My photos from yesterday...

Yesterday morning I was thinking about students tested into the PRAGUE DTO who were far too advanced for their classes...yet when I asked them if they would like to move up a level or 3...they invariably refused to budge...and I put this down to simply liking to be in a class where nobody else was confident enough to speak and so they could hog the conversation 'practice' with the native speaker teacher...

A schoolboy called THOMASZ was one such student...odd because the DTO normally had a rule against under-18s from attending classes...he was about 16 as far as I can recall...and he was fluent...in fact, I had an inkling that he might even be an actor...pretending to be CZECH..

THOMASZ also spoke fluent French with a very good accent...he told me that this had been his first 'second language' but curiously enough - he didn't speak English with a French accent - as is normally the case - there is a 'transfer' of accent from second to third foreign language learnt...in relation to English/French...

Anyway, i found out who had interviewed him - SUSAN SINCLAIR who told me that his written test had been appalling...and she had put this guy into a LOWER INTERMEDIATE CLASS - whereas in fact, he had a better command of English than most native speakers I meet around CLACTON...really.

I do not suppose that SINCLAIR was lying...just that he had acted 'not good' at interview...with a view to getting put into that class, for some reason.

The upshot of thinking about the above was...to go for my customary walk yesterday - and to find outside of my BELLE COURT flat window - these two 'keyrings' left out...as clues.

I then began to walk up ELLIS ROAD and walked past a guy who was a standin for TOMASZ...he even had that GREY TWEED CAP that TOMASZ used to wear for every English lesson and wouldn't take it off...

Students like THOMASZ were relatively common in my classes:

THE ROTHSCHILD programmer...PAVEL KUCERA...and i begin to wonder now, they must have wanted to spy upon somebody else in that particular class...