This is my first post in 2018, so hello new year! I'm not gonna go with the slogan "new year, new me", simply because I don't do that anymore..? I've stopped making new year resolutions since 2016. I no longer think that you should become a totally new person, for the sake of the entrance of a new year. My thinking and belief had changed - if you wanna make changes upon yourself, then do it. Whether it's a new year or not, it doesn't matter. What I'm trying to say here is that you have to constantly change and make improvements on yourself - every single day, not just every single year.
So today's post isn't particularly about a new year or something similar to that, it's regarding my study and basically my future. And as you already know, I am now in the second semester (out of eight semesters altogether) of my degree. It has been only two weeks of class and trust me, it's already tiring and exhausting. For this semester, we are now slowly being exposed into deeper knowledge on teaching and not just the English language itself. In this semester, we'll be taught on how to do lesson plans, learning more theories in teaching, how to make teaching & learning process more aligned with the 21st century learning & basically so much more. Plus, starting from this semester, we'll start our school-based experience for a week at any primary school of our own choice.
When I first encounter the course Teaching English as Second Language (TESL), I honestly found it a bit tempting because it involves English language and for your record, I loooooove (but erm seriously idk if I should put the word 'love' as the past or present tense lol) English so much! And when I decided to go on with this course, although I know I have no passion or interest in teaching and becoming a teacher, but since I love English language so much, I told and promised myself that I will develop the interest and passion in teaching as I step into this journey.
I used to love English because of how interesting it was (not that I found English is no longer fun today, in the present but idk). When I was a little younger, I loved to jot down unfamiliar English words along with the meaning, I loved to talk to myself in English, I loved watching English movies, I loved listening to English songs (I still do), I love how English has different accents - whether it's British or American or whatever accents that ever existed. Like generally, I grew up with my life revolving and being exposed to English and its usage. The basic skills that you need to have to master any language are of course; reading, writing, listening and speaking in that particular language. I grew up believing that I was literate enough, I was fluent enough in English language since I can speak, write, listen and read in English well.
But now here I am, a TESL student, in the year 2018, realizing that these basic skills ARE NOT enough, AT ALL! I also realized that being in this course, your fluency or your love towards English language alone IS NOT sufficient in order to be a good TESL student and later, a good English teacher to your kids. And today, you know what more that I realized? I realized that this isn't just merely about English language or some simple teaching methods to teach the kids. It's not! There's just so much more to it!
I have learnt Linguistics in the first semester and I swear it was not easy at all! Not the kind of English language that I used to believe was just a piece of cake. For this semester on the other hand, I'll be learning English Phonetics & Phonology and I'm 100% sure that this paper will be A LOT tougher. So let's just say, those teenage years I spent on believing that English is easy had just been totally crushed. Nope, English language is not easy. Not anymore.
As I had just two weeks of class in 2018, I know nothing after this will be easy and relaxing. And how I have been taking this teaching & being a teacher stuff very lightly ever since I started my studies on 2016 - obviously I was wrong and dumb and foolish to not take it seriously. Being a TESL student will be a lot more challenging after this. Being a future primary school teacher will definitely be 100 times tougher.
So look what I have got myself into...
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