Archive for June, 2007

Ian Ritchie, the chief executive of Wimbledon tennis club, quoted in full by the International Herald Tribune- no doubt for the amusement of their American readers:

“We take very seriously being a sort of world-class event, hopefully”

“And to a degree there’s always been those people who have said it’s a bit cloistered. Maybe with the roof off, I don’t know, it is going to get people more excited”

Great fencing language! (As well as the much despised but almost standard There has been people). He could almost be speaking Japanese with that much use of vagueness. No wonder British English is so popular in Japan (although a certain amount of anti-Americanism is also involved). And ditto as a Brit learning Japanese, you can really express the way you don’t want express yourself.

The most fluent foreigner I have ever met was Italian, but there was something utterly un-Japanese about the way she spoke- no umming and ahhing at all. Japanese and British English must be the only two languages where you make yourself sound more like the natives by lacking fluency.

latest news is that Carson Young is thought almost certain to buy out the Birmingham Brasshouse Language Centre, so David Sullivan could be reduced to running a three classroom school with bored housewife teachers in Ipswich whose days of glory in the European English teaching market are long behind them.

Or am I confusing the big money excitement of English football with the big money excitement of English teaching again?

A sumo wrestler was demoted in the last rankings for driving a car, which is against the rules of the sumo association. Seeing as there would be logistical problems with them trying to ride a horse or be dragged along in one of the few of the rickshaws* that run around looking for tourists, that just leaves waddling along in their flip flops or getting stuck in the underground ticket barriers (seen by a friend of mine). Can only imagine this is a law of the same vintage as the ‘no shooting Welshmen with arrows on Sundays’ still somewhere in the distant recesses of the British lawbooks, the difference being that no-one has been chucked out of the UK Olympic archery team for that one recently.

This is just one example of how Japan sometimes feels like living in a 1950’s American sci-fi set- the architecture and gadgetry are from the future, but the morals and behaviour are from a past that was lost in the UK long before I was born. Female teachers have been poked in the stomach by (admittedly weird) old men for showing a millimetre of skin, travel agents look up your flight arrangements on the computer and then copy it out by hand in triplet and stamp it with a ‘hanko’ made of ivory, and then there’s the bowing etc. etc. And a good thing this mix is too- Japan can sometimes sound antiseptic the way travel writers describe it, but it is anything but. Human contact and a visible personal touch remain the most important things.

Hence perhaps the shocking lack of technology in English language teaching here. In a previous school of mine a computer was finally bought and set up to much excitement by the teachers, only for it to be put back in the box 2 weeks later. Never found out the reason for that one. There are even urban legends of accountants in some companies doing the travel expenses on abacuses that are, if unverified, at least believable.

So, plenty of tips on teaching English with minimal resources coming up from me, and absolutely none on using technology at all.

* Rickshaw is a Japanese invention and the English word a corruption of the Japanese word ‘jin-riki-sha’, human-power-cart. Just thought I’d show off that I know that one…

New research suggests that elder siblings have a higher IQ than younger ones.

 http://www.iht.com/articles/2007/06/25/news/siblings.php

Will be letting my three younger sisters know that several times an hour when I go back for a week to the UK, although obviously not revealing the fact that the result is a statistical average rather than something true in every family- and anyway the difference is only three IQ points.

Needless to say, parents all over America and Japan are taking this a whole lot more seriously than me. Three IQ points in Japan could be the difference between Todai (Tokyo University, guaranteed passport to selling your soul to the corrupt ruling classes for serious cash) and Waseda (also prestigious, but risk of learning some unpleasingly original thoughts and therefore messing up your career prospects ).

For English teaching, the most important part of the research is the suggestion that the reason why the elder brothers and sisters learn more is that when they try to come up with explanations for how things work for their little brat kid brother, it helps them learn the information more than it does the person it is being explained to. Therefore, in the classroom maybe a higher level student who helps a lower level one by explaining grammar is also fixing that language in their own brain forever, and should therefore stop whining all the time about being in the wrong class!!! (Feel better after venting that)

The theory makes sense to me. When I was teaching grammar and the phonemic script for the first time in my first couple of years, I certainly picked it up faster than my students. From now on they can teach me, and pay me for the privilege!

