MASTERIZED OR MARTYRIZED?

Our experience within this master's course has been a mixture of 'comings and goings' of feelings. We belong to a generation who is undergoing an important shift into the educational system and this is being a double-edged tool for both students and teachers.

On the one hand, there are some positive aspects about the master's development. We are dedicating more time studying in depth issues related to education (psychological teenagers characteristics, curriculum constraints, teaching methodologies, innovative programmes for EFL, etc) since the master has been extended in time. The training period has also been prolongued and, as a consequence, we have a wider idea of the classroom reality. Apart from that, we have been required to work in groups sharing different views and impressions as well as to make a great amount of oral presentations, contributing to the enrichment of our confidence when speaking in public, a feature which is essential in the teaching practice.

On the other hand, we also find some shortcomings in the master. To start with, we have been required to do a huge amount of projects, presentations and other type of works within a very short period of time. This has been a difficult issue to deal with because of the time constraints and the volum of the works required. From our point of view, there is an unbalance between the quantity of papers and their quality. The quality should be over the quantity; therefore, the time invested would be more profitable. Moreover, we think that the content of the master is not as practical as it should be and it lacks the explanation of important issues that are relevant in the teaching profession such as error correction (when is it better to correct the students? how can we do it? which is the best way to do it?), classroom management (what can we do with those students who do not want to study? how can we teach English providing them a lot of input?), teaching strategies and not only being overloaded with abstract theories, and a large etcetera.

Despite of this, we expect to finish the master with a certain ability to face our profession in an efficient way.