I spent a fabulous two weeks as a participant of the Pilgrims teacher training course ’British Life, Language and Culture’ at the beautiful Canterbury campus of the University of Kent between July 19 and Aug 1 2015, as one of the seven fortunate winners of Erasmus Plus grant. The course was held by Paul Davis, a well-known Cambridge University lecturer and Pilgrims teacher trainer, author and co-author of many EFL resource books. In our fantastic multicultural group of 18 English teachers there were participants from Germany, Spain, Portugal, Japan, Russia, Slovenia and Hungary, all with the required language level of C1. As well as the well-planned and perfectly scheduled course content it was my intelligent, motivated, inspired, open minded groupmates that I could learn the most from.
The course focused on the most important issues of current British society referring to aspects of modern English language and culture throughout, using up-to-date, motivating teaching methods. We learnt about British mentality and stereotypes, the every day problems and structure of 21st century British society, about the British youth and the education system. We had an insight into British history through famous British people and dealt with the notion of political correctness and its numerous language examples.
An important part of the course was listening to and communicating with guest speakers from different parts of society. A young student from Nigeria told us about his studies, assimilation difficulties, his future plans and the initial culture shock he had experienced. A head teacher of a primary school in Kent told us about the British education system, the experiences and relationship of his school colleagues, pupils and parents and the difficulties they face. Another guest, a young social worker woman told us about children in foster care, the difficult families she deals with and the beauty and challenges of her voluntary work and help. A young police officer told us about crime in Britain and the importance of crime prevention at schools. A disabled, unemployed village carpenter shared with us his views about the meaning of life and the ways he can make ends meet and make himself useful. We heard a thought provoking account of the British Samaritans, a voluntary 24-hour call for help association, whose members try to prevent people from committing suicide.
Each and every invited guest speaker represented a different social layer, language style and accent, highlighting the cultural challenges, the dark and bright sides of British every day life in a first hand and interactive manner in such a depth that would be impossible anywhere else. Apart from our listening to the speakers, they patiently answered all our questions related to their topic or field. We took notes about their presentations, the language points and individual aspects of which we discussed and analised in great detail in group discussions afterwards. As it soon turned out, these activities and exercises were the most useful and beneficial ones representing the real challenge to develop our advanced language competences.
In the middle of the second week of the course there was a book fair organised for all Pilgrims participants where we had the chance to get to know the most modern reference books for teaching English and we were also offered considerable discount to buy them. During the two weeks we were given loads of homework for the following day (reading newspaper articles and reflecting to them, doing several language tasks, browsing on the internet with some special focus etc. ) We found time as part of the compulsory culture content of our course, to investigate the beautiful town of Canterbury, visited an evensong at the world famous cathedral, enjoyed the wide selection of food and drink Canterbury pubs offered, watched the brand new Amy Winehouse film and visited some charming seaside towns nearby at the weekend. Last but not least, I made invaluable friendships with fellow teachers from all over the world and have been keeping contact sharing teaching material and memories ever since!