Found a spelling mistake that disproves the theory? Want to publically humiliate your siblings? Want to vent your spleen here so rather than killing whingeing students? Press “comment” below:

A big up to Katie at TEFLogue.com. Now officially a member of the TEFLtastic possie for being the first person to review my blog. Check it out at http://www.tefllogue.com/resources/new-blog-at-teflnet-tefltastic.html

Was very impressed with the rest of the site as well. How someone finds time to read all that stuff and still write a blog, I will never understand. Well, maybe come to think of it other people spend less time trying to link hot springs and the EFL classroom….

Don’t know if the exploding posh hot springs resort in Shibuya (of 8 directions at once crossing and Lost in Translation karaoke fame) made the news abroad. It was another quiet news day in Japan (apparently news of Africa cannot reach east of the Maldives due to some physical law or another), so we were convinced it was a yakuza hit and on the edge of our seats. But it was not to be, just pure incompetence.

Much as I might have been confused and interested by a story of built up volcanic gases destroying a shopping centre a couple of years ago, I lost interest pretty quickly in this one due to no surprises- neither the incompetence that lead to the explosion (the Japanese are as serious and hard-working as they could possibly be, but if their boss isn’t focused on safety neither are they) nor the fact that there as a hot springs resort in the equivalent of Trafalgar Square.

The Japanese really do love their mineral baths. One theory* of why is that they can’t actually relax unless they are told it is good for you and virtually a moral duty to do so. Hence the fact that you can’t reply “Oh no, that’s fine. I enjoyed it” when your boss thanks you for doing some work and you have to make strange noises all the time to show how much effort you are making. And hence the appeal of doing something right and sitting around in radioactive water etc.

And so it often is in the language classroom. As they know they are doing something they should (learning English), they finally feel they can justify chatting, relaxing and generally enjoying themselves. However, they certainly won’t be saying that is their motivation if you ask them, hence the difficulty of doing needs analysis in Japan and students who keep on asking for more homework but not doing any of it.

There might be some everyday human good intentions seeing the light of day there, of course, but where is the fun in not making gross generalisations???

That will officially be the only Google search result for “exploding baths and English teaching”. Coming up next- “Bananas and error correction”

* Vague summary of what I remember from the book “Getting Wet- Adventures in the Japanese Bath”, Eric Talmadge, Kodansha. Highly recommended for those who wonder what the appeal of getting naked and pink with strangers of the same sex could be

Missing- One Subash Melwani and Two Advanced Institutes

Talking of Spain (see below), whatever happened to Advanced Institute in Fernandez de los Rios in Madrid? More important, what happened to the lovely filing system I set up there? Has my life’s work gone to waste???? Is my masterpiece no more?????

Not that this would be the first English school to disappear without trace, if in fact it hasn’t just changed name or something. In this case, the fact that there is nothing on the internet is probably a good sign. At least this school actually taught some students (very well when I was there!) unlike the “schools” in Spain that make their money offering Pakistanis jobs teaching English in Spain as long as they send a “small advance” to sort out their visas.

Anyhows, Scooby doobie doo- where are you? (What a prescient nickname by George Cloonie that turned out to be!)

Still not loving teaching the 18-20 year olds. Passing on my wisdom is all very well, but I prefer to have some passed back my way too. At least I’m having to research some stuff about Oz (where most of them are going next year) to plan their lessons and so getting some culture that way. Well I guess you could say culture, if you could also say Shane Warne is the Leonardo di Vinci of the antipodes. 

An almost entirely positive point about the classes, though, is the textbook they have chosen for me. Am loving teaching with Face2Face Pre-Intermediate and Face2Face Intermediate (both Chris Redston and Gillie Cunningham, Cambridge University Press). Seems to suit my way of teaching down to the ground. Bizarrely, also gives much more useful language for the IELTS exam than the designated book for that course- being the almost completely pointless book Step Up to IELTS (Vanessa Jakeman and Clare McDowell, also CUP). I also hear daily complaints from the other teachers about Achieve IELTS (Marshall Cavendish). Are there no decent IELTS textbooks out there????

Anyone else like these, hate them or want to know more about them?

