I have never wrote a diary, but if I would, the topic of teaching my mother tongue would be in it for sure!
During last week, on the 7th of November, I organized an event, named ‘Litvanska noč’, where I had an opportunity to improve myself as a mentor in youth activities. This time I would like to describe the importance of preparation and to mention how I felt, while teaching my own language to foreign people.
So, first of all let’s speak about the process of preparation. In our MC’s team, we have such a nice lady – Nina Nahtigal, who has experience in teaching youngsters. Because of her, I got some good ideas, how to prepare myself for the class. One of her suggestions was to make a timeline/schedule of things, which will be done in 45 minutes. It helped a lot! After you write everything down, it is much easier to imagine an event. Also, an important point was to find a balance between the theoretical and practical parts. Probably all of us know, how boring it can be, if just the mentor or teacher speaks while having their activity… As a solution to this, I have chosen some non-formal teaching methods, in which participants had to do some tasks by their selves or in couples.
Secondly, I would like to remind you, that one thing is to plan everything and another one is – to make it come true. It became the most challenging part. I don’t want to say, that it was impossible or so, but a lot of different thoughts were popping out. Especially in the beginning of the language class… ;)
Did I choose the right methods of the activity? Are the participants interested? How to explain things, which are so obvious to me? What can be done, to make participants feel good? All these questions were in my head, at the time I was teaching alphabet, numbers and basic phrases. I have never thought, that teaching your own language can be so complicated and exciting at the same time!
In the theoretical part of being an EVS volunteer it is said, that you get a lot of new experience and try yourself out in different fields. Here, the theory confirms the reality! For me, one of the appropriate examples could be the lessons of my country’s language. :)
Written by EVS volunteer Laura Adomaitytė
