Archive for December, 2007

As much as I try to defend TEFL as a serious profession (for some), I’ve got to admit that most of us have it well easy compared to a secondary school French teacher:

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Although I often feel disappointed with the lack of any social value in my life of teaching adverbs of frequency to spoiled teenagers who want to be dolphin trainers and finding grammar points in Friends videos and typing up worksheets, it seems all English teachers must be on the side of justice and freedom after all. If you can’t judge us by our friends (because they are almost all TEFL teachers too and so not a good control group), have a look at our enemies:

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Don’t know how and when it happened, but no kids’ classes at all this year so had no chance to see their happy and snotty little faces when doing the lessons below, but WiseHat lessons are usually very stimulating for both teacher and students, very occassionally in a slightly odd way! (more…)

Language for entertaining a foreign visitor

More to come over the weekend, but here are a couple of stocking fillers to keep you happy until you can open the big lesson plans under the tree on Sunday or Monday:

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“Hmm, two independant thought alarms in one day. The children must be over stimulated. Willy, remove the coloured chalk from all the classrooms”

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Stephen Fry gets heavy with the grammar correction (not recommended viewing for CELTA trainees!)

Room 101- Grammar Bullies (recommended viewing for 74 year old Applied Linguistics professors)

Getting published in TEFL- Choosing a route

There are 7 main routes to getting yourself published in the world of EFL. Although they are not mutually exclusive and a successful effort in one sphere can often lead to opportunities in another, I think it is worth examining the advantages and disadvantages of each one as people with limited time and energy might want to put most of their efforts into to one or another of the options and/ or people who were thinking of one of the options might think it is actually better to at least start themselves off in one of the others once they have seen all different approaches that are available. (more…)

Problem hotels fun roleplay (some and any/ Travel English/ complaining and dealing with complaints)

“Economists use decimal points to prove they have a sense of humour” (more…)