I knew I was in trouble when I read in Content-Based Instruction in Foreign Language Education about the "huge effort" invloved in planning a CBI course. This includes finding all sorts of authentic materials. For example I gave my first lecture on Urban Sociology last week. I studied sociology in college, but I still found myself scouring web pages trying to put everything together.
The work is intersting (luckily for me). The main goals of the two CBI courses are to teach EAP through CBI. So before I gave my lecture, we talked about lectures in the US vs. lectures in Korea and strategies for taking notes during lectures. I hope the students are getting as much out of it as I am. My former director once quoted someone as saying "The first time you teach something, you learn something. The second time you teach something, the students learn something. The third time you teach something, no one learns anything".
This is the first time I've taught Sociology or History (well I taught British History for a few weeks once) so it might be my turn and not the student's turn... I'll have to see what I can do about that.
Posted by James Trotta at March 13, 2004 12:39 PMESL blog is one of many Blogs for learning English & teaching English. Translation services information.