📙 Part 2: Describe a course that impressed you

This episode's vocabulary

Memorable (adj.) - likely to be remembered or worth remembering.

To stand out (phrasal verb) - to be very noticeable.

Dedicated (adj.) - believing that something is very important and giving a lot of time and energy to it.

Assignment (noun) - a piece of work given to someone, typically as part of their studies or job.

Participant (noun) - a person who takes part in or becomes involved in a particular activity.

Aspect (noun) - one part of a situation, problem, subject, etc.

Beforehand (adverb) - earlier (than a particular time).

Impressive (adj.) - if an object or achievement is impressive, you admire or respect it, usually because it is special, important, or very large.

Scope (noun) - the range of a subject covered by a book, programme, discussion, class, etc.

Feature (noun) - a typical quality or an important part of something.

Session (noun) - a period of time or meeting arranged for a particular activity.

Workload (noun) - the amount of work to be done, especially by a particular person or machine in a period of time.

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Questions and Answers

M: Ready Rory, are you all ready?

R: Very!

M: Bring it on!

R: I suppose I got quite lucky with this one, since I'm forever doing courses. One of the most memorable ones I've done was called the IH Certificate in Advanced Methodology. Now, that sounds very fancy. But it was really just a teacher training course, although, admittedly, it was a very good one. I've taken a few such courses. But what stood out the most about this one was the trainers who taught it and who managed the general administration. They were very dedicated to their work and they helped me become a better teacher through the various assignments they set for the participants, which was great. That was the whole reason behind taking the course in the first place. So if that hadn't happened, then it would have been a bit pointless then, wouldn't it? Another thing that stood out was the assignments, there is a new one every week. And these were designed to cover particular aspects which we had been learning about beforehand, we had to learn everything, not from how to teach specific grammar point, or like vocabulary sets, to how to teach the structure of whole texts. So it was quite impressive with how in-depth it was. And actually, the scope that was covered as, well, another impressive feature, I suppose. I'll also never forget the people who were on the course with me. In addition to the high-quality trainers, I already talked about them, everyone else on the course was a very dedicated participant. And we spoke for ages about the different aspects in like fabulous amounts of detail. Even after the main input sessions had ended the conversations would go on for hours afterwards. I think we were all quite sad when it was all over, though. But I'm sure no one missed the huge workload, even if they had achieved a lot by the time it was all over. I mean, I remember being exhausted and having to spend weekends doing different things. So to be honest, once that was done, I was quite happy to have my weekends back.

M: Would you like to do this course again?

R: Not know that I've done it the one time. Just a once is enough.

M: Thank you, Rory. That was a nice answer, to be honest with you!

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