The following day, Emma sat in her usual state of befuddlement through the grammar tutorial. This was the fourth or fifth bout of grammatical input - she couldn’t remember exactly how many because they were now beginning to roll into one big fuddley heap of confusion - and she still didn’t seem to be getting any nearer understanding her own language. It was worrying but, as she’d made it through two lessons without melting into a puddle of embarrassment on the floor, she’d become fairly nonchalant about the issue. It concerned her in a detached ‘this is somewhat unfortunate given that I’m training to be an English teacher’ kind of way but she’d managed to lock the fear of being revealed as a grammatical fraud away in the compartment of her brain labelled ‘DENIAL’. Besides, so long as she stuck to the language analysis in the book and then squeezed the material into something more engaging than the boring old colourless photocopy, she’d be fine. Structure the lesson as she’d been taught to do, work on her instructions and so forth, get through the hour or whatever it was she had to plan for and it’d all be okay.
The bewildering grammar class ended and she collected her A3 spread for her first sixty minute group lesson that night. As she’d expected, given that she’d managed to escape grammar-free from her first two lessons, this material included a fat wodge of the stuff. Something called gerunds and to-infinitives, whatever the hell that was. She scanned the page and noted the analysis box. It contained some rules. She’d stick to those. She wandered through to the lesson preparation room, via the coffee machine, which duly spat out its usual searingly hot plastic cup of something resembling caffeine, plonked her stuff on the table and sat down to mull over the book. The theme appeared to be football and there was an interesting text from an author whose books she’d actually read, then a brief listening comprehension (that must be the bit where she created the context and all that) and then she moved into the analysis section and......
.....her brain ploughed into sludge. A bit like a tractor with a bin-full of apples on the back which is making it’s way to the loading bay but has hit a boggy patch of the orchard. The cogs of her brain appeared to have wedged stuck and she couldn’t seem to get her head around the grammar-muck. Okay okay, don’t panic, let’s see - she tried writing an example phrase out from the book and fitting it to the appropriate rule:
He likes to arrive really early to get a good seat.
Hmmm, now..... which rule was that?
VERB+to-infinitive, couldn’t be a gerund because of the ‘to’, right? And a gerund appeared to involve the -ing form but then she’d thought the -ing form was something to do with the continuous. In fact that had been her only moment of comprehension in that last tutorial, but this was something different. It didn’t appear to have anything to do with time. Or tenses or anything they’d covered in the Big Grammar Blast of the last couple of weeks.
She felt her brain closing in on itself in a defence mechanism she’d only ever experienced in Chemistry at school when it all just got too baffling and she’d found it easier just to switch off and sit in a confused but chilled out fog through the rest of the lesson. But she couldn’t do that with this - she had to teach this information in two hours and she didn’t understand it herself and oh god here was that ‘what am I doing here - don’t they realise I have no idea what I’m doing?’ panicky sweaty feeling again.
NO. STOP.
She could do this. It was just a matter of planning.
He likes to arrive really early to get a good seat.
That would be..... she scanned the eight rules..... process of elimination..... erm.....
Describe how you feel about something and imply that you think it’s a good idea.
BINGO! That must be it..... Right?
She checked again. It couldn’t be anything else. And then she had a sparky light-bulb moment - this was how she’d confine the class to the rules she was going to teach and avoid them asking awkward questions: a nice kinaesthetic task where they matched the rules to example sentences she’d already picked out from the text - no room for manoeuvre - she could make the sentences fit the rules and explain it that way. Ha! It was all about preparation. That was the key! With that in mind, she set about adapting the material and structuring her plan. By the time the big black cloud of the lesson had advanced close enough for her to sense the rain, her nerves were at the familiar jangly point of brain dullness that left her feeling as if, once again, she was being transported into the classroom on legs that were not her own but powered by some sadistic elves who liked nothing better than to see her shaking so much she could barely hold her pen.
Okay. Showtime.
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