Teaching Terminale!

So for the final part of my assistantship in Lille, I was working with students in Terminale. They were mainly aged between 17 and 18 (although some were 19) and they were preparing for their BAC exams.

Most of the time I was given groups of 5-3 students and I had to do mock oral exams, so they had to present a 'notion' that they had worked on to me and I had to give them feedback.

 I always asked the students if they wanted to have a couple of minutes to prepare and after their preparation (reading notes) they had to present their work to me.

The majority were incredibly nervous, even though I told them so many times that I wasn't marking them or going to tell the teacher, but overall I was sooo impressed with them and always encouraged them.

Other groups still had to do proper lessons. I tried to incorporate the 'mock exams' into these classes as much as possible so that I could work out which areas they needed to improve. The problems varied but were mainly pronunciation, sentence structure and giving genders to random objects like tables (The table was nice, she was wooden and brown - obviously they weren't doing lessons on tables but this was the only example I could think of).

Other than the mock exam parts of the lessons, I tried to get them to do mind maps of the notions so that we could prepare potential exam questions together. For example, for the notion of progress I had them mind map everything that they knew about progress such as new technology, medicine, science, politics etc. etc.) and then we went through them together. After, I gave them a sheet with a question on like 'Is progress always positive?' and 2 columns with titles 'yes' and 'no'. We then as a class used the board to write our arguments for each column and then the students had to summarize and present their overall ideas to me.

These lessons worked incredibly well and most of the students told me they found it very helpful.

If anyone is looking for ideas of lesson plans or things to do with students in terminale in preparation for their exams, do not hesitate to ask me!

Sorry this post is so short, I will be doing longer posts again soon.

Thank you for reading!

Emily

Travelling to Bruges!

After Christmas, I was really feeling the back to work blues and so my friend, Jen, and I immediately booked a weekend away in Bruges.

We went from Lille Europe via train to Bruges. We had to stop at Courtrai but overall the journey was not a problem, taking around 2 hours.

As soon as we arrived we had lunch, which of course included some Belgian beer...

It was cherry flavoured.

...And then we went sight seeing, meaning we walked around aimlessly all day and ended up in Zara.

The canal

Me and Jen in front of a random canal

The 'Grand Place'

Another view of 'Grand Place'

After the travelling and walking we headed back to our Hotel which was literally a 2 second walk from Grand Place, down a street. I knew I would need a lie down so I attempted to have a nap but I couldn't and we decided to get ready to go out.

By the time we were ready (Literally 10:00pm) we had to run all over the city centre to find a cash-point and a restaurant that was a) open b) looked appetising c) would let us come in. We eventually found one and they quickly seated us and took our orders.

Escargots

Half a Lobster in garlic butter

I tried escargot for the first time for my starter, they weren't in their shells and so I thought the waiter had given me the wrong thing, but as it turned out, the black mushroom looking things were the snails. I was grossed out but they literally just tasted of garlic.

After that we came upon a very loud bar/ club and unintentionally ended up staying until 4am because the music was too good.

Me and Jen in the bar/club toilets

The next morning/ afternoon, we got up and checked out before walking all around Bruges again. We finally had a Belgian waffle for breakfast and it was insanely delicious but very very sickly.

Belgian waffle with nutella

The rest of the day we spent walking around Bruges, the sky was blue and beautiful, we were so lucky. Then, we got the train back to Courtrai and then Lille at around 4pm, which was again, a smooth journey.

There were beautiful monuments scattered all over the city

INFO FOR IF YOU'RE THINKING OF GOING TO BRUGES:

-We definitely went for the perfect amount of time, any more than 2-3 days may get boring as Bruges is quite small.

-The weather can be a bit crazy at times, one second the sky was blue and the next it started hail stoning and they were like golf balls.

-As expected, food and drinks were generally pretty expensive so don't go thinking you'll not spend a lot.

-Everywhere we went they spoke French and English as well as many others- for those who worry about languages.

-There was a small street just off Grand Place, next to the post office that had lots of chocolate shops, I would strongly suggest going because we got tasters!!

-There are not a lot of cash machines around, we managed to find a BNP Paribas that was open late close to Grand Place, but be aware.

- The horse and carriages literally do not care where you are, we were nearly ran over many many times.

-Bruges is a beautiful place, if you're considering going I would say GO FOR IT!!

Starting Teaching...

After my last blog post, it was the school 'half term' which lasted 2 weeks and so, due to lack of money to do anything, I decided to go home. I spent 10 days catching up with friends and family before returning to Lille to begin working properly.

