I’m almost three months into teaching English abroad in Vilnius. My timetable consists of working alternating Saturdays, therefore, as far as travelling is concerned, last weekend I took a city break to Riga, Latvia. Because Riga really is a beautiful city. When I’m working during the weekend I teach kids and teenager groups for a duration of two hours per lesson. I plan to use this opportunity to develop my teaching experience with young learners because there are many differences compared to teaching adults ESL. It’s important to have clear instructions and be energetic, fun, enthusiastic and full of creative ideas. For example, I use Kahoot! in ESL classrooms, I would recommend this free online quiz/ mobile application game which can be used as a formative assessment tool. As a result of gaining my TEFL qualification, I have previous experience of teaching young learners while working in summer camp positions in Poland. The aim of the summer camps was for kids/ teenagers to practice their English as much as possible through involving them in a variety of fun activities as well as learning new vocabulary and structures. In fact, I’m looking out for new opportunities to teaching English this summer in Central European summer camps.

I have covered some lessons for my colleagues, teaching PTE Academic: Pearson Test of English to teenagers. Primarily, I had to prepare a lesson for three main parts to the test: speaking and writing (together), listening and reading. I also have some previous knowledge of Cambridge English: Advanced (CAE) Exam, Cambridge English: Proficiency (CPE) Exam, IELTS Exam.

In other news, I visited the Museum of Genocide Victims (KGB Museum) since I didn’t know a lot about the history behind it and that the building was used as a KGB prison. Staying with culture, in Vilnius, it’s the 23^rd Vilnius International Film Festival “Kino Pavasaris”. I’ve seen three films, however, the one that stood out the most was titled Dovlatov which charts six days in the life of a writer who lived and worked in 1970s Soviet Russia. Finally, I’m looking forward to the open house Vilnius festival which is an open architecture weekend happening on 28-29^th April.

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