translation). I've lived in Prague for over a year altogether and studied in London for a year and a half and I still understand only about 80% of what my main teacher says (not bad) and 30% of what my conversation teacher says (she speaks so fast that I still haven't managed to catch her name). Is this what it was like for my students, all of whom, from beginners up, were instructed only in English? How did their beginner and elementary level heads not just explode? Or is Czech really a great deal more difficult than other languages?

The pedagogical methods employed in teaching Czech fascinate me. In comparison to the wealth of EFL materials available, much of which is, admittedly, redundant and/or of dubious value, teachers of Czech seem to survive on two main textbooks – Communicative Czech and Czech Step By Step – neither of which appear to come with communication activities involving little bits of cut out paper. There's no obsession with the phonetic alphabet a la New English File either, and Communicative Czech in particular appears to delight in thematic and narrative randomness. In the Elementary textbook, we follow the burgeoning romance of Bulgarian student Kristyna and her Czech boyfriend Petr for three chapters, during which they go to the theatre, plan a trip to Bulgaria and visit Petr's family in Brno. Then, just after the Locative Singular, Petr and Kristýna disappear in favor of shopping friends, a middle aged couple arguing about what to wear to the theatre and another man named Petr, who is dissatisfied with his job in Prague and wants to relocate to České Budejovice. Nothing further of K & P. What happened?! Kristýna is studying Czech…so perhaps the locative singular proved too much for her to master? Or possibly their romance will be rekindled in Intermediate Communicative Czech! Watch this space!

Seriously, though – the methods employed in teaching Czech are the sort of old fashioned drills that delight the perfectionist in me, but which would likely get an EFL teacher a bad evaluation should s/he employ them. Lots of teacher time – my teachers almost never stop talking – and little variation. No controlled language practice moving towards free improvisation – just grammar, grammar, grammar, while the conversation class doesn't pre-teach structure, but instead confronts shell-shocked students emerging from a two and half hour grammar class with "UNESCO, good or bad? Discuss." I'm not saying it doesn't work – already on day two I'm catching significantly more than I did yesterday – but it does make me wonder whether each language requires its own carefully calibrated pedagogy or if the EFL method really is the best – purely as a result of what a big business it is, as compared to the teaching of Slavic languages, which apart from Russian, are a relatively small game. Has all the money invested in EFL resulted in the best of all possible language teaching models, or does the EFL industry just churn out methodologies and textbooks the way Jerry Bruckheimer cranks out blockbusters?

I shall continue to think about this as the course progresses…but should any language teachers or learners read this, do share your opinions on the matter. (This should not, however, be interpreted as an invitation to the online Esperanto lobby to advocate their cause, as they did the last time I posted about language.)