Archive for December, 2007

We’re down to curried TEFL Xmas now, so it’s very nearly the end… 

“We were at the end of Christmas lunch. The turkey and the pudding were settling nicely and the wine had rendered us conversational in that idling way in which nothing said is of any great significance. My son Brian mentioned that he ought to find a new hobby; I replied that he might try steel engraving. He and my wife stared at me in utter confusion and amazement. “Why would anybody want to do that?” she demanded. “Well,” I replied, “It came to my mind because I’ve just been reading about a nineteenth-century artist who did it.” Brian shook his head in puzzled exasperation. “Stealing gravy?”

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‘When [the family] would have an avocado salad the father would point out that the word “avocado” originates in the Aztec “ahucatl” meaning testicles and his mother would happily tell everyone that the word “salad” comes from salt and hence they were eating “salted testicles”‘ (more…)

“My boom” (as the Japanese like to say, meaning “what I am really into”) at the moment is Scientific American Mind, and more specifically the free podcasts available on the website- with a special mention for the 60 second ones that can fill in the time between changing from the Yamanote line to the Keihin Tohoku line at Shinagawa station almost exactly. As well as being interesting and often connected in some way  with language teaching, Scientific American Mind articles and podcasts are another thing that makes me wonder why people who write about Linguistics and (more) Applied Linguistics are not capable of using language in a way to make their subjects interesting for everyone and easy to read.

Anyhow, a recent one that made me think is an article and 60 second podcast that says memories of subjective feelings are much less reliable than memories of facts. As most student satisfaction questionnaires are based on them remembering their feelings about various parts of the course, seems we might have a problem…

Other stories of TEFL interest on the same site include: (more…)

Why is education usually such a national and personal priority in Japan?

Why is which university you go to so important in Japan?

Why do Japanese students fall asleep in class?

Why are Japanese Junior High School kids so different in class to Japanese Elementary School kids?

Why are academic standards in Japanese schools dipping compared to the rest of the world?

Why are Japanese kids so well behaved?

Why are juku cram schools such a big thing in Japan?

Answers to all these mysteries on the Japanese education explained page on my new blog Japan Explained FASAQ.

In my newly developed quest to educate you English Lit grads with the world of science that is passing us English teachers by, here are the highlights from the Discover Magazine 100 top science stories of the year that touch directly or less so on the world of TEFL:

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This was supposed to be a self-congratulatory post to pat myself on the back for a good 6 months of TEFLtasticking, but I must be getting sentimental in my old age and/ or around Xmas, because instead I’d like to give my TEFL Oscar acceptance speech and thank everyone else involved:

I’d like to thank:

-All the people who are responsible for the 60,000 views or so there have been in 6 months, including the person who searched for “alex case for hamster” on Christmas day, and if that means just 6 people viewing 10,000 times each I’d like to thank each of you even more…

- Anyone who has written any of the 450 comments, especially those who answered questions from readers (more questions always welcome) and those who made me chuckle

- All the blogs who have linked to me or mentioned my stuff, especially if there are any who I haven’t paid back because their mutual link has got lost in my mess of a links page

- Whoever the people at Wordpress might be doing whatever it is they might do that somehow makes it possible to do this

And a special mention for my guest writers (please have a click and a read if you have’t read their posts yet, it makes a very nice break from me waffling on) Katie from TEFLlogue for writing about “When I am TEFL President” and Do’s and Don’ts in Bosnia, Kaithe for writing about being Troubled in Tunisia, Sharon for writing about Eastern Europe when it really was an adventure, and Laurent from lo-la.co.uk on passing as and improving on a native speaker English teacher in Japan.

And finally a huge thank you to the editor of TEFL.net, who first suggested me starting a blog in June this year, for which my eternal gratitude should more than make up for the curses he gets from my fiancee, who I guess should also get a thank you for putting up with it. And thanks to my agent, my hairdresser, my make up artist, my stylist, I love you guys, sob sob sob, wave to the crowd (this speech still needs some work I think, all done much better by John Cleese)

“Mao Yu (pronounced “miao” without the “i” and a really harsh “you”), or Alice, as she is called, 28, comes from Chong Qing (pronounced “ch-oe-ng” and “ch-ing”), a small municipality in the heart of China with over 30 million people.”

Nice try at educating the readers, but they perhaps should have thought about the negative implications of the words “really harsh” before printing that one.

It goes on: (more…)

Christmas being a time of year to look with sympathy at the problems of the less fortunate, I’d like to take a look at human trafficking in Japan.

Tempted by stories of a professional job for good money, once they arrive in Japan they realise they were only recruited for their looks (blue eyes and blond hair being prefered by the Japanese clients) and they are locked up in a small room for up to 8 hours a day, forced to service up to 16 clients, usually older bored housewives. The fact that all this often happens in a glass walled room makes it even more demeaning.

Although most of the people trafficked quickly realised they have been tricked, the fact that their money quickly gets spent on the alcohol they need to get them through this horrible experience means that many of them cannot even afford the airfare home, and the fact that many of them were fleeing problems at home such as still living with their parents or not being able to find a girlfriend means that many of them actually have nowhere else to go.

So, when you are tucking into your turkey in front of a blazing fire, spare a thought for someone for whom Xmas is just a piece of luke warm KFC chicken and please donate a few pennies to the “Save the Eikaiwa Teachers Fund”. (more…)

By a superhuman struggle with the technology that I can not even understand, let alone reproduce, the TEFL.net editor has made it possible to put PDF and Word files on the Worksheets page, and if I can stop myself starting a new blog everyday in the near future I will do precisely that.

The first worksheet available in not one but two formats is the latest Friends video worksheet of mine I believe I have been trying to get you all to use before- Friends Series One New Year Episode (the one with the monkey).

Also a (less personal) thank you to PDFonline, which is an amazingly quick and totally free way of converting Word documents to PDF worksheets that I stumbled on.

Setting up blogs really should be made more difficult to stop people like me getting carried away…

The latest TEFLtastic Christmas baby is Japan Explained, where today you can find out:

Why do the Japanese have cream and strawberry sponge cakes at Xmas?

Why do the Japanese eat chicken (including KFC) for Christmas?

Why is Xmas considered a romantic time for couples in Japan?

Why do the Xmas decorations come down on the 25th of December in Japan?

by reading “Japanese Christmas Explained” here.