Best teaching moment? I got my students to practise modal verbs expressing possibility/deduction by speculating about what some abstract paintings might/must represent and how the artist may/must have felt while painting them. The charm of the new coupled with the invitation to improvise in a relaxed environment elicited contributions from students who had never said anything in class before.
And worst? Bringing a song by my favourite British alternative rock band, Radiohead, to class. Few of my students appreciated the music.
What have you learned? A lot. Especially after I got my students to do linguistic research about the English lexis our politicians and the media like to borrow. The richness of the data that my students gathered vastly exceeded my expectations. My students say their opinions on language changed during the project and mine have, too.
Biggest challenge? To "teach" my students to become autonomous learners. I feel they rely heavily on the support of their teachers and dare little to venture beyond the boundaries of the course to pursue what they are most interested in.
What's next? One of my recent interests (which I'm currently working on as part of my PhD research) is teacher education: understanding how teachers learn, how they make their classroom decisions, how they can support their own learning. I have found the self-reflection this involves to be a very powerful.
Top tip? Challenge students with projects that are personally meaningful and relevant to them and allow yourself to be surprised by the breadth of information that students generate and their creativity.
guardian.co.uk
