Eight months ago I stepped off the train in Tortosa, freshly graduated from university and with very little idea what to expect from this small Catalan city, or my new job as an English Language Teaching Assistant. Immediately met by the head of the English department, Jesús, and the headmaster, Joan, I learned very quickly that any nervousness I had about moving almost 8000km around the world was completely unnecessary. Regardless of my foreigner's status, my nearly non-existent Catalan language skills, or the fact that I have a tendency to wear short sleeves in winter (it gets down below -40 degrees celsius where I’m from), everyone here has welcomed me with open arms, going over and above to make me feel at home.
One of my 2 BATX classes
One of the fantastic things about my job as a language assistant is it combines the knowledge and experience of the incredible English teachers at my school, with the lived experience of a native speaker. Students have been able to therefore benefit from not only years of teaching practice, tried and proven methods, as well as the advice of people who had learned English as a foreign language themselves, but simultaneously hear native pronunciation, up-to-date vocabulary, as well as natural speech. My students were brave souls learning along with me as I tried new things. We played language games, had intense debates, did plenty of practice for the Cambridge exams and much more while working on fluency, pronunciation, and vocabulary. I’ve learned so much from my students- sometimes I feel much more than they learned from me. I’ve worked with students all the way from 1 ESO to 2 BATX, and even a fantastic debate team for the Tortosa English Festival. Every age and every class were a bit different, but all have been fantastic. Seeing the students’ speaking improve over the year and watching them gain not only knowledge but also confidence has been incredibly rewarding; I am in awe of how well so many of my students speak and how hard they work. I do not have the words to describe my pride at seeing them come back from their KET, PET and FIRST exams saying ‘that was easy’, in the middle of an intense class discussion or onstage at the university for the debate competition. My students are bright, motivated and manage to keep a sense of humour through everything that keep my classes a pleasure to go to every single day.