School: week two & DW "Closing Time"

[bagheera_san]

Week two of teacher internship is over. Taught my first German lesson (on narrators and text interpretation at nearly A-Level level) and it went well. I have no problem whatsoever teaching older pupils (about 17-18), in fact, I enjoy it. My one problem is that I can't stop myself from smiling or laughing when they do silly stuff, so I undermine my own authority.

Next week I have to teach three lessons and I can already tell that nothing eats time like lesson preparation. Also, who the hell thinks its a good idea to teach grammar to adult native speakers who don't plan on a career in writing?

*

Yesterday's Who episode was mostly cute, but not as good as the last two. Matt Smith and Matt Smith's Wonderful Coat were awesome, however. Seriously, that coat deserves a BAFTA.



BAD:

*Cybermen defeated through the power of love. I hate "love defeats everything" anyway, but it seems particularly dumb when used against Cybermen. The whole point of Cybermen is that they take things like love away from you. That's the horror of them. If you can defeat them with love, then there's no horror at all.

*AMY IS A MODEL. Oh man. I guess now the fact that Amy's biggest skill is looking pretty is canon. I'm sad, because I think any companion is wasted on a modelling career. Even being a kiss-o-gram is a better use of companion skills.

GOOD:

*ELEVEN. I've never liked him as much as I did this episode. At one point I thought, "I'm really glad he isn't actually going to die, because then I would miss him." Matt Smith is good at a number of Doctor-ish things - being young-old, being alien/peculiar, being wise and clever and sad. This episode let him use all those skills, and mixed it with some funny bits and the result is that Eleven and Ten have never been more different. Basically this episode was Eleven's version of the final sequence of End of Time, only whereas Ten was all sulking and drama, Eleven's angst is quiet and sad and generally much more accepting. Also: Eleven and kids always works.

Also, I wish the long coat and bow tie combination had been his costume from the start - his other coat was too normal, and could be worn with a bow tie anyway, this new outfit looks much stranger (and much more dramatic), just as a Doctor outfit ought to look.

*Baby. The Stormy joke did not get old.

*Cybermats. My Benny-induced horror of them persists, but at the same time they're hilarious.

*The whole gay comedy with Craig and the Doctor worked for me.


One thing that made me thoughtful was the bit about the Doctor believing in humans. "The God Complex" gave away neither the Doctor's greatest fear nor his faith. Does he believe in humanity the way Amy believed in him? I don't think so. The Doctor believes in the potential of people, and he REALLY LIKES humans, but he's always had a healthy scepticism, too (just think of Three's distrust of the military or the way Four would have scoffed if you told him about the POWER OF LOVE).

Comments

[tardiscrash.livejournal.com]

As for Amy, I think that she had to be more that just a model. She clearly had some hand in the marketing with the name and tag line for the perfume. My first thought was actress, this makes more sense with the little girl going up to her because a child is far more likely to know an actress than a random model unless she is a model with a chat show or something.

[bagheera-san.livejournal.com]

That makes sense actually, and acting is a much better job for someone whose qualifications include kiss-o-gram and Time Lord companion.

[tardiscrash.livejournal.com]

I could also see a companion very much not wanting to do companion things after Doctor Times. When tragedy doesn't strike, most seam to go on to be heroes or BAMFS in their own right but I think there must be the sort of person would just go on and live like a normal person and just be happy for the chance they had to see the universe.

Now what I wonder is what Rory is up to? Other than being the worlds most adorable pack mule.

[dragonofmemory]

Oh, lesson plans. Ye necessary evil. The courses I took were completely ridiculous too, since you had to plan everything down to the minute what you were going to do with the class. Those took hours and were completely unrealistic. Then you get into actually teaching and I found simple ones generally worked for me. As long as I could get them done a week in advance, I was good.

As for teaching grammar... Well, this is a more humorous take on it. And a bit painful, because it's sadly true.

The Cybermats completely made my night. It was really all the episode needed to be awesome. I did love Eleven and 'Stormy' too though. It was a fluffy episode and I can't bring myself to hate on good fluff.

[bagheera-san.livejournal.com]

Ahahaha, that video. So true. The shit you do in modern teaching just to make stuff fun... and in the end it's still grammar. The only times I ever learned grammar and it stuck was when I did it the traditional way.

[asthenie-vd.livejournal.com]

Oh, some sense of grammar never hurts in office jobs. Especially when you write long-winded emails to clients. ;)


I liked Who this week (though I could do without any more "love is the greates power in the universe" solutions). Sure, it wasn't the greatest episode of all time, or even the funniest, but I'll never say "no" to a bit of fluff, especially when the rest of the season is so dark and gloomy.

And yeah, Amy being an actress makes much more sense than modelling, what with the little girl wanting an autograph, and actors being the faces of perfume marketing campaigns and what not isn't exactly uncommon.

[bagheera-san.livejournal.com]

I believe that grammar is useful in nearly every situation because language IS grammar. But I very much doubt that the twelfth grade is the right time to learn correct grammar, and Berufskolleg Fachhochschulreife is the equivalent of 12/13th grade. But it's not for me to decide...

[xparrot.livejournal.com]

I think I like this Who best when it's being silly and fluffy - the comedy works better for me than anything else; the drama I'm still not feeling. Though I agree that Matt Smith can handle the Doctor's depth and contradictions.

Does Eleven have more faith in humanity than previous incarnations? Or less faith in himself, perhaps...

Also...teaching grammar to native speakers is rather ridiculous from the psycho-linguistic perspective. Native speakers innately understand grammar - it's how our brains work! The only things anyone needs to be taught are the niggling little exceptions to the rules that are technically "correct" - but don't matter because you can be perfectly understood without them. And if they're commonly misunderstood anyway the likelihood is that they'll vanish from the language eventually anyway...

(the exception is teaching grammar to someone who will be judged by how well they follow those niggling rules - like a writer, or a public speaker. But for most people, yeah, it's a waste of time. Besides, the only way I ever understood grammar was by studying other languages; it's much easier to grasp the concepts from the outside, when they're *not* innate and obvious...)

[bagheera-san.livejournal.com]

Well, now that I've seen the teacher who told me to do the grammar lesson hold a couple of her own lessons, I suspect she just likes really boring stuff. Like, the maximum boredom you could cram into 45 minutes would be her ideal lesson.