Tonight my 3 colleagues and I went to our first Macedonian lesson and I believe it will also be our last with this teacher. One of the first things she said after walking into the classroom was, "I've never taught beginners before. I'm used to teaching people who already know Macedonian." That seemed like a bad sign. Then she started on the alphabet, using the "drill and kill" technique, which basically meant repeating the sounds after her, ad nauseum. Then each of us had to say the alphabet on our own, without her. Of course, our pronunciation was not perfect, but this teacher was obviously a perfectionist and would not let us rest until we had it perfect, which was difficult considering it was our first lesson ever. And when we made mistakes, she laughed at us! She kept putting one of my colleagues on the spot and when he got more and more flustered, she just kept picking on him. It made everyone extremely uncomfortable. I almost cried at one point. I needed a drink afterwards.
So we will not be going back to her, needless to say. Next week we're going to try another place that's been recommended by someone we work with.
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1 comment:
jesus i can't believe it what a weirdo! how could she think that's a good lesson?! does she have no notion of teaching techniques? classroom management? how to tell when a student is being embarassed by you so you should change things up? weird.
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