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Showing posts with label video lessons. Show all posts
Showing posts with label video lessons. Show all posts

Sunday, May 17, 2020

LOCKDOWN CASTELLDEFELS - DAY 63 – Sunday, 17th May




Today is, apparently, the last day of the daily ritual of applauding the front line workers at 8pm.  Is this a significant moment?  Why are we stopping?  The virus is still killing and infecting and, while the numbers are decreasing, there is no real end in sight for Covid-19 in Spain.

     I can understand the need for progress and also the need to give confidence and assurance to a population that is truly fed up with the lockdown.  But, and it’s a big but, the virus is not confined by borders or political pronouncements.  Reactions to the virus can be spun, but the reality of infection and death transcend spin – as I fear we will discover in a couple of weeks time when the full effects of the loosening of the restrictions become clear.

     As the weather gets steadily warmer people are becoming more relaxed about the dangers of the virus.  Youngsters are acting as if they are immune and the very young, usually with their parents, are rarely masked.  I think that there is a real problem with the basic knowledge of transmission.  There was a very revealing piece of film where a group of people went to a buffet with one of the group having a small amount of colourless fluorescent paint cupped in his hand.  The group had their meal and then they were checked with a UV light to see how many had evidence of the paint.  It was everywhere: hands, faces, tables, glasses, clothes, everywhere!  If kids are asymptomatic you cannot expect them to behave in a way that is going to limit infection.  And without testing we are running on a prayer anyway.



I took my part in the last 8pm clap for the front line workers.  It may be my sentimentality, but I thought that there were more of us this evening than usual.  I wonder if our little neighbourhood will take any notice of the ‘last’ element of the clap and just go on doing it regardless.  After all, the thanks are still due because the situation is still there.  And even if we didn’t have the bloody Covid-19, health workers are worth applauding anyway!



Tomorrow is the penultimate video lesson of the Catalan course that has been interrupted by the virus.  I cannot, with the best will in the world, say that the lessons have been a success and I think that most learners and teachers have written off the rest of this year.  As our little school is for adult education I think that many of the ‘students’ are apprehensive about social distancing and they have written off the year already.

      We have been offered (as far as I can tell) free access to the course for next year, except were we to want to progress, our school does not offer the next level in Catalan so we would have to go to another centre.  Don’t get me wrong, my level of Catalan is nowhere near the level that we are ‘doing’ this year, never mind about going up a level.

     Tomorrow is conversation!  I hope to go that there is at least one other student joining the class to take some of the pressure off me.  You see, even though I am ritually humiliated in these classes, I do not stop going.  There is a part of the fellow teacher feeling for our tutor, one has to give one’s support even if it is not exactly what one wants to do.

     Let the linguistic mispronunciation fall where it will, I will soldier on.  Or I could try and do a bit of work and a generous amount of revision? 

     Nah!  Wing it!