After being awarded the MA in TEYL this spring, my new path started: teaching English at tertiary level. I was lucky to be offered three months teaching experience at Toyo Gakuen University in Tokyo. It was a different ball game and valuable learning experience for me. Building rapport with the learners was something pleasurable for me no matter who they are. Yet facilitating a friendly and safe learning environment for the youth while providing motivation, engaging and relevant materials were challenging due to
the larger gap between what the
uni students want to do and can do in L2. For children, the gap between L1 proficiency and L2 one is smaller. So, kids tend to enjoy what they can do in L2 such as simple learning activities or projects. For
uni students, it took more time to find cognitively challenging yet lexically simple tasks. Despite the challenges, I enjoyed the freedom and responsibilities I had in the
uni classes I had and my new goal was emerged. Sharing my stories with language learners, whether they are young or not.
Diverse audience should require additional and different skills. My learning process might take more time than the others yet my will, determination and curiosity are strong enough to explore this new path.
Hope everything will work out and I'd get more stories to tell.
