📙 Part 2: Describe a skill you can teach others

This episode's vocabulary

Flesh sth out (phrasal verb) - to add more details or information to something.

Underpinning (noun) - support, strength, or the basic structure of something.

Put sth in/into sth (phrasal verb) - to spend a lot of time or effort doing something.

Key (adj.) - very important and having a lot of influence on other people or things.

Tenet (noun) - one of the principles on which a belief or theory is based.

Lay sth  out (phrasal verb) - to explain or describe something in a clear and detailed way.

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Questions and Answers

M: Rory will describe a skill he can teach others. He will say what it is, when he learned it, how he taught others and explain how he felt about it. Are you ready to rock and roll? Off you go.

R: I can teach others how to teach English, I suppose. Although, I should say that's not very difficult, to be honest. It's not really a very difficult skill to acquire. I learned it through a combination of theory and practice and, well, like direct observation, I suppose. So when it comes to the theory site, I read a lot of textbooks and course books about teaching, and I looked things up on websites to flesh out the whole, well, theoretical underpinning behind what I was actually putting into practice. And then, well, like I say, I actually put it into practice and I got feedback based on what worked best from colleagues and from the students reactions themselves. And you could see that almost immediately. Alongside that I also, like I say, I observed what others were doing and I borrowed ideas from them too. And I taught it to other people much in the same way, to be honest. I recommended a variety of sources on theory and I pushed people to try and change certain things or even just to try certain things out, and letting them see how it actually works. Or if it didn't work for them, then it didn't work and they would learn from that when they reflected and got feedback. As I said before, the key tenets aren't that hard, to be honest. It's essentially what is the subject and what is the material that can be used to teach and how can that be adapted and laid out in a logical plan to teach in the time given, I suppose, to the students in question. Of course, most people must also understand that they won't get it right every time. And that's a process that they should be willing to. Well, sorry, it's a part of the process they should be willing to accept. It's a useful skill to have because I think it means that you grow past being a teacher and you can actually help other teachers with their work as long as you can maintain a certain level of patience. Although I should say that being able to maintain your level of patience isn't something that's unique just to teaching or teacher training.

M: Do you often teach other people things?

R: Well, I used to, but my course is winding downer, so I don't need to do that so much.

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