Scotch College

Staff In the spotlight: Elaine Tarran

What do you like most about your job?

The most enjoyable aspect of my job is to getting to know students individually: their particular interests, their motivation for learning a language, and of course their particular sense of humour. The excitement when students return from an exchange experience feeling they really have lived and become familiar with another language, its people and culture, is a real buzz.

Equally fulfilling is the glow of understanding when a student has grasped a challenging new linguistic concept, or realises he has been able to understand, and be understood by, a native speaker of the particular language he is studying. Language teaching offers the opportunity to get to know individual students well, both through oral and written language activities, as well as the informal chats that occur beyond class.

What are a few amusing or memorable incidents in your career at Scotch?

When I started at Scotch in 1996 I got to know quite a few boys, thanks to their friendships with students from my former school, MLC. In that first year at Scotch, it happened quite often that a boy would introduce himself and pass on a greeting from some of the MLC girls I had taught, and that created a nice link for me between past and present students.

Especially memorable have been the school trips which I accompanied: the Scotch exchange trip to Lyon in France, and the China tour. I remember the stallholders at the Silk Market in Beijing being entertained by our students’ bargaining skills – in amazingly fluent Chinese – as they struck deals. ‘These boys drive a tougher bargain than we Chinese!’ was one local’s comment.

Similarly, in a restaurant in Paris, the kindly manager suggested to me that one of our students may not realise what was in the special of the day which he had ordered – andouillete (a sausage made from pig’s intestines) – but our student replied in confident French, saying he knew exactly what an andouillette was, and had been introduced to this delicacy by his French host family in Lyon. I loved observing our students’ willingness to push boundaries, and their confidence in giving new experiences like this a go.

Which student expressions of personal growth impress you?

Boys make big strides as they move through Years 7 to 12, and along the way develop from little boys to young men. Some set challenging goals right from the start, and pursue them with dedication – in their studies, in their engagement in some of the many activities on offer at Scotch, and in their friendships. To stay focused on these goals requires commitment, hard work and passion.

However, just as impressive are the boys who struggle to achieve academically, or lack self-confidence, but who make choices and keep trying until they find the right studies, or activities, for their particular skills and talents.

How are you involved in student forms of leadership or challenging learning?

Encouraging exchanges and in-country experiences through which students learn to communicate in a different language and behave in culturally appropriate ways is one of the goals of any language teacher, and so is encouraging and challenging our students to step outside their own culture and look back at it with a critical eye. I like to challenge students to identify positive and negative aspects within their own and other cultures.

To be a successful linguist, you often have to work things out for yourself – there won’t always be a dictionary or interpreter there to help you. To help develop that skill, students often encounter new linguistic patterns before learning them formally. Usually someone queries the unfamiliar pattern, and in the discussion that follows, students are regularly challenged to work out the grammatical rule from their own reasoning, before being given the formal explanation. Similarly, in comprehension tasks students are challenged to use their existing knowledge of vocabulary and grammar to work out the unfamiliar parts of a text.

How do you make your ‘own space’ in the busy school week?

There’s not much time during the working week, but I am a keen reader – of fiction and non-fiction – and at weekends I enjoy coastal walks with my husband, going to theatre and films, dining out with friends, and most importantly, supporting Melbourne Victory at their home games.