So far, I work around 10 hours a week, the teachers are trying to get me 2 more hours so that I will be doing the full 12 hours that I am allowed to do. I am teaching (assisting) the 'Seconde' classes who are around 15 years old.

Here are some of the main events of the past 2 weeks of teaching:

• Some days, I start work at 8am and so I go for the bus at 25 past 7, so that I can arrive and have plenty of time to climb up all of the stairs to the 4th floor and not be sweating and panting like mad. As I leave this early (and as it is winter time and therefore dark more than it is light), I have seen such beautiful sunrises, it almost makes getting up so early worth it.

• I woke up last Friday to a very annoying buzzing and immediately knew that it was a mosquito. I pulled the duvet up so that just my face was peeking and felt something tickle my face so I smacked it and hurried to turn on the light, only to see that there was a squashed mosquito on my pillow and MY blood that it had been feasting on. I woke up later on with a lovely bite ON MY EYELID and so looked like Quasimodo until I got some cream. -Thankfully it didn't swell up properly until after my classes.

• My first ever lesson, I was given half of the class to go through a sheet about Jamie Oliver, I had no idea what to do and the class were laughing and talking, completely ignoring me. One student started reading out in a silly voice and I was so stressed out I didn't even call him out on it because I was scared he would say it was his real voice.....Since then, it has become a lot easier. I actually enjoy the lessons now that I've stopped taking it personally when they would rather chat to their friend than do the work that I have set them.

• A lot of my classes struggle with my accent, so I end up talking very slow and trying to sound posh, but even then one teacher told me that the students had finished my lesson and been convinced that I was Australian!?!?!

• I was asked to play a game with the students where 2 students were suspects in a murder investigation and had to be each others alibis while the rest of the class were detectives and asked questions, but I got the game wrong and had half the class be detectives asking the other half questions. My 'wrong' version actually worked a lot better than when I tried to play the real game and the students had so much more fun coming up with their own imaginary stories. Their English is amazing, I was walking around each small group to help them with vocabulary and sentence structure and overheard one girl saying 'I was his bodyguard, I heard him shout and so I broke down the door and found him on the floor, he was blue because he wasn't breathing! I hadn't heard anything, but I looked around and couldn't see any evidence of a break in so I felt his pulse and he was dead..'.

• I had a class of 11 students who wanted to move the tables into a U shape so that I could stand at the top and help them with work, but there was one student in my class who is 12 but has been moved up a few grades because he is very intelligent. The class were all picking on him, so he did not want to sit with the rest of the class in the U shape and he sat alone. I tried to compensate for not being good enough at French to tell them to pack it in and so was being overly nice to him for the whole lesson.  Another group of students in this class instead of wanting to talk about their 'ideal school' were cutting up each others pencil cases. Ah, teenagers..

• Whenever I run out of activities, or more often when the class is refusing to take part and I can't think of anything else to do, I turn to tongue twisters. I write something like 'The big bug bit the little beetle but the little beetle bit the big bug back' on the board and each student has a go. They really enjoy it and even after the lessons I hear them telling their friends in the corridor. HOWEVER.. normally the class will then demand that I have a go at a French tongue twister and although I've done the same one several times, I still find it hard: 'Les chaussettes de l'archiduchesse sont-elles sèches?  Archi-sèches ?' 

• Each class that I have for the first time, I ask 'does anyone have any questions for me? About England? Or my life?' and some classes straight away have their hands up 'How long are you in France for?', 'Where are you from?', 'Do you gave a boyfriend?' etc. etc. - although one student said 'a little boy' instead of boyfriend because in French it is 'petit copain' or 'petit ami' which literally translates to little friend. Anyway, the more common response to my question is complete silence, they all stare and shake their heads whispering 'elle a dit quoi?' (what did she say?) , 'je ne comprends rien' (I don't understand) or simply...'Non' (no).

Other than teaching, I haven't been up to much, I've been attending a group called 'Franglish' each Tuesday, where you sit and talk to a French partner for 7 minutes in English and 7 minutes in French and then swap partners. It is interesting, but I find myself having the same conversations over and over in terrible French until I've had a couple of drinks...

The Christmas market is finally being set up and so I'm very excited for that opening very soon! Only 6 weeks to go till Christmas!

Greetings from Lille!

I have finally started my year abroad! Well actually I started 3 weeks ago, but we just got WIFI on Tuesday and I had a lot of TV to catch up on...

I am living in Lille, Nord-Pas-de-Calais, France, for the next 7/8 months and am working as an English Assistant in a French Lycée, which is a public French secondary school where the students are between the ages of 15 & 18.

