Teacher Feature #5

Name: Emilie-May Hubbard

Nationality: British and French

 How long have you been teaching? 

I’ve been transmitting the love I have for English language and British culture for 19 years now. I started teaching children when I was a young student. Our sessions were mainly based on having fun, discovering genuinely English traditions and cultural features. I then realised how English language was perceived and sadly automatically associated to a scholastic subject.

What are you teaching? 

EFL/ESL English in companies

What certifications do you have? 

Initially I didn’t want to be a language teacher or trainer but was venturing out on a more artistic venture as I wanted to be an Art Restorer (which I am also today). Therefore I decided to officialise my British nationality when passing my History of Arts degree with the Open University . In the meantime I continued to help children and young adults by giving English sessions and sharing my knowledge, as sharing is key to me and then taught as an independent worker.

How did you get into teaching English? Where are you currently working? country, school, companies, etc.

I gradually switched from teaching kids to helping adults and then had the chance to work for training companies and language schools for working people. As a result I was given the opportunity to become a Key Account Manager and Pedagogical Assistant in a training company in the Paris Region called ‘Business Class’. I do realize fortunate I am to have such a position and to be able to continue training too.

How long have you been working there? 

I have been working for Business Class for more than a year now and as the company is successful, we deal with more and more requests which are always made-to-measure.

Where else have you worked?

 In other training companies as an independent trainer.

Where do you prefer teaching English? 

I prefer sharing cultural and idiomatic aspects of the language in companies.

What do you love about teaching English? 

Helping trainees to gain self-confidence and making them realize that they can enjoy speaking English.

What are the advantages to teaching for you?  

Learning a language is a real eye-opener for trainees who discover other ways of addressing communication and encountering enriching people. The world is your oyster as we say!

What are the disadvantages to teaching for you? 

The training can be too short and frustrating for both learner and trainer. The trainee acquires knowledge and ease but has to stop once the allocated number of hours is over.

Do you like teaching English?  Why? 

Meeting great people from miscellaneous backgrounds. As a trainer you are constantly learning new things having to adapt the sessions to specific fields or diversified positions.

Do you do another job? 

Yes, I’m very lucky to have another job I also love. I am an Art Restorer, I more precisely restore paintings under the independent worker status.

Thanks so much Emilie-May for your insightful interview about teaching English in France.:D  Hope this helps someone.

 

Le Petit Prince

It’s been a very long while since I read Le Petit Prince and I can’t say that I loved it or understood it very well in high school.  It was a reading assignment in second year French.  I thought it was a little difficult and absolutely didn’t compare to reading Le Petit Nicolas the year before, which was very easy.  So here I am 31 years later giving it a try for its 70th anniversary.  Funny that there wasn’t much more hype than different covers being sold in bookshops, with banners marking the anniversary but not much more than that.  I’m assuming more was done in Paris.

Le Petit Prince begins with the narrator’s plane crashing in the Sahara desert. (That really did happen to Saint-Exupéry and is believed that it sparked the idea for Le Petit Prince.)  He has very little food and water and must rely on his limited knowledge to repair his plane.  While contemplating his dilemma, he’s approached by a little blond boy who asks him to draw a sheep.  We then learn that he comes from a planet called Asteroid 325, which is called Asteroid B 612 on Earth.  The little prince is conscientious about making sure his planet stays balanced and that it won’t get overrun by bad seeds or baobab trees.  Then one day a mysterious rose grows on the planet and he immediately falls in love with it, until he catches the rose in a lie.  He realizes he can’t trust the rose and that makes him feel lonely.  In spite of everything, the little prince decides to venture out and explore other places to try to cure his loneliness.

This isn’t really my kind of story.  Le Petit Prince is a succession of parables that make one story.  It kind of reminded me a slightly of The Alchemist for that and I hated The Alchemist.  Even though, there is something original and redeeming in Le Petit Prince.  The main character happens to be a little boy and most people believe the story is for children which I really don’t think is the case.  It is written in a way that children can relate to and the beautiful watercolors from Saint-Exupéry make it all so inviting, especially for little boys.  It is a multilayered story written in simple fashion.  Not to mention the parables are clear but not too preachy, thank goodness for that.  The principal themes are narrow-mindedness and its dangers along with how exploration can bring enlightenment.  These themes are touched on in some way through all the encounters the little prince makes with the different characters and the narrator.  The allegory is quite clear in the story for adults but not so much for children, but that’s ok because they will be more focused on the little prince’s travels, adventure, and all the characters he meets.  The recurring symbols are the stars, water, the trains, and the desert.  The cover picture was a perfect choice.

