Tuesday, May 15, 2012

My Valdivia Travelogue VIII

By Georgia Wyche

The first semester has begun and things have picked up at UACh. Part of my teaching load includes teaching Psycholinguistics, Advanced English Grammar, and a class on phrasal verbs for the English department. I’m substituting two of the classes for a teacher who is on maternity leave. The teacher comes back to work in the middle of April.  So far it has been an enriching experience and I’m also happy to be working with the English pedagogy students once again.

In addition to teaching classes for the English department, I’m also teaching for the UACh Outreach Department. I’m teaching a Basic English class to local artisans in Valdivia. I’m thrilled to have the opportunity to teach classes to people from the community not affiliated with the university.

I also recently began working at the Australian Corner, which is similar to the American Corner on the Isla Teja campus. The Australian Corner is located on the Mira Flores campus, which is about a ten minutes bus ride from the UACh Isla Teja campus. I’m teaching Basic English classes to students studying engineering and computer science.

 In the beginning of March, the scientific writing workshop that was held in January had a small ceremony. The students who attended regularly and completed all of the assignments received a certificate of completion.  

The scientific writing workshop will become a class for honors students in the middle of April. I will be co-teaching this class with UACh professor, Dr. Sandor Mulsow. The class will meet once a week until the middle of June. I’m looking forward to working with him.

Along with teaching the classes mentioned, I continue to teach English conversation classes to UACh journalists and I’m doing some private tutoring.  I enjoy working with the journalists because they are a lively group. I’m tutoring a few students who need to brush up on their English before heading to the United States in June.

My UACh teaching experience is drawing to a close in about two and a half months, so I will do my best to make the most out of the time I have left.