Some comments from FITers
Here you can find some comments from teachers who participated in the last FITs. And at the bottom of the page some useful links.
MY FIRST FIT
To be the first time, it was a really valuable experience in my life since -my life- has been to teach so far.
We planned to have the FIT since long ago, it finally caught our attention for a while. Everything started with a long-meeting many days before. We had to plan what new things we could do on a two-day-camping. It was the day of departure, we had gotten to the bus stop to take our bus. As usual some people were late. It was almost noon when we were finally on the way to "Las Lenas", it's about two hours from the city. Since we got on the bus we had been singing and talking in english, but there were also other people, they thought we belonged to a church, it was the first thing that made us laugh.
At first we were a little uncomfortable because of the bags we had carried along with us. We thought that the bus driver would turn on the radio and we were going to listen to music in spanish, but actually it didn't happened, because they didn't have radio on the bus.
When we got there some student had slept on the way, others couldn't. We had already got to the right place, most of us were hungry, but we had to set first our tents, that's what we did incredibly in no time. Then we ordered for the menu, since there was a restaurant, but the students couldn't have contact with the waiter and other people, Why? The reason is obvious. All of us were only speaking in english, that was worth to do it, that's why we had gone to a nice place where we could find little contact with spanish speakers. However some of the students couldn't avoid to say some funny expressions or words in spanish, but it happened so few times that nobody cared about it.
After lunch we started our first activity, all the afternoon up to more than midnight we were just playing and talking. We got very tired that the only thing we wanted to do was to go to sleep.
Before 7:00 next day, some students were awaken, but we all had gotten asleep up to 8:00 o'clock and we had already had our first chilly night on camping. It was really cold even the sleeping bags and covers.
The second day was another busy one, we had students read articles about many controversial topics, we discussed them in a way that the ones who had to speak were the students more than us, it really worked. Many of them had different points of view which were supported with strong believes and reasons. Of course some students guessed what our intention was. It was about six in the afternoon, it seemed to me that the students didn't want to leave. However many of us had many things to do the next day, that was a quite strong reason that did change our minds to get back as soon as possible .
On the way back home, the students were sure that they didn't want to speak spanish anymore, since they got used to communicate in english, but unfortunately our cruel reality was that we do need spanish to speak with other people.
Besides being such a good experience for teachers and students, a camping like that really worked beyond our objectives and goals.
Teacher: AdolfoAguilar@Globalimmersion.zzn.com
FULL IMMERSION TRAINING (FIT)JULY 19th, 2001.
When we start to think about and plan this FIT, we never thought that our expectations will be that satisfied and the results could not be better.
To start with, our meeting was really long, so you can imagine how many things we thought at first, and also how to developed them, but when we finish it was really late 12.00 a.m. (late, really?), but when we came out, we came out with amazing ideas.
Everything was carefully planned but we never thought something very important, What about if one of the member is late?, and yes that happened, one of the teachers was late and we had to wait for almost 3 hours, because he had the exams, so I remember, when we started to get desperate we start singing songs until he arrived, so finally we left and we were on the way.
Before this to get a transportation to take us to RICARDO PALMA was very funny, we took a van but as were not allowed to speak in Spanish we tried to do it in English, but it never worked so, we did it in English, we wrote songs for the students, and being on the way the Head of the program took the guitar, and we were singing all the way songs in English, and the driver tried to turn his radio on but we start to sing louder and he finally gave up.
Everybody looked at us like saying: 'They must be missioners'.
We, me and the head of the program, wanted to make sure about the food, so we decided to collect the money and never allow students to have any contact with spanish speakers they were told to survive in this place but in English, so one of the first activities was to start to create our home-made sleeping bags and that was funny I have never done that kind of things in my life but I could get by, of course with a little help from my friends.
When we finish we start with the games, there was one I really enjoyed , well not only me but also the rest of the team, and the name is 'From my waist above and from my waist bellow' that one was really funny, I couldn't believe when I noticed that what I said according to the game was that from my waist below I am outstanding.
After that, the kids started with an scramble song and they were divided into two teams the boys and the girls, and the girls won, by the way, two times.
Our lunch was, for me, great because I love Grilled Chicken with fried potatoes, at night we were all tired but we started a fire, which took about an hour to light it, and we were all singing different songs and telling horror stories and of course, in English, at that particular moment I thought about my blanked so, I had a look and it was wet as the tend was.
I remember we did not have too much space, so all the boys had to sleep into a pretty small tend we got, and amazingly we could fit in, despite the fact we had to sacrifice three members of the team (they had to sleep outside) and they were talking very noisily during the night.
Next day we woke up quite late, because we were supposed to be awake at 6:00 a.m. but we were really tired, so continued sleeping for a couple of hours, despite the fact that some students were awoken.
This was a very important day, students now had to show what they have learnt during the eight months they were studying here, so our first activity was to talk about different topics, like euthanasia, or sex and also the death penalty, we tried to drive them crazy, and they express all their arguments in English, arguing for their beliefs, when we finish we explained them about it and ask them not to hate us because of that, they realized about our real purpose make them speak.
Finally they took their exams in order to evaluate their knowledge, and we went back home with an awesome experience and also new friends we will remember for sure for now on.
I have been particularly, an enjoyable experience for me, and something I will never forget apart the people who were involved in this FIT is the activity about unscramble a really nice song
'Yesterday once more' by The Carpenters.
Teacher: RenatoBeraun@Globalimmersion.zzn.com
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Some useful sites
Survival 1 and 2 (http://www.clta.on.ca/hillsofmexico/gc/homgrammmar.htm)
(http://www.better-english.com/easier.htm)
Survival 3 - 5 (http://www.clta.on.ca/hillsofmexico/ce/ce.htm)
Quizzes (http://web2.uvcs.uvic.ca/elc/studyzone/grammar.htm)
Dr. Grammar - Your Rx for Writing Ills
http://www.drgrammar.org/
Common Errors in English
http://www.wsu.edu/~brians/errors/
Education resources on the Internet
http://www.edufind.com/english/grammar/
Grammar Links for ESL
http://userpages.umbc.edu/~kpokoy1/grammar1.htm
11 Rules of Writing
http://www.junketstudies.com/rulesofw/frules.html
Pop-Up Grammar
http://www.brownlee.org/durk/grammar/
ONLY FOR TEACHERS
(Uniform English)http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Oracle/4012/
(A very brief history of language teaching methods)http://www.greenheart.com/jrmentel/tips2.htm
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