English Language and Literature Teaching (ELLT) was a course based on practical application, with a dose of theory when required. The highlight of the course was that we got to teach a class nearly every week.
We were informed about the new-age methods of teaching, and what we should do to avoid getting stuck in the age-old 100% lecturing style of teaching. The freedom to experiment allowed us to mix and match multiple methodologies and change our teaching plans on the go. This practice helped us in the end when the pandemic lockdown began and we had to change our CA and SEE to make sure it was remote-friendly.
CA-1 and CA-2 were great in helping us plan an entire session for a class, and take care of all aspects, while applying the methodologies we had picked up along the way. The class had to be moved to Zoom, which was a different kind of learning experience.
In terms of syllabus, the units seemed like a staggered rollout of teaching methodologies to us, which got more complicated as the course continued.
Unit - 1 covered the basic methods that helped introduce the concepts of ELLT, teaching us the principles and challenges of the field. In my opinion, it was a great introduction to the course.
Unit - 2 introduced us to more complicated teaching learning strategies, and gave us more insight into planning a class with an interactive session in mind. This was my favorite unit to tackle as the mapping-based methodologies were fun to plan for.
Unit - 3 was about curriculum building, and included advanced teaching methodologies. This unit helped me in planning for the CA and SEE classes, even though I did not directly employ the methodologies.
Unit 4 was more about applying the methodologies learnt to plan a session, and it was helpful with the session planning, in addition to the other tricks we had learnt throughout the course.
All in all, this course was great because of the amount of practical work we did. Professor Andrew Barreto was also a great help in guiding us to make better choices with the implementation of methodologies with regards to the topics we had picked.