TEFLtastic with Alex Case

Again, Engrish is not exactly my preferred way of referring to “Japanese English”, but getting bored with the same ole blog post titles and probably still at least four to go until I finally get to Z! Am also writing two more serious articles on the topic

hair make (hea meiku) – hair and make up (for a big party, at a hair salon)

half (haafu) – mixed Japanese/ foreign parentage (standard word that is not generally considered insulting)

half coat (haafu kooto) – short coat

ham egg (hamu eggu) – ham and eggs

handle (handoru) – steering wheel or handlebars of bike (perhaps from a time when it was a handle rather than a wheel)

happening (hapuningu) – unexpected incident, not artistic event

happy end (happii endo) – happy ending

hard (haado) – hardware (not hard-core, and very rarely meaning difficult)

heading shoot (hedin shuuto) – a header towards goal

Hello work (hero waaku) – the official and usually used name for government job centres

health centre (herusu sentaa) – recreation centre, rather than a clinic (apparently, never came across this one)

health meter (herusu miita) – bathroom scales (the Japanese “taijukei” is almost exclusively used in conversation, but you will see this written sometimes)

hearing test (hiaringu testo) – listening comprehension test

heartful (haatofuru) – with good or warm feeling/ good hearted??

high collar (hai kara) – stylish/ snobbish – outdated slang

high grade (hai gureido) – high quality anything (not just uranium)

high miss (hai misu) – spinster – outdated expression??

high sense (hai sensu) – good taste

high teens (hai tiin) – late teens

high vision (hai bijon) – HDTV

hip (hippu) – the most common euphemism for buttocks, and not meaning the bit round the side as in English

hire (haiya) – limousine (although often only the same size as a taxi) with driver

home drama (hoomu dorama) – soap opera (but probably not as long running as in most countries, and rarely on more than once a week)

homeless (hoomuresu) – homeless people

homewear (hoomuwea) – tracksuits etc for relaxing around the house

homo – homosexual (not disparaging, apparently)

hot tea (hotto tii) – the opposite of iced tea, used even when the temperature is fairly obvious

hotcake (hotto keiki) – pancake

hun st (han suto) – short for hunger strike

hus (hazu- short for husband) – outdated slang??

hussle (hassuru) – complete determination (apparently)

hut (hyutte) – simple accommodation for mountain climbers

hysteri (hisuteri – from the German for hysteria) – bad temper

idling stop (aiduringu sutoppu) – leaving your engine on while parked, often seen on signs telling you not to do this common action

illustr (irasutro) – illustrated (map etc), usually used as a noun

image up (imejii appu) – improving your image

Indian – still used to refer to American Indian/ Native American, and almost exclusively as Indian Indian is “indojin”

infla (infure) – short for inflation, and almost always used in place of the longer word

infra (infura) – infrastructure

initial (inisharu) – used for “your initials”, but not with the more general meaning of “first”

inside report (insaido repooto) – exposé

intelli (interi) – intellectual (noun referring to person)

intelligent (interijento) – something which is computerized (apparently)

interphone (intafoon) – intercom

iron (airon) – used to refer to the thing used for ironing and the action, not to the metal

jar (jya) – electric rice cooker (apparently, although I say suihanki and my in-laws use yet another expression)

jeans (jiinzu) – denim (as well as jeans, although they are often known as “G-pan”, from “jeans pants”) jet coaster (jetto koosta) – roller coaster

jockey (jokki) – a mug of beer

J-pop (jei poppu) – Japanese pop music (this is now probably standard English among people who know it exists)

jumper (jyanpa) – jacket of thick, rough cloth, something like a denim jacket, not a synonym for sweater/ pullover

just (jyasuto) – exact/ exactly, not “only”, with predictable confusions when telling the time in English

k (rather than km) – kilometres

Karte (kaata, from German) – medical records

katsu – short for cutlet, and now all the way back into the English language as part of tonkatsu