All in all Antoine de Saint-Exupéry created a story that spoke about the person he was and his beliefs.  Unfortunately, he didn’t have the privilege to realize or experience the worldwide popularity of Le Petit Prince, which was translated into over 250 languages.  It was published in 1943 when Saint-Exupéry set sail on an American ship from the United States headed to Europe to fight in World War II.  He wanted to fight in the war and save Europe from nazism.  He left with a quickly bound copy of Le Petit Prince made by his publishing company.  He then joined the Free French Air Force in North Africa but disappeared over the Mediterranean Sea in July 1944 on his last mission.  He was of maximum age for flying during the war and his health was declining.  Nevertheless, he wrote three very successful novels during his hiatus in the United States that all received literary recognition and awards:  Terre des Hommes in 1939 (Wind, Sand, and Stars), Pilote de Guerre in 1942 (Flight to Arras),and Le Petit Prince in 1943 (The Little Prince).

Title: Le Petit Prince

Genre:  Classic/French Literature/Young Adult/Fantasy/Philosophy

Published:  1943

Edition:  Gallimard

Pages:  95

Language:  French

My rating:  * * * 

+5,260

 

Weekly Photo Challenge: From Above

This was the top of my niece’s beautifully decorated French wedding cake, with yummy “nougatine”.  Nougatine is basically a mixture of almonds and caramel.  Wonder who proposed?

 

If Beale Street Could Talk

This book really took me by surprise.  The last James Baldwin book I read was Go Tell it on the Mountain and that was over 20 years ago.  I just remember liking parts of it and other parts were a bit slow.  If Beale Street Could Talk is the story of Fonny and Clementine alias Tish.  They are deeply in love and are planning to move into a loft flat in Greenwich Village together.  It’s the 1970s and relations between blacks and whites are tense.  They finally find a loft apartment where they can live together and Fonny can do his passion sculpting.  When one day the police come and take Fonny away because he’s being accused of rape.  From there, the story follows the trials and tribulations of Fonny trying to stay positive that he will get out of jail and Fonny and Tish’s families trying to earn enough money to pay the lawyer’s fees and most of all trying to support each other during this difficult time.

What struck me about If Beale Street Could Talk, Baldwin’s thirteenth novel, was that it was direct, realistic, and the impressive in-your-face style of writing.  Baldwin was telling it like it was, as always.  If you’re not ready to listen then abstain.  The language is very 1970s but I found it somehow refreshing.  The story is fiction but it rings as a true one.  Baldwin even adds sexually explicit scenes to accentuate the reality of the story even more.  The families seem to represent two types of families in the black community.  There was Tisha’s family that remains unified and supporting each other no matter what.  They will brave fire and walk to the ends of the Earth for each other.  On the other hand, Fonny’s family is superficial, judgmental, and unreliable.  His mother claims to be a christian although she has the most unchristian  attitude and believes that she is better than everybody else.  His sisters are frivolous and negligent on their quests to find husbands and picking from the most ineligible types.  They don’t seem to care very much about their brother and that goes even before he gets thrown into jail.  Sonny’s father Frank loves him very much but as the story progresses he proves to be unable to keep up the strength needed to help Fonny get out of jail.

Baldwin put a lot of emphasis on character development and less on the story, but that wasn’t a problem at all since the characters are described and put into situations so that we can understand them better.  Even so, the novel reads with ease and the dated expressions conjure up some humour.  My favourite character is Ernestine, Tish’s sister, because of her strong personality and her frankness.  She is a really self-sufficient, strong character who really knows what to do and say.

I really enjoyed reading If Beale Street Could Talk because this was one of the many important classic works of African-American literature.  James Baldwin was a master.  He always managed to tell the most realistic stories about African-Americans and their difficulty to survive and to progress.  If you haven’t had the pleasure of picking up any of his work, I highly recommend If Beale Street Could Talk.  It contains themes of racism, love, and solidarity among the disinherited that are fighting for their rights the best they can with the little they’ve got.  These themes are very universal but are all treated in intricate woven threads around the unfair imprisonment of Fonny.  It is a bittersweet tale and the quote on the back of the Vintage International edition is spot on, “A moving, painful story, so vividly human and so obviously based on reality that it strikes us as timeless.” – Joyce Carol Oates.

Title: If Beale Street Could Talk

Genre:  African-American/Classic/Literature

Published:  1974

Edition:  Vintage International

Pages:  197

Language:  English

Favorite quote: “Neither love nor terror makes one blind: indifference makes one blind.” (If Beale Street Could Talk, p. 99)

My rating:  * * * * 

+5,165

 

The Reader

The Reader has garnished my shelves now for about three years and I have finally gotten a chance to enjoy it.  If anything it’s made me want to review all the unread books on my shelves and to get cracking on them.  This novel has been talked about here and there over the years but I’ve never heard any of my book buddies talk about it.  I feel it’s a hidden jewel that everybody should try to possess.

