TEFL Bremen

I have learned many things from this course, but I will start with the one that is most important to me. I was truly surprised with the level of empathy I believe this course has given me when it comes to relating to the needs and perspective of the students. I have teaching experience, and I am not saying that I was insensitive to their needs before, but now that I have had so much opportunity to refresh my grammar, and to see it from the perspective of how the english student learns, I can really understand how difficult it must be for a student just learning english. So many things we take for granted as a native speaker, and so many things we don't even have to think about, are really big deals for students and often very challenging. I think this will help me in my future teaching as it will make me more conscious of how I tailor my lessons to fit the needs of the student and be more aware of how students learn and absorb grammar points. I have also learned a lot through the grammar exercises and the lesson planning activities have been invaluable. Prior to this, I have taught in schools that both have required lesson planning and some that do not. In the schools that I've taught with lesson planning, I had no instruction on how to actually do this, and now I feel so much more empowered and organized! In the schools that I taught in that had no planning, I see now how the students really lose out from the lack of organization and focus. The grammar exercises helped me not only learn the grammar for myself, but also see how the students must learn the information and this will also be very useful for my lesson planning in the future.