!anaj ,em s’taht

Having been here for two weeks now, I am acutely aware that my previous use of the terms “Scottish/British/English” was inexcusably fuzzy. Hence now a division between: Scottish and British trivia. And may the term “English” never make its way into this blog again! (unless the aim were to denigrate the English, provided they’re behaving English).

The Scottish thistle:

The Scottish flag:

The picture you continental Europeans have been waiting for: SPAM!

And apple pie which looks exactly what it is supposed to look like (judging from my very first “English” - consider the quotation marks - book).

Ok, this is Sunday. We undertook a fabulous outing to North Berwick yesterday, but no time to write about that at present.

Tomorrow, my first assignment is due: “Language related tasks”. For four different language items, we need to provide a discussion of meaning, form and phonology, and in particular devise a context to illustrate the meaning and effective concept questions to check students’ understanding. Of course I know that I am inclined to get bogged down in details… right now I am getting bogged down in illustration: Yes, this may be taken literally.

Not wanting to print every other draft of the assignment, I decided to go completely digital. The last time I tampered with Flash was in 2000 (time flies…), thank God it did not take me too long to get used to the interface again. I suppose Freehand would be better than Flash for illustrations, but I really to not have the time to get my head around another software right now. Anyhow, please marvel at my explanation of:

IT’S TOO HEAVY TO CARRY (particular challenge being that the structure must be explained with as simple words as possible, as this is an elementary structure):

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 2.0 Austria License.<!–

Illustration of Language Items
2006
Several images, some of them sequential, created to illustrate the four language items of English:
_too heavy to carry
_they lived VS they have lived
_remember to meet VS remember meeting him
_I wish I had (done something in the past)
–>

The Basil Paterson classroom. I took this pictures at night (working late), which might make the room look a bit duskier than it really is. But of course it’s a completely different teaching atmosphere compared to good old (new) Vorarlberg University of Applied Sciences. Things like teaching / learning in a horseshoe, not having a desk to write on (to hide behind), which goes for both teachers and students, up to the fact that the room is carpeted which absorbs much of your and the students’ voice… this all contributes to making teaching a new challenge. Nevertheless, at this point I (still) (?) have the feeling that these limitations create fairly productive boundaries…

In the mornings, this is the trainee classroom, in the afternoons, we are to teach a bunch of 15 students who pay about 1 pound per day for being taught by trainee teachers:-) Meaning that my initual belief that BP squeezes money both out of trainee teachers and students isn’t quite correct. Students pay 25 pounds for a for weeks course and if they attend regularly, they’ll get five pounds back.

The teacher’s rickety throne:

For camparison: A classroom at my (newly) beloved FHV, featuring my beloved colleague Colin, dressed to impress on FHV open day:

The common room (it’s mainly students hanging out there - we hardly have time to socialize with anyone apart from us and the photo copying machine)

The hall, to give you another idea of the architecture:

These pictures are not really up to date: On Sunday, that is four days ago, Sam and I went on a short hiking tour to Arthur’s seat, the local mountain (like our local Karren) located right in the town, between the centre and the sea. I’ll show you some of the sights, and one of the cliffs (or: crags, as the Scottish would) that is popular among people with suicidal tendencies. Salisbury crag.

What I find interesting is that, even if only mentally, my language slowly begins to transforms and take on a Scottish form. I can not really explain this in writing, and I don’t think that I will begin talking like this before the end of this month… but in my head my mental vocal chords begins rolling the r like that, and phrases like ‘like mad’ begin to:
(pseudo German phonetic transcript) so-und leek frrrehses lejk ‘lejk mahd’. interrrestin….

Anyhow, the pics below are in reverse chronological order - the further you scroll down, the earlier I took them on the tour.

In other words: the first five pics you see below were the ones I took last on our tour.

Best place to commit suicide in Edinburgh since 1895.