Michael Berg becomes ill one day on his way home from school when Hanna picks him up and cleans him off.  She is twice his age and he is only fifteen years old.  Michael continues to go back to visit Hanna and they carry on a love affair for a while.  As time goes on, the complexities of Hanna start to show, but Michael is virtually incapable of any analysis of this mysterious woman and her ways, who awakens his sexuality, his senses, as he becomes a man.

The novel is told in first person which makes it personal, as if a friend is telling his story.  The narrator is a very reliable source because he’s very honest about some very personal private emotions that sometimes aren’t too flattering.  The Reader is erotic, melancholic, hopeful, and infuriating.  I don’t think I’ve ever read a book that put me through so many profound emotions.  At times I felt like a voyeur.  Schlink was a master at writing this story because it contains all the aspects of what’s needed to make a perfectly balanced.  Nothing is done for sensationalism.  Every scene has its reason for existing.

Schlink also did an excellent job exploring how the generation of World War II born during or right after the war must have felt and how the collective conscience tries to adapt.  The guilt was terribly heavy and doubt was looming over friends but especially family – wondering to what extent they had participated in the war or to what degree did their silence cost lives.  It’s terrifying having had to face such heavy actions.  This theme is carried right through the book when Michael deals with different characters, his father included.

The Reader was translated into 37 languages and won a few awards including the Hans Fallada Prize (awarded every two years to a young author from the German speaking world since 1981) in 1988, while being the first German book to top the The New York Times bestselling books list.  The film adaptation lead to Kate Winslet winning an Academy Award for best actress for her portrayal of Hanna Schmitz.  Bernhard Schlink has written many books including non-fiction and crime novels.  He was born in Bethel, Germany in 1944 although he was brought up in Heidelberg and worked as a professor of law at the University of Berlin and later became a judge.  The Reader was his first novel that was translated into English in 1997.  Watch the link below to find out more about how and why he wrote The Reader.  He’s a very interesting speaker.

Title: The Reader

Genre:  Historical Fiction/German literature/World War II Holocaust

Published:  1995 – 1997 translated to English

Edition:  Vintage International

Pages:  218

Language:  English

My rating:  * * * * 1/2

+4,968

 

Teacher Feature #4

Name: Wiebke Franke       

Nationality: German

How long have you been teaching?        

I have been teaching English since 2004.

What are you teaching? EFL/ESL?    

I teach ESL for adults.

What certifications do you have?    

I have a teaching degree for elementary schools (math and sports), and Magistra Artium in English literature.

How did you get into teaching English?    

While I was at university I was looking for something I could do with my English studies and somehow got into contact with people organizing presentations in English for ESL learners at adult education centers in Hanover. So I started giving slide shows in English and then took over a few evening classes.

Where are you currently working? country, school, companies, etc.            

I am currently working in Hanover, Germany, for an English Language School, Wall Street English. The school works with a combination of e-learning and teacher lessons.

What kind of contract are you working under?              

I have an unlimited 10h/week contract. But it comes with overtime, as we do not have regular classes but individual lessons that change every week.

How long have you been working there?          

Technically since 2006, however, I didn’t start as a teacher but as a personal tutor. I have been employed as a teacher there for 2 years now.

Where else have you worked?             

I’ve worked for adult education centers, and for a private vocational school. There I have been teaching English for students getting an education in hotel management and tourism.

 

Where do you prefer teaching English?            

Definitely at the language school. We don’t use exams and standard evaluation systems, like grades. Adult education centers are great, too, but people don’t often come regularly. I prefer working with adults who want to learn the language.

What do you love about teaching English?     

 I love the language and I think it is very important in today’s world. Teaching English gives me the opportunity to meet many people with varying backgrounds. I enjoy having conversations and discussions on various topics with them, this way I can learn something from my students, too.

 

What are the advantages to teaching for you?                

Like I said before, teaching English I meet many interesting people and I am not limited to one topic. To keep classes interesting I need to stay in touch with what is going on outside my little job bubble. Furthermore it never gets boring, although there is some routine, no class is like any other.

What are the disadvantages to teaching for you?          

 It is very difficult to find a job that is secure and supports you.

Do you like teaching English?  Why?                               

I like teaching English for the aforementioned reasons, it is always interesting and exciting. Plus I get the chance to work in a language I love.

Do you do another job?                      

Currently I also work in a cinema and am on a break from teaching aerobics classes.

