Thursday, April 10, 2014

Thursday, 10 April 2014

I didn't take any cold medicine (Coldex) last night at all, and I slept fairly well, although I had some trouble getting to sleep. I had some drainage this morning and some sinus pain during the day, but generally the cold seems to gradually be going away.

I taught 7 units of Berlitz lesson today: 10:00-11:30, 3:00-4:30, 5:30-6:15 (but it was a late cancellation); and 6:30-8:00.

We ate lunch at Buddha Burgers today.

I had some complications with both my last lesson yesterday and the last one today. Both were the respective first sessions of classes of students from the same company, a car-rental company in Germany, and both are scheduled to use special Customer Care materials that are produced by Oxford. The materials are NOT online, so we have to depend on both the teacher and the students looking at their hardcopy books. And that's where the problem was -- I have the 2007 edition, and the students were sent a newer one. Worse yet, the first chapter is completely different. Last night, I resorted to having the students read from their books without myself knowing what would come next. Tonight, I implemented a different strategy -- I simply had them read and discuss an article from Forbes' online. Unfortunately, the office staff were either out (2 of them) or too busy (the remaining one) to even read the urgent e-mail I had sent them after class last night, and, by the time I finally called, it was too late to do anything at all about the problem. But, the good news is that I feel like I successfully delivered pretty good classes despite the giant screw-up with materials!

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