The first one offers a view of the place where the Queen resides when she visits Edinburgh. As you can see on the following pictures: Arthur’s seat is really right in the middle of the town, wedged between sea (where I need t go some time soon) and the city centre.

Just a few glimpses.

…but no time to post anything. Had my second day of teacher training today and it feels already like the fifth day. I know the names of all our students: José, Gilles, Juan, Omar, Antonio, Lucia, Arancha, Pilar, Sylvie, Lorena, Anais, Liliana, Delia, Francisco and Pavel. As you can tell from the names, the majority of them is Spanish - and sometimes I’m really struggling to understand them. They’re all in the intermediate group (i.e. not the elementary group), and judging from them I find that Austrian and German English school teachers do their job quite well:-)))

Speaking about the tutors: They have never heard of or successfully ignore the Common European Framework of Reference and the five core skills as stipulated by CEFR: Spoken Interaction and Spoken Production are lumped together as Speaking.

I learned new acronyms: TTT vs. STT - STT should be maximised, TTT should be limited. Can you guess what this means? My TTT level is too high - I wasnt surprised.

Good night:

Jana

Today: Scottish history:

an inhospitable land of mist, bogs, midges and warring tribes (according to Roman emperor Hadrian, 2nd century, who decided to built Hadrian’s wall to prevent military raids by the tribes of Scotland) - ein ungastliches Land der Nebel, Sümpfe, Mücken und kriegsführenden Stämme

a turf rampart - ein Graswall (like the one built by emperor Antonius Pius, Hadrian’s successor)

to convert to Christianity - sich zum Christentum bekehren (by the 8th century, most Scottish tribes had converted to Christianity)

We managed to get another three of free tickets for another show at the underbelly (as in “underbelly of Edinburgh” which is the building inside George IV bridge, as already mentioned; meanwhile I’ve learnt that the udderbelly is a comedy tent run by a TV channel the name of which is a pun on the the underbelly), which appears to be one of the traditional festival venues. Incredible building with a confusing maze of staircases, courts, levels and venues. More about this in the architecture report (if I ever pen it down).

Anyhow, when we arrived there, there were crowds of people gathering and waiting outside because of a fire alarm which turned out to be nothing but an inappropriate response of the fire alarm to the smoke machine#-)

Check out the t-shirts of the crew - nobody could say they were irrespective of gender:-)

The piece we got to see eventually was a beautiful tribute to the career of Douglas Fairbanks - sadly, very badly attended. There were ten people in the audience, one of them being a stooge. It wasn’t really comedy and parts of the piece were muffled by the laughter coming from the venue next door - but it gave me a cineastic thrill. Apart from being at least 10 centimeters too short, the main actor Rick Chester was truly the spitting image of Fairbanks.

I was unable to tell from the quality of the picture or the acting whether the reel they showed was re-enacted or ‘real’. They called it ‘Bagdad Bandit’. As the Fairbanks flic is called ‘The thief of bagdad’, it probably was staged.

The pics above were taken from Rick’s blog.

Another show I would love to see is this one: Jesus: The Guantanamo years.- Let me read the blurb from this slightly blurred image to you:

“Jesus Christ (son of God and father of modern stand-up) returns to earth for his long-awaited comeback tour. He doesn’t get past U.S. immigration: He’s a bearded, Middle-Eastern guy, fully prepared to die as a religious martyr. He’s immediately detained under the Patriot Act.

In His first one-man show for almost two millennia, Jesus talks candidly about His time in Guantanamo, His controversial relationship with His Father, and His on-going legal battle with ‘The Life of Brian’.”

Sounds good to me:-)))

A few more pics from Edinburgh uptown, all camera cellphone pictures. Regarding picture three: The birds are really fat in Edinburgh (who cares, for as long as the phone booths are attractive). Steven told me horrific stories of Edinburgh’s past, in particular of the houses that are built underground (Edinburgh has both the oldest ’skyscrapers’ and deepest cellars) and of the people who whose homes were concreted during a plague, leaving them to die in the basements - more news about this later.