This is a little out of date, but think things were getting a bit too Japan-otaku on this blog recently, so here’s a bit of Europe to clear the palette. Anyhow, if it’s good enough to be sticky on Dave’s ESL cafe then it’s good enough for the likes of you, young man…

“I was a teacher, teacher trainer and DoS in Madrid for two years. I must say I loved it, but it certainly takes some getting used to. Here’s my summary:

So that’s Madrilenos at play. Work, unfortunately, is just something they do to get themselves to the next piece of play. So the service in shops and restaurants is terrible. Waiters have a superb knack of moving their eyes across the room so as to see every corner of the room but your hand. Strangely this is most true when you want to pay the bill, even when they are turning people away because there are no tables left. So you can sit there sipping on your tiny beer for hours without being hassled and moved on. Again, I didn’t really get the knack, and I didn’t have 3 hours for lunch. But if someone is getting stressed and unpleasant in a bar it’s not the locals, that’s for sure.

In shops again, it can seem like they’re doing you a favour. Well, don’t look it at that way. It’s the owner they’re really doing a favour for- working a 12-hour day for rubbish money and no job security. And they are giving the owner exactly the amount of dedication to the job he deserves- you are just being caught in the crossfire. Go into a shop just for a chat and to practise your Spanish rather than to buy something, and they’ll stop everything for you. Just do all your actual shopping in VIPS, the local 7 Eleven.

The students

Spanish teenagers are what you would expect you’d get by putting those two words together. Like all European teenagers, they are not in the slightest bit interested in learning, and being Spanish they are just that bit louder than the average. They are also spoilt stupid at home, which means at least you will not be teaching Marilyn Manson fans who are going to take a shotgun to you- but also means you may as well tell their parents they are angels and geniuses or suffer the consequences. Again like all teenagers, the girls are 1000 times easier to teach than the boys, and luckily when you get to adult classes it’s 75% female and even they seem to have grown up and changed personality from one day to the next.

The adults still like playing games and chatting and seem to forget homework- but what would you prefer that or stressed up Austrians who want to see an improvement of at least 2.52% every lesson? In Spain you can try out all those wacky games you saw in some Humanistic book and couldn’t try anywhere else. Even in adult classes, the girls are notably more hardworking than the boys. The big mystery of the classes is that they love speaking, but the Spanish sense of the ridiculous means they just cannot take themselves seriously talking to another Spanish person in English. Thinking about it, it does seem a bit silly- but the Spanish can’t stop thinking about it, even at very high levels. Hence the need to make jokes and asides in Spanish, and to directly translate expressions even when they know they doesn’t exist in English. It keeps them happy, and you can get them to translate to you afterwards. In the street, people’s unwillingness to speak English means you will pick up Spanish very quickly- which is good, no?

You might expect Business classes to be more serious- but no. Most companies give English classes because they have to give a certain amount of training to their staff, and English comes cheap. So- get out Communication Games again and make sure you and they have a good time but also feel like they’ve learnt something. And don’t get disheartened when numbers are down by 50% after a couple of months- is this what you would want to be doing in your lunch time?

The job

Split shifts and Saturdays are a fact of life in Spanish Academias. That’s just when the students want classes. Just make sure you negotiate only one term of Saturdays, and make sure you do something useful with your time in the middle of the day. There’s no lack of museums or nice strolls, and then there’s Spanish lessons, or a very long lunch…

The money is generally okay. You can afford a shared flat and to go out for a few beers and tapas virtually every night, and take day trips at the weekend. You might have to cut down on the going out to save enough for holidays etc, though. Schools rarely offer flats or flight money, but living in a cheap ‘hostal’ or ‘pension’ is not much more than living in a shared flat and is okay while you search for somewhere. ”
 

Just read a very convincing explanation of why the Warmlet (warms your arse) and Washlet (cleans it) are so popular in Japan, and why the Massagelet must be just around the corner. The theory goes that as western style (non-squatting) toilets became popular at the same time as the video recorder people expected the same amount of functions from both. From the excellent book “Shinohata”, about 20 years of change in a Japanese village.

 That only leaves me with about 120 “Why on earth…?” questions about Japan now.