I have just completed another summer at INTO University of East Anglia.  I wrote about my experience last year in a longer post.   Induction week was back in June and all 425 students on the 12 week course received their final results on Friday 14 September.

I had a mild panic attack during the first staff meeting in week 12 (the weeks are counted down, not up, because of other 8-week and 6-week courses).  But other than that, I had no issues and coped well with the demands of the teaching. The organisation and structure of the course at INTO, University of East Anglia, was superb once again. Once again, I taught two Humanities and Science classes, rather than Business or Law students.  Once again, I lived on campus with several other teachers.  I taught Humanities C & D (shown below), which consisted of 31 students from mainland China, and one Saudi male.

This year, Research Skills were taught separately by another set of teachers, while there was a return to lectures on Wednesday afternoon for the students.  This seemed to make the workload easier this year, compared with last. Individual tutorials were still required outside of class time, but I managed this perfectly well, along with my fantastic teaching partner, Melissa.  Subject discussion classes were also introduced this time.  Initially the teachers led the discussion with an article or Ted Talk, with students gradually taking over this class towards the end of the course.  This year, I really made full use of Padlet with my writing class.  Both my planning and teacher talking time has been reduced.

Everything about this EAP course suits me, especially the location. Long gone are the days when I would struggle with workload or feel disorientated by living in another country.  It’s good to be in Norwich and I hope to properly move to the city very soon.

I will continue to be an IELTS invigilator with INTO on occasional Saturdays and have every intention of returning next year on the 12-week course.   Meanwhile, I have just started working again for Norfolk Community Learning Services, so not much of a break.  I do have a holiday and conference coming up in Malta, but a change is as good as a rest, anyway.

A selection of photos from the summer are below. In addition, there is a separate collection of photos from our class day trip to the North Norfolk coast in the final week.

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