by Ayşe Merve Kurtulan
As someone who always seeks for guidance, counseling and advice, I would be happy to share some of my experience during my internship in METU College. I think I should firstly start with the issue of the escalating fear towards METU College among METU senior students because it is important to break down the prejudices. Mostly, people do not want to attend the internship there since they think that students’ English level is so high that they wouldn’t feel competent in the classroom. COME ON, you are a METU student yourself! Be confident and feel competent! Yes, students speak very fluently and are very successful in English; however, this is something we should regard as an opportunity to develop ourselves, not a negative aspect to run away from. I know you want to avoid anything that might have the possibility of getting in the way of your AAs or of causing you work harder, however, this is yourmajor and you will learn it only by experiencing real life teaching. Please do not forget that. These come from astudent who tries to be sincere and who had had the same rationale once, but regretting it now, and wants to point out that doing your internship in METU College is a great chance.
If I must continue with the student profile, they are very successful kids and have been learning English since kindergarten. This may challenge you a little bit in class as I mentioned above, nonetheless, it has its advantages as well. Students do know their stuff and it gives you leveragein terms of attending and participating issues. One of the most common fears among student-teachers is ‘what if they wouldn’t speak and attend to my lesson!’. No worries about that, believe me, you won’t have any difficulty in motivating them to participate!
However, I have some advice for you. Since they have just entered their adolescence, there are some problems you might confront. They are ‘early teenagers’ as it is called in the literature, who are much more challenging than teenagers since it is the transitional period, which requires you to have great classroom management skills. I highly recommend you to do research beforehand about how to deal with teenagers and early teenagers. You might also have trouble in preparing materials since you can’t decide whether they are teenagers or still young learners, they are something between actually, which will be my next point.
MICRO TEACHINGS VS. SCHOOL EXPERIENCE
BE REALISTIC!
If I was asked to tell the one thing I learned from my internship, my answer would go to the point of being realistic. Yes, we have been preparing lovely lesson plans for four years, which have warm-ups, lead-ins, pre-s and post-s and we have been performing them in our classes as micro teachings. But please do not forget that you are performing your lesson plan in front of advanced level adults who are obliged to do as you say. However when it comes to real life teaching, this is not how it works. You have only 40 minutes sharing with your partner and these ‘ideal’ lesson plans we learned do not work in this context. We only have a time to do a quick warm up and an lead in for 10-15 minutes, and in the rest of the session, student only are able to do the while activity, nothing more! I am afraid to say that you need to forget about the post activities, but if your mentor teacher is flexible enough to give you two hours, go all the way, because it is much more effective to revise and review the point you teach in post activities. Moreover, they looveee speaking, try to integrate your lessons with speaking activities.
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