Spice up your teaching – Malta July 2023 - by Eva-Maria Bodner

 

My highlights on Malta

Well, it all started off with a fabulous weekend before the course started on Monday. We decided to fly to Malta earlier to get familiar with the island, its culture, people, sights and landscape to settle in and adapt to the heatwave reaching 43°Celsius.

The isle of Gozo, located next to Malta was worth a visit. The Cittadella in Victoria exceeded my expectations. It felt like being in the middle of an Arabic country. The heat even reinforced the feeling of being in a southern country. We got to hear the Maltese language for the first time by participating in a Sunday service at the Cittadella’s Cathedral (of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary). After that we needed some cooling down and refreshed ourselves by jumping into the crystal-blue water at Xlendi Beach, south of Victoria.

Arriving on Gozo by ferry

It's sizzling hot but the panorma walk along the ramparts must not be missed!

The facade of the Cittadella's Cathedral, one of the 360 (!) chapels and churches on the Maltese islands

Inside the Baroque cathedral we were astonished by the masterful trompe d'oeil:
Who would have guessed that the magnificently painted dome is in reality compeltely flat? 

Sunset near Xlendi Beach

On Monday morning my course started at the Executive Training Institute (ETI) in San Giljan and I felt straight away taken in and overwhelmed by the engaging class activities. We started off on the topic of roleplays and drama, which was a perfect way to get introduced to my other teacher colleagues from Hungary, Poland and the Czech Republic. We definitely had a laugh 😊 Throughout my course I felt inspired to learn new strategies of teaching to spice up my lessons in the future. The course was not only filled with games, engaging activities, fun strategies, but also highly useful websites to motivate learners. Every day I was looking forward to attending the course as it was such a pleasure to build up on my teaching methods. Besides, the interaction with the other colleagues from different countries was highly inspiring. We shared ideas, own teaching methods and developed a variety of new techniques also by using helpful and interactive websites online. So, at the end of the week our “schoolbag” was filled with a collection of practical methodologies for language teaching to spice up my future lessons. As a result, I hope that language learning will be fun for the students I teach and therefore English learning will be a “piece of cake” for them. 

Cultural wise another highlight was definitely the arranged tours by ETI to Valletta, the capital of Malta and Mdina. Mario, a professional guide, led us through the main land-marks of the cities. Mdina also known as an old Medieval Citadel was just picture-perfect. The atmosphere there was magical and beyond imagination. We also strolled along the outskirts of Rabat and learned all about the history of Malta.

Walking through the quiet streets of Mdina, 

formerly the main residence of the Maltese nobility

St. Paul's Cathedral in Mdina

   
I was impressed by the beautiful variety of doors!

The week was completed by a last swim, and I was even snorkelling at Sliema beach, it felt like swimming in an aquarium 😊 Some souvenir shopping had still to be done before packing up for flying home. The whole trip was an inspiring and engaging experience, combined with highly effective teaching strategies to be given a whirl soon in autumn. To put it in a nutshell, attending the course at ETI was an experience to be remembered!  

I'm glad I brought my snorkel - it definitely paid off!