key holder (kii horudaa) – key ring

keyboard (kii boodo) – used to refer to a computer, not a piano

lab (rabbu) – photos only, not science

lady first (reidii faasto) – ladies first

level up (reburu appu) – improvement

les (lezu) – short for lesbian, and apparently not insulting

limousine bus (rimojin basu) – airport shuttle bus

lip (rippu) – lip salve

live house (raibu hausu) – music venue

living kitchen (ribingu kitchin) – open plan

LL (eru eru) – XL

loca (roka) – short for (film) location

long seller – long term seller, like a best seller but in time rather than sales

Los (rosu) – short for Los Angeles, as LA is rarely if ever used

low teens (roo tiin) – early teens, i.e. someone under 15

lumpen (from German lumpen proletariat) – homeless people (never seen this as “homeless” is the normal noun in Japanese, maybe technical or old fashioned??)

Part One

Part Two

Part Three

Reading and blogging about Japan, of course!

Recent questions that I have kind of answered on JapanExplained (after a long hiatus) include:

- Why would anyone coat a park in grey dust?

- Why do Japanese companies pay more as you age?

- Why are Japanese companies so obsessed with quality?

- Why do the Japanese not speak better English? 2nd attempt

- Why is the foreign source still so often marked in conversational Japanese?

and

- Why are the Japanese so into (real) robots?

That New in the post title is just part of the name of the book, because all this stuff has been up for a while but only just got round to doing the obvious thing and arranging it by module (= unit) and so the new stuff that I do put up soon should, uniquely for stuff on TEFLtastic, be easy to find. Until then, there are two or three worksheets per module up, mostly communication games and vocabulary practice, but also some homework tasks and self-study links for students:

New Cutting Edge Intermediate Communication Games and Other Handouts

Just when you least need them, I’m sure, but have a backlog of ones I’ve been writing and using since June who’ve been patiently waiting for my holiday to see the light of day.  As I’d half forgotten that some of these existed, I think you can trust my judgement for once that some of these are quite nice. Have roughly arranged them so that my favourites are near the top.

What band names mean (at last, I’ve found a category of English that really every student comes across all the time!)

Advanced functions review games

Intermediate functional language review games

Pingu gets a bike (a very very simple word recognition for colours and toys video activity, with a little bit of colouring to keep them busy too. Should even be possible with some six year olds)

Your weekend and life predictions and possibilities

Jobs mini presentations (I might not be able to do much about their speaking, but at least I can make them speak for longer!)

Exile on Main Street match the reviews to the number of stars (positive and negative adjectives and other vocabulary)

Photos from your weekend Extended speaking

Photos from your life Extended speaking

Mini-presentations revision game (for Natural English Intermediate, but easily adaptable for other books)

Other worksheets designed for use with New Cutting Edge Intermediate and Incredible English 1, but useable with most classes I reckon

My post on this classic and long lost site wasn’t supposed to be a campaign for its return as I thought that Simon Barne had done a Jim Thompson on us and so made it impossible, but the man himself ended up there with messages to give us hope and yesterday announced that almost the whole site is back up here. Onto the next campaign then- how about Bring Back the Anti-Grammar Grammar Book?

Apparently many prospective TEFL teachers nowadays think that 4 weeks is too long to study to become a teacher. Luckily, there are also the dedicated few like Jo Gillespie who decide to make the whole CELTA thing longer while also properly learning how to control, and maybe even teach, the shorter of our students (in both height and attention spans). Is that as hard as it sounds? Is it all worth it? Here are her experiences, musings and advice:

“I’m writing about the two-week intensive course, and when they say “intensive”, they mean EXACTLY that. Cambridge have taken about two-thirds of what was the four-week CELTYL and compressed it into a two-week course. So you can expect Assignments, Tasks, and Teaching Practice (TP) to come in a continuous wave once you’ve begun.

What’s it really like?

It is FULL ON!

Our course began on a Friday, which gave us an orientation day. We got to know our TP group a little, and after a morning of housekeeping, had guided lesson planning with our key tutor to prepare us for our first Teaching Practice on the Monday morning. After that first relatively gentle day the rest of the time passed in a blur, and it was helpful to have a GREAT support team at home. There were some on the course who even had their partners cutting and pasting well past midnight before a TP day.