So I arrived in Lille, by the Eurostar, on the 25th September. I had never been before and had no idea what to expect, although I was told that the weather would be terrible (like at home in the North East..) and that French people weren't friendly but people in Lille were friendlier..

Place du théatre

Flace du Général de Gaulle

Walkway to Rihour

Vieux Lille (Old Lille)

  

The weather was beautiful when I arrived and stayed gorgeous up until this week, when all of a sudden it turned absolutely freezing almost overnight and has rained quite a lot. The people, mostly, have exceeded expectation and all been very welcoming and friendly and always speak to me in French even if they can speak English and cannot understand a word I'm trying to say, they always help out and really appreciate my efforts.

I am living just outside of the city centre next to the Bois du Boulogne, its a quiet area but the public transport is great in Lille so I can get into the city by bus or by metro in 15 mins. I'm living in a shared house alongside 2 Russian Assistants and a German Assistant, all are very nice.

This took absolutely ages and keeps falling down during the night and giving me the shock of my life, 

I'm hoping I've secured it now,,

My Bedroom

View from my bedroom

We have a simple kitchen (with no bloody oven) and a shower room, which always has hot water so that's great but,..

The toilet is outside?!?!?!?!!?

Its enclosed which is good (but doesn't lock..) and actually doesn't cause as much of a problem as I had thought it would...BUT now that its freezing on a night, I have to force myself to go twice and not drink anything after half 9 so that I won't have to get up and go.

Anyway, so that is where I'm living and all about Lille itself so far...

Now I'm going to give some brief details of my time observing classes in the Lycée (I don't start teaching till after the school holidays)...

- So far the most popular question when the students have to 'quiz' me has been 'Do you like French people?'- obviously I'm not going to say no am I?!

- The weirdest and most random questions that I have been asked are: 'Matt Smith or Peter Capaldi?', 'Is it true that English people stop everything at 5pm to drink tea?' and 'Is it true that every English person has read Wooster and Jeeves?'

- French school days are loooooooong.. 8am-6pm with a 2 hour lunch and some students come in on Saturdays too!!

-My school has 4 floors and no lift, each floor takes 2 flights of stairs to get to... it took me most of the lessons to recover when I was on floor 4.

- French school lunches generally consist of 1 main meal such as pizza and mash (what the hell) and vegetables if you want, 3 'sides' like salads and things, a cheese (of course), some bread and then a dessert........How they can then continue with another 4 or 5 hours of school after this is beyond me.

-I cannot count the times I have been mistaken for a student by staff and by students until I manage to blurt out 'JE SUIS L'ASSISTANTE D'ANGLAIS' and they laugh and tell me I'm small.

-All French classrooms,the staff room and even the staff toilets are locked (at least they are in my school) and I don't have any keys yet, so until I found the student toilets I would hold it all day and I creepily hang about outside the staff room until someone goes somewhere and I can sneak in (They got sick of me knocking all the time).

-The French students are cheeky but also hilarious, e.g. In one class they were doing a listening exercise about Oprah Winfrey and how she managed to go from 'poverty to celebrity' (the phrase they used) and one boy at the side just randomly came out with 'started from za bottom now we're here' in the most monotone voice I've ever heard. Another example was when the class were fascinated with a stretchy rubber mouse while their English teacher was desperately trying to get them to answer questions, they were throwing it to each other sneakily and stretching it and sticking it to the window until it was confiscated.

-Most of the students don't want to ask me questions when they are supposed to and so when they have to do work they whisper something random like 'psst.. miss...do you like Arctic Monkeys?' then they squeal and whisper in French when I say yes.

All in all, its been an eventful few weeks and I've really enjoyed being at the school so far. The food has been amazing (except certain school meals) and I'm finally starting to feel more settled and can feel my French starting to progress veeeeery slowly.

Thankyou if you're still reading, the rest of my posts won't be as long- I hope!!!

Paris: Day 2- Disneyland

Today I'm going to blog about my second day in Paris, we went to Disneyland! I'd never been to Euro-Disney before, only Florida and we had such an amazing day!

Getting tickets

About a month and a half before we went to Paris, my boyfriend and I had been looking at tickets online, so that we could try to get them cheaper than at the gate. Eventually my boyfriend found some tickets for £44 each, just after searching 'Disneyland Paris tickets 2 parks 1 day' a few times on Google.

 We decided that this was a great price for both parks and booked them. They arrived about a week later so that was fab.

Getting there

To get to Disneyland, we had to use the RER A train in the direction: Marne-la-Valée- Chessy.

There are several stations in Paris where you can get the RER A including: Charles de Gaulle Étoile, Chatelet-les Halles, Auber, Gare de Lyon and Nation. These are all accessible by metro.

