Good news

[estepheia]

Just had the job interview for the second course. A course description was agreed upon. No one actually said 'congratulations, you're hired', we just gradually moved away from the conditional clauses... until only one remained:if enough students sign up for the course, I will be teaching TWO courses from October onwards. Yippieh! Money! Teaching experience. References that will look good on my cv. Yihaaa. Keep your fingers crossed that enough people sign up. The good thing is that I can run both courses based on the same lesson plan, with only few variation. Meaning I do the prep work once and reap the benefits twice. Yes!
The lady who interviewed me, a native speaker, said that they normally don't hire non-native speakers. My spoken English is so rusty these days, I feel like I need another three weeks in an English speaking country to get my bearings again. *sigh* But apparently my English is still good enough for the job. Or maybe my unabashed enthusiasm won the day. *breathes sigh of relief*
I intend to do all the exercises I set myself. If only to see how much work it truly is. :-) So I won't completely neglect my own writing. *looks determined*

Comments

[shatten.livejournal.com]

Your spoken English is just fine. I didn't spot any grammatical errors yesterday and, even though we spoke for nearly two hours, and I teased you with my impenetrable English humour, you still stayed on track. You are one of the best English speakers I know in Germany. This will be the least of your problems.

To be honest with you, the whole "native speaker" bit sometimes seems like a red herring. Alright, there my be some idioms we know that an non-native does not, but the big disadvantage is that native speakers talk to quickly (normal speed) and often have accents which non-natives find difficult to grasp...

During my English lessons I have to speak unnaturally S-l-o-w-l-y and it sometimes gets on my nerves and often I speed up and only realise I have when I see lots of people who have "zoned"...

You will be fine. You may find your class will find it a relief to talk German...

[estepheia.livejournal.com]

Awww, thank you Paul. :-)
See, I still can't escape the low-confidence trap. Give ma smigeon of a reason to doubt my abilities and I'll pounce on it. *bangs head on desk*
I think it's my granny's martyr complex that comes through here. She worked her whole life, was competent in many things, but she still walked through life thinking that other people are better, more competent and more deserving than her. Some of that just rubbed off, you know?

Thanks for the pep talk. Always appreciated. *beams*