The course focused on the mid-age range. One week we worked with a group of 8 to 10 year-olds and the next week, 11 to 13 year olds. Each TP group taught every morning for two hours, then had feedback with their key tutor and TP group. I found this the most useful part of the whole course. Reflecting on the lesson just presented allowed us to focus on what went well, and really clarified our personal challenges. Our tutors were very direct and specific in their recommendations, and we finished each TP session with action points to work on. (I especially enjoyed one tutor’s way of saying “So, your NEXT challenge is….”).

After feedback, we had time for lesson planning in our groups and a quick lunch, then there were seminars as a whole group. These covered some of the theory, but were mainly of a practical nature, ranging from learning styles and multiple intelligences, through to ideas for teaching skills, and maintaining discipline in the classroom. There was one session on Very Young Learners (pre-schoolers) and teenagers.

It seemed to me that the people who got the most out of the course were the ones able to work well as part of their TP group. As we were teaching a 40 minute slot in a two-hour lesson, it was important to be able to liaise with the other teachers, so as to present a coherent whole.

Another thing I noted was that the people in the group who had only recently finished their CELTA (or a DELTA module) seemed to find the actual writing up of lesson plans (in the correct format) easier than those of us for whom initial training was a distant memory.

One thing I would have liked was a specific reading list before the course began. I had read some useful books, but not the key one they recommended on the first day of the course. If you can, read “How Languages Are Learned” by Patsy Lightbown and Nina Spada, and also “Children’s Minds” by Margaret Donaldson, and “Children Learning English” by Jayne Moon (my personal favourite because it contains ideas for reflecting on lessons, which you’ll need to do during the course). Once you are actually doing the course, you’ll need something more practical, and the one I used the most was “500 Activities For The Primary Classroom” by Carol Read. We were provided with a lot of course books to draw on, but usually found ourselves preparing our own materials (which was also a positive aspect of the course).

And is it really worth it?

It depends. If you were thrown in the deep end teaching young learners soon after completing your initial TESOL qualification, you’ve probably managed to gain enough experience that this qualification would be “just a piece of paper”, especially if you’ve been studying the theory and keeping up with the research.

However, if you have NO experience teaching children, or if you have only a little experience, and need a confidence boost (this was my case!), I would say that the YL Extension to the CELTA is well worth doing.”

Jo Gillespie is a New Zealander now living in Italy. She got the Trinity Cert. TESOL back in 1996, but didn’t get into teaching until 1999. After a year in the Czech Republic (Mladà Boleslav), she moved first to Thiene in the north of Italy, and then to a small village just north of Rome. She teaches all levels and ages, and has just finished the YL Extension to the CELTA. She welcomes questions and comments, and also blogs (randomly) at www.jogillespie.blogspot.com

“Dear Alex,

I recently read your reflection on the Delta course on Tefl.net and as a prospective Delta trainee I was quite inspired by what you’d written. I have some doubts about the course so I’d like to ask your opinion on a few things, I hope you’ll be able to advise me.

Firstly, although I do have sufficient teaching experience I have never been on any training courses and have not yet started the pre-reading. I was told at interview that I could still do the course but would have to buckle down, yet at the same time that waiting another year to give me time to prepare would be pointless. What’s your opinion on this? Would a year of preparation, pre-reading, attending courses etc. make the Delta more mangeable? Or could I fit in the pre-reading now in the two months I have before the course and be ready all the same?

Did you have to research a specialist area for your extended assignment (this is now the case with Module 3)? How did you choose your area and manage to collect samples of data from the students? Did this take up a lot of your time on the course? I am concerned as I think we are supposed to prepare this in advance but as I’m not currently teaching I won’t be able to choose a group of students and collect data from them until the course starts.

Where did you take the Delta? Was it the intensive course? Did your trainers devote lots of time to exam preparation? How much time did you spend on revision?

One last thing, would you advise buying all the essential books or just one or two and then borrowing the rest from the library?

Thanks in advance for your time, I really appreciate it. I look forward to hearing from you.”

Will try to find time to put my own answers in comments below tomorrow, so that gives you all 24 hours to get in there first!