DATE: Sunday, May 18, 1997                  TAG: 9705160250

SECTION: SUFFOLK SUN             PAGE: 18   EDITION: FINAL 

SOURCE: BY PHYLLIS SPEIDELL, STAFF WRITER 

                                            LENGTH:   59 lines

TCC PROF MAKES THIRD TEACHING VISIT ABROAD BETTY PERKINSON WENT TO THE CZECH REPUBLIC TO TEST HER THEORY ABOUT METHODS OF TEACHING ENGLISH.

Armed with a Czech vocubulary limited to ``thank you,'' ``please,'' and ``help,'' Betty Jolly ``Kitty'' Perkinson set off to teach for a month in Prague, Czech Republic, as part of a faculty exchange agreement between Tidewater Community College and Charles University, a school with 30,000 students and 3,000 teachers.

TCC is the only community college in the United States to have an exchange agreement with Charles University.

What are the most effective ways to teach English? Perkinson, an associate professor of English, has ready answers based on her 17 years experience at TCC. She had a chance to test her theory that methods successful in teaching English are equally effective in teaching English as a second language when she spent March teaching methodology courses to future teachers at Charles University .

This was Perkinson's third visit to Prague where two years ago she had served as a visiting professor at the new Anglo American College. At Charles Perkinson taught methodology courses to seniors and graduate students and also lectured to freshman composition classes.

Perkinson found Czech students similar to TCC students in their motivation and desire to learn, but a bit more relaxed about class attendance. Charles University is a prestigious school and not easily entered, but once students are accepted, their tuition is paid by the government.

Known as the artists' center of the Western world, Prague offers a multitude of cultural events including several symphonies, ballets, operas, and folk performances - many of which Perkinson made a point of attending.

Even with her limited Czech language skills she had no qualms about soloing around the city, riding the public tram and metro or walking to get from her guest house lodgings to anywhere in the city.

``When you are a tourist you tend to walk on the surface of things, hearing and seeing what they want you to see and meeting what I call the ``primped'' people,'' Perkinson said. ``When you are living and working there you get to see life as it really is, what it is like to have to get up on a cold, rainy day with the wind whipping to make a bus to get to work on time.''

Prague, Perkinson observed, even has the smell of New York City on a cold, rainy day.

Lacking the language to communicate, Perkinson's respect for language as a primary communications tool was reinforced. ``I began to think what babies must feel like when they enter the world without a language,'' she said.

While abroad, Perkinson took a long weekend to lecture at the American Studies Center of the University of Warsaw in Warsaw and Bialystok, Poland.

Ready to go back any time she can, Perkinson referred back to Mark Twain for her reasons why. ``Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry and narrow mindedness,'' Twain said. ``Broad, wholesome, charitable views cannot be acquired by vegetating in one little corner of the earth.'' ILLUSTRATION: Photo

Betty J. Perkinson at Vltava River by the Charles Bridge in Prague,

the Czech Republic, where she taught methodology to future teachers.

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