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Jackie: For this week's podcastsinenglish.com I'm speaking to Scott. Hi, Scott...
Scott: Hi, Jackie.
Jackie: ...who's just finished a postgraduate course at Nottingham University.
Scott: That's right.
Jackie: How long were you there for?
Scott: About eleven months all told.
Jackie: Right. What was the subject?
Scott: It was an MA, a Masters degree in Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages, a Masters in TESOL.
Jackie: TESOL, right. So am I right in saying then that all the other classmates were native speakers?
Scott: No, no, no, no, no. Most of the students, there were 30 in our group, was from some other country.
Jackie: Oh, really?
Scott: Yes, English was their second language.
Jackie: Oh wow, so people who had English as a second language were doing a TESOL course?
Scott: That's right, yes. It was quite a challenge for them sometimes I think.
Jackie: What kind of nationalities did you have in the class?
Scott: Well, we had Chinese um... several Chinese students, Taiwanese students as well, Thai students, a Vietnamese student, Japanese students um... some students from Kurdistan um... also a girl from Pakistan, they were from all over there were quite a lot of people.
Jackie: Wow, so a real mixture of nationalities?
Scott: Yeah, it really was, yeah.
Jackie: So for them coming to the UK it must have been quite a culture shock then.
Scott: I think it was yes. I spoke to some of them about that and a lot of it was um... how they would act in class, or how to be a student basically in the UK which was very, very different from being a student in their own countries.
Jackie: The relationship maybe between even the students and the teacher is very different from what these people are used to.
Scott: Well, most were very shy about speaking out in class. Being shy, perhaps being unsure, as English is their second language, you know, speaking out in a situation like that, a lot of times people weren't very forthcoming.
Jackie: So some of the students were a little bit reluctant to speak in class. What about their reading and writing skills?
Scott: Well, all students, of course, had to have, you know, a prescribed level of English to get into the course I think was 6.5 IELTS score, something like that. Most people came with pretty good reading skills and... and writing skills, what I mean is that they were able to read and write but they were missing sometimes was this angle of criticality.
Jackie: Critical thinking.
Scott: That's right. Critical thinking, reflected through critical reading, reading critically, writing, expressing your thoughts um... in a way, that I think, that lots of students thought that critical thinking, critical writing would mean to criticise.
Jackie: Right. To say something against the author, or... and they're not happy to do that.
Scott: And they were very...how can I say, that this person is wrong, how can I criticise this famous author because in our countries we... we quote them verbatim in our papers.
Jackie: But... but it doesn't necessarily mean that though, does it?
Scott: No, of course not, no. Critical thinking, the way I understand it... is... is intertwining your own questions er... reading into something reading through something, asking yourself questions while you're reading or exploring an idea.
Jackie: Scott, I know that there will be um... IELTS students listening to the podcast who are going to the UK to do um... some kind of course, Masters or whatever. Can you give them any advice?
Scott: I think the key is learning how to read into things and learning how to question yourself while you're reading or speaking to someone, asking yourself questions that come up or writing them down as you go and thinking about them and using those later in your... when you create your own... your own writing.
Jackie: So maybe just to get into the practice of... of questioning things.
Scott: Yes, yes.
Jackie: Scott, thank you very much.
Scott: Okay thank you, Jackie.
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