[Squinting in the spring sun on the Wisła river in Kraków. Next to my head is Wawel Hill, site of the Royal Castle and the national cathedral]
I'm between jobs at the moment (really!), so I took the opportunity of spending a month in Kraków with the Talking Bear. We studied together here at the Jagiellonian University as part of our Polish degree course, and John loved it so much he emigrated the day after his finals. He's now firing on all cylinders with a translation bureau, a sideline teaching English & Linguistics and what must be the most uncommon name found in a Polish passport (John Beauchamp pronounced in Polish sounds something like Yon Bohamp). Thanks for having me, mate.
On the Bear's recommendation I signed up for a CELTA (Certificate of English Language Teaching to Adults) course during my time here. What I thought would be a holiday of sorts and chance to start revising for law school turned into four weeks of late nights spent familiarising myself with a new set of jargon (Gap-fills at the Clarification Stage, anyone? How about a spot of Test-Teach-Test before the Gist Task?) and preparing for daily teaching practice in real classrooms with real students. I really enjoyed being thrown into the deep end and teaching from the second day of the course. My fellow trainees were a great bunch of very interesting people and it made the world of difference that we were so well supported by experienced and inspiring tutors. I hope they get round to reading this post and decide to stay in touch (not least because my classmates each owe me 25 złoty. Grrr)!
So the CELTA was enjoyably challenging and may prove useful as a means of earning extra income whilst abroad. Unexpectedly, learning to teach English also gave me some food for thought about how learning impacts upon the lawyer's profession.
When presenting complex legal argument in court, advocates need to keep the target of their advocacy (single judge, panel of judges, jury) with them - "because of point A, we submit point B, the effect of which is point C", etc. This can be extremely difficult to do and is one of the reasons why some want to abolish juries in complex fraud trials. A little CELTA methodology might be useful here.
The course encourages analysis of the way in which individuals prefer to study and the adoption of a style of teaching with this preference in mind. If your judge has an auditory preference, offer to read her the section of the statute before directing her to a written version. If your magistrate is teacher-dependent, be prepared for questions for which answers are already in the bundle you have given him - he wants to hear you say it.
Perhaps I am stretching the metaphor between advocate and teacher - effective advocates must also be great salespeople, and the teacher-student / advocate-judge relationship are totally opposite in many ways. However essential to both professions is the skill of conveying information and some reflection on how humans (this includes judges!) best receive and retain information might result in a worthwhile advantage.
BoB recommends International House Kraków for anyone wanting to take a full-time CELTA course for as long as Magda Markiewicz and Declan Cooley are the course tutors. The fees are approximately half of what one would pay in the UK and even after accomodation a significant saving can be made. The course is very intensive however so make sure you leave some time for sightseeing before or after (but not during) the course.
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