Language is Cake

I believe the metaphor asserts the idea that language learning is nice and empowering but needs to be cut right, presented  nicely and ate with a certain proportion.

  I am an English language teacher in the higher technological institute. I teach English to Egyptian students (Speakers of other language). I have never received training on TESOL. Sometimes, the way I teach is successful. Others it is disastrous. Maybe, this because I have not learned any TESOL course.

  The course would really help me improve as a teacher and help my students. I really like to learn more about many aspects of teaching English language, and get exposed to the latest theories and practices. I would be pleased to join the program. I would do my best throughout the program to learn as much as possible. I would be an active participant. I would learn how to cut my cake and give  my students the right portion sizes.

I teach general English in the Higher Technological Institute. The institute was built by the help of the organization of 10th of Ramadan investors, an NGO aiming at investing in teaching students engineering, business and computer science. Unfortunately, the institute does not provide training for the teachers because of the inadequacy of resources. The resources are spent on salaries, maintenance and accrediting subjects. The Courses I teach are General English  levels A, B, C, and D for Engineering,  English for Computer  Science levels  3,4, and 5, and Business English levels A, B, C, D, E, and F for the business department.

Throughout my teaching career, a hoard of questions occur to me: the most relevant one is: why my students – all students in Egypt, in fact, need so long time to learn English, a second language, and they never master even the elementary level though they learn English for at least ten years from primary school till secondary stage and finally at college or even at graduate school? Another important question is why learning English is a bad experience to most students I meet. As such, I have been always concerned about learning and developing more efficient and effective educational practices to make language teaching and learning an easy and lovable experience to students.

The TESOL program would help me get an idea about the newest techniques on teaching and learning English in order to better teach my students. As Rabindanath Tragore (1861-1941) the Nobel Prize Laureate for Literature denotes: “A teacher can never truly teach unless she is learning herself. With over eighteen years of experience teaching English, I really need to hone my skills more, as I still face difficulty in class and I do not stand on the latest theories.

The metaphor “Language is cake” really impressed me as it was the first time I faced this metaphor used as a comparison between language teaching and cake –preparing or cake-serving. In preparing a cake, knowing all the ingredients is not enough to have a delicious and nice presented cake. You should know the appropriate quantities for each of the ingredient, how to mix them in order for the dough to be smooth and creamy and also the baking temperature is very important. The last but not the least the presentation of the cake is just like the cherry on the cake, so why not putting a cherry on our cake too J.

Language teaching instead of ingredients has got its fundamental principles. First you have to comprehend these principles and then through appropriate techniques you have to build and scaffold your own teaching method. It’s important to maintain a balance of information and messages you want to convey to your students, neither more nor less. It’s true that in language teaching there is not a strict “recipe” to be followed but this profession gives us the possibility to prepare our own cake as soon as we find out the appropriate ingredients to make it as delicious and nice looking as possible than you can stick at it and try to make it each time better and better.

I’m more than happy for being given the chance to enroll in this course and I’m really enjoying it so far. I feel absolutely positive that this course will meet all my expectations and give me the possibility to get to know more about language teaching and share my experiences with a lot of other people and why not learning from their experiences and background too