French Interview

Ohhhhh god.
Curses. Swear. Insert filthy language here. Curses. Curses.

Today was awful.
I went to Bordeaux for a job interview (to be an English teacher).
This proved harder than I thought. The person giving the interview spoke no English at all. Trying to convey my ideas and teaching methods with a limited French vocabulary (probably more the fact that my grammar is totally shit) was very taxing. I persevered through 25 minutes of speaking French and discussed lesson plans etc. I forgot half of what I had wanted to say and spoke worse French than normal because in the pressure of the moment I was incredibly tongue-tied. The TEFL course I did taught you to teach English by immersing your students in it - not allowing your students to speak anything but English in a lesson. You should only use their mother-tongue as a last resort. I am quite happy with this methodology, understand the principles and the ways the teacher should teach English, but the person interviewing thought it necessary that I should be fluent in French. She asked me if I was currently taking lessons, etc etc. SO after stealing my teaching ideas - which she was very impressed with as they were creative and engaging, unlike the French method of listen and write, she said she would email me, but I bet I don't receive a response. At least I understood everything she said and she understood me. The other English teacher they have is French and the person who was being interviewed after me was also French, but a part of me thinks they should have an English person teaching English - not just for better pronunciation, but I think it's important to learn the idioms of our every day language, our obscure sayings and quirks... "It's raining cats and dogs" "A little bird told me" "A lick and a promise" "I've got an axe to grind..."

hehehe, ah well, nothing ventured nothing gained - a rolling stone gathers no moss.