Whatever you do, no matter how tired you are... ARRIVE EARLY!!!! 

We arrived at about 10:45 and then spent the next 45 minutes queuing to just get our bags checked before we went in, which was incredibly irritating because it was very hot, but this was all our fault for being lazy.

During the day

We knew from experience that food and drink would be very expensive inside Disneyland, so we made some sandwiches before we went and brought our own water. However, since it was a very hot day, we had to buy bottles of water throughout the day to stay hydrated.

I will post some photos but I don't want to go on and on because the day really was great...

Excuse how pale I am.. I chose to wear a vest (Dorothy Perkins) and some white trousers (Sainsburys TU) to keep cool, I also wore an over the shoulder bag (Dorothy Perkins) as I had heard (and kinda knew) that wearing a 'bumbag' literally screams 'TOURISTS' and this bag fit on all the rides anyway.

The Buzz Lightyear ride was so fun!! They have this in Florida too, you get a photo taken which is always hilarious.

Star Wars Simulator ride

Walt Disney Studios Park

The Best Rides*

Obviously this won't apply to everyone as my boyfriend and I like the big rides like rollercoasters and big thrills, but we also enjoyed the smaller rides too!

• Buzz Lightyear 
• Star Tours
• Pinocchio - we genuinely enjoyed this even though its really for little kids
• Aerosmith - my boyfriend said this was the best ride he's ever been on (This is also in Florida, but I found the one in Paris was much crazier)
• Armageddon
• Studio Backlot tour
• The Phantom Manor

*A lot of the rides had insanely long queues with it being a busy day but also because the 'Fast Pass' machines were off, so we couldn't go on everything that we wanted to.

So that was our day 2! We really did have a great day, despite the long queues and baking hot weather.

 As I said, if you ever go its important to get down early to avoid queuing and make the most of your day, but realistically it didn't spoil our time too much!

If anyone has any questions, do not hesitate to ask! I will post later about the evening of our day 2, where we ate and drank etc.

Thankyou for reading :)

Paris! (Day 1- travelling)

Bonjour !

I haven't blogged in soooo long because I have just got back from Paris! I went with my boyfriend and we stayed with his sister for 6 nights, it's been great and I am gutted to be back!

My next holiday will be Florida which is in about 3 weeks... but I am going to do a few posts about Paris over the next few days and also giving some advice for anyone who is looking to go.

Day One

So to get to Paris, we used the Eurostar. This was both of our first times on the Eurostar train, although I have been through the tunnel in the car before.

We got 2 return tickets from Durham to Paris (obviously stopping at London) for £99 each, which is very good.

I would definitely recommend going via Eurostar as I have flown before but can barely remember and my boyfriend has been to Paris a few times and says he much preferred going by train. The security is very quick and easy and with there being a stop at London along the way, it splits up the journey (around 5/6 hours) and seems to go a lot faster. Also, the Eurostar stops directly in in centre of Paris at Gare du Nord, so we just had to hop on a metro to Place d'Italie when we got there and didn't need to get transfers or anything like that.

All in all, using the Eurostar turned out to be quicker than flying because going to the airport you have to be there early anyway, go through security, hang around in the departure lounge, board the plane, wait for take-off and then finally after 1.5 hours flying, land, go through to get bags, then eventually transfer to Paris.

Anyway, as I said we had to go to Place d'Italie, which is where my boyfriend's sister lives. This was a great area as it was very handy for the metro and close to lots of popular places, but also not touristy whatsoever, which was great.

It did have a few bars which were small and nice too, but we didn't really spend much time around there.

We went to a bar and a Vietnamese restaurant close by called Song Huong and all of us had this:

(Beef with tomato rice, an egg and salad)

It was amazing!!

We basically just went to bed after this, we were so tired and were going to have a big day the next day (I will post about that later today or tomorrow..)

I hope that this post has been helpful, I will be posting more exciting Paris related things very soon!

If anyone has any questions, don't hesitate to ask :)

My Year Abroad

At the end of April, I received this in an email, FINALLY confirming my offer of an assistantship in France. The region I chose was Lille (North) and I chose secondary school children, who I will be assisting in learning English!!

The next step in the process is sending off for a ICPC (International Child Protection Certificate) to confirm that I have no criminal records etc and obviously this involves having (not so) stunning passport-like pictures taken. After that, I will be finding out which school I should be going to!! Scary stuff.

I set up this blog for during my year abroad and so I just wanted to briefly outline where I am at with the applications and everything. Fingers crossed that everything runs smoothly until then!!

Emily X