I’d like to give a big thanks to Wiebke for sharing a bit of her English teaching in Germany.  You can also check out Wiebke’s very interesting You Tube channel called 1book1review http://www.youtube.com/user/1book1review where she reviews books and talks about other bookish topics. 

 

Graphic Novels #1

You’re probably wondering what drove me to pick up these two since they don’t really correspond to what I typically read.  I guess it was good old-fashioned curiosity.  I’ve heard so many things about Walking Dead that I had to give it a try.  It’s one of the hot American tv series at the moment and I tried that out too.  I only watched the first four episodes of season one to get an idea.  I left off where the guys saws his hand off to get out of some handcuffs.  I’m good.

Now I have to say I’m no zombie expert or anything but I found the graphic novels not so bad.  The story begins with the main protagonist Rick waking up in a hospital bed to find no living beings left there except some zombies in an enclosed operating room.  He then ventures out of the hospital searching for his wife and son. He grabs a bike and rides to his home which he finds abandoned.  As he leaves and is searching for anyone who can explain what’s going on he’s hit on the back of the head with a shovel and the post apocalyptic adventure begins.

I read these stories in French because I was enticed into buying them while in the manga section looking for a birthday present for one of my daughters.  I could read more of these but I’d really have to be in the mood, not to mention there are about 16 volumes in this series for the moment.  I’ll be hitting up my local library for the others at some point.  Reading Walking Dead in French didn’t change much to the story.  It read very much like a film.  However, they were extremely different from the television series.  In my opinion the graphic novels had a better story line, while the television series is more sensationalist and the characters are pretty despicable.  There is more emphasis placed on blood, guts, and shock value.  The graphic novels seem to study the aspect of survival and how people behave in these extreme situations.  Fidelity, love, family, and killing are other recurring themes.

The artwork in book one Passé Décomposé, which is called Days Gone By in English was beautifully executed.  The detail in the faces and shading in the scenery was fantastic.  It was a joy to look at.  As for the second book Cette Vie Derrière Nous, which is called Miles Behind Us, I had a lot of difficulty adjusting to the artwork.  All the characters from the first book looked different in the second one and some even looked older than what they were in the first one. The utilisation of black ink sort of made everybody look a little crazy in book two.  Walking Dead is written by Robert Kirkman who started in comics in the United States around 2000.  The artists for book one are Charlie Adlard, who is a British comic book artist and debuted his career in the 1990s and Tony Moore another American comic book artist who worked with Robert Kirkman on another project called Battle Pope.  The artistic combination was a success but in book two the artwork isn’t as personal and detailed as in book one, which is done solely by Adlard.

This next graphic novel was a real surprise.  I must admit that what attracted me to it was the beautiful cover and its title.  How could I pass on a story about Cairo, the place where I lived for three and a half years.  This is an adventure involving an Egyptian journalist, an American girl, an American/Lebanese boy, a hashish smuggler, a woman Israeli soldier, and a jinn.  There’s magic, humour, fantasy, adventure, and a bit of religion. The hunt for a magical hookah which can lead to immense power.  Cairo was cited as one of the Best Graphic Novels for High School Students in 2008, one of 2009′s Top Ten Graphic Novels for Teens by American Library Association and named one of the best graphic novels of 2007 by Publishers Weekly.

I found this story interesting and an extremely quick read.  I almost wished the story would have been a bit more complex and lasted a bit longer, maybe a part two.  I enjoyed the snarky personalities of Ashraf, the drug smuggler and Tova, the Israeli soldier.  The ambiance of the story was complete with references to Arabic literature and enough Arabic words to make you feel Egypt.  The artwork was beautifully detailed and loved the way the mis en page was done.  I liked the way there were some squares that were upside down.  That really added to the story.  M.K. Perker was the artist of Cairo.  He is Turkish and started comic book drawing at 16 years old.  He really does have a perfected technique that showed throughout the story.

G. Willow Wilson has written other graphic novels such as Air a four-volume graphic novel, Mystic: The Tenth Apprentice, Vixen: Return of the Lion, Alif the Unseen, and The Butterfly Mosque: A Young American Woman’s Journey to Love and  Islam.  Wilson was born and raised in New Jersey.  She was studying Arabic and history at Boston University where she eventually converted to Islam.  She then moved to Cairo where she taught English and furthered her writing career.  At 21 years old, she was the first Western writer to interview the current Egyptian Mufti.  She was also longlisted for the Women’s Prize for fiction 2013 for her first novel Alif the Unseen.  It’s a story about a young Arab-Indian hacker who protects his dishonest clients. I suggest you check out something by G. Willow Wilson because I’m sure we’ll be hearing a lot more about her.

+4,968