Teachers on strike

Tuesday, 7th July

Yesterday evening we had  Welcome Drinks at Lass O`Gowrie,  located in the area that was once one of the poorest in the city known as "Little Ireland". There`s a legend that the original landlord of the pub was not an Irishman, but a proud homesick Scotsman who named the pub in honour of his favourite poem - "The Lass O`Gowrie". Of course our teachers were present as well. So we could have a free talk. Mark Hancock said that they don`t know themselves what, when and if ever will happen something as a result of Brexit. In his opinion the whole referendum was just the government`s dirty trick to draw the people`s attention away from the banks`crises in Britain.

Jamie Keddie (a Scotsman) mentioned that now there`s one more reason for Scotland to separate from UK as they voted to remain.

Our morning session was cultural - speaking about differences between the south and the north.

And it appeared the differences are really enormous.Watched a video taken before the elections in UK. A reporter interviewed people in London Kensington and in Liverpool Kensington. People in Liverpool sounded really depressed and hopeless saying: "Doesn`t matter who we vote for, the south will benefit from it not us. We won`t vote at all." Unemployment, drugs, homeless people, shops closing down is the characteristics of Liverpool. London Kensington - pompous impressive dwelling houses. I still thought England is a wealthy welfare state and there isn`t such big contravercy between the rich and the poor. 

The second session was on Learner Autonomy by Alan Mackenzie. An autonomous learner is interested in his/her progress and takes responsibility for his/her studies. He/She is consciously making an effort to contribute to their learning. We did group work to find out the activities for developing learner autonomy.

In the afternoon we worked in the library and discovered many useful materials on ELT.

                                             This is my schoolmate Melly - an American French living in Paris              

                                         
                                           My Italian coursemates Edda, Patricia and Carla

               
                 Teachers and students were on  strike for education today (all over UK)
The ministry is planning to cut down subjects like art, music and handicraft and even younger students have to take tests that grown-up educated people are not able to!!!

                                 
                       Me, Patricia and Edda  between the sessions