International Training At Training Centre ( Melt ) At...

Microteaching on AMES students As part of Defense Cooperation Program (DCP), in 2013 I had an opportunity to attend Methodology of English Language Training (MELT) at Defense International Training Centre (DITC) in RAAF Williams Melbourne. MELT is a four months course with the objective to prepare participants for a teaching role in English courses. The participants from different countries will learn about lesson planning, teaching skills, classroom management, teaching aid production, and English language development. The course has practical focus whereby the participants will perform not only weekly peer teaching but also authentic students teaching. The students are from Adult Multicultural Education Services (AMES) in Werribee who are regularly invited by DITC to support the participants’ microteaching session. Some of the AMES students even recently arrived in Australia from migrant’s detention facilities. There were rumors from fellow predecessors of the course that the microteaching with AM ES students will be very tough due to their low proficiency. I imagined a classroom situation where the teacher struggled to explain a single word whereas the students also struggled to figure out what the teacher said. Some of the MELT students even thought that it would be helpful to provide more body language and images when we were explaining something. Therefore, they started collecting pictures related to the lesson plan not only from the internet but also newspaper and