Archive for the ‘Teaching’ Category

Re-reading my little story on weeping housewives (or not) who hadn’t done their homework, I must admit that it does really cut it as an anecdote- never been a talent of mine, as I find my own life incredibly dull and so hardly worth telling anyone about. To make up for it, here’s the one anecdote from other teachers I have heard over the last 13 years that has made me laugh more than any other. 

Our hero starts with a fairly typical set of difficult TEFLing circumstances, he’s got the Headway textbook and teacher’s book but no tape. Not worried so far, he is slightly put off by the fact that the lesson that is coming up is the part of Headway with the song “Wonderful Tonight” by Eric Clapton. Luckily, he finds a solution. (more…)

… you can’t explain anything that happened in your lesson to a non-TEFLer in less than two attempts

 … none of your teaching stories are funny to anyone outside the profession

I had a classic example of this recently when I told my new wife that one of my two students in a home lesson cried for 45 minutes because I nagged her about her homework and then was smiling and laughing by the end of the class. The slight misunderstanding was that she thought I was talking about an adult class. The mental picture gave me a laugh, but I still told her that she would have to try to be a bit more understanding with the neurotic teaching stories (just think of us as lovey actors) or I’d have to send her back under the Japanese two week purchase cooling off period.

You can see the original You Know You’ve Been in TEFL Too Long post here, EFL Geek’s take on it here and the original You Know You’ve Been in Japan Too Long When here.

Maybe a few more actually, as I didn’t have any record for the first few months. It’s not Craiglist, but as my blog stats are the closest thing I get to payment (I like to think of them as monopoly money) I’m going to give myself a pat on the back.

And why should you care? Well, this is your perfect chance to jump on the bandwagon and get yourself heard on TEFLtastic with comments, links and/ or guest articles. To illustrate what I mean, here goes with trying to drive up the traffic on my neglected Japanexplained blog with an unsubtle selling of my post The Big List of My Japanese Faux Pas, which is mainly about messups in the classroom and therefore nice and relevant to anyone who has taught foreigners I reckon… Just as unsubtle selling of your own blogs and sites, as long as also vaguely connected to TEFL and teaching abroad, also allowed! You can start in the comments to this post if you like.

Number one: cosplay

Only joking- I mean of course that the status of English teachers is not so obviously low that when I met the love of my life and asked her to marry me she actually agreed!

You won’t hear a lot about it on the TEFL forums, but there are actually a lot of other advantages to choosing Japan to teach in: (more…)

I’ve been reading “English as a Lingua Franca: Attitude and Identity” (hence “the ELF” of the post title) by Jenny Jenkins, and although its a much easier read than that Pseuds Corner book title might make you think, the main reaction so far is “Who cares?”

To summarize 37 pages in 37 words, the concept of English as a Lingua Franca is that as more and more English is used between non-native speakers a new variety or varities of English are being created that are just as valid and important as Glaswegian English or even RP and SAE- and much more relevant than those forms to most students studying English. So far, so fascinating- if we are in the process of the language and teaching changing, you can probably tell from the post below that I’d be happy to have something to shake things up. The important little grammar word here, though, is “if”.

Let’s see what Prof Jen Jen has to say about it:

 ”if a substantial number of non-native speakers did come to see themselves as a single group with major shared interests, the impact on the international language would be considerable” C Brumfit, “Individual Freedom in Language Teaching” pg 116, quoted by Jennifer Jenkins, “English as a Lingua Franca: Attitude and Identity” pg 5

“it seems entirely reasonable that there will ultimately be ELF literature” pg 14

“it could be predicted that ELF will eventually fit all these criteria” pg 15

Elsewhere in the book she seems to be admitting that the majority of native speaker and non-native speaker teachers, students and linguistics don’t believe in ELF and that it is emerging at best and doesn’t yet meet most of the criteria for a variety of language.

So, not the most encouraging of messages on the present importance of ELF in the world and in our classrooms, especially for a book that is meant to be a defence against people who attacked her previous book and is in many ways a polemic against her critics. The good news is that being a polemic makes it very readable in a “Michael Lewis for our time” kind of way, and I found the dogmatism far less annoying in print than it was in her lecturers in my King’s College London MA- the ones that eventually made me give up on it…

So in summary, and in the place of the proper review of this book I will probably never write, a bracing read full of fascinating ideas that will never happen and the academic feuds that such things tend to lead to.

I’ve been teaching three virtually identical classes every week for the last couple of months, something I hadn’t done since doing primary school classes in Thailand. For some reason the second attempt at teaching the lesson is always better than the first but by the third one I’m forgetting what I’m talking about halfway through my sentence, losing my page and generally switching so much onto automatic pilot that I forget where the controls are.

No suprise there- I’ve had the same thing several times over the years, and its always the second one that is the peak. The worrying thing is that the third class is the one that reminds me most of what my teaching is generally like at the moment. And so the question springs to mind- is this the point where all the reading and thinking and blogging in the world is not going to change the fact that my teaching simply isn’t going to get better. I’ve been holding off the decline for the last few years like an aged defender whose energy levels aren’t up the job anymore but whose eye for the ball and new love of the game since the pressure is off makes up for it. Sooner or later, though, the fact that you’ve done it all means your desire has gone and a move to the second division is just around the corner. And 37 and just married seems perfectly timed for the defender extended metaphor to work…

Then again, maybe I’m just a striker that has gone off song. If so, whether my off period will be Raul-length or not and whether I’ll need to just wait it out, shake up my training regime or get a transfer to get over it, only a genuis manager would know. Even more of a short supply in TEFL than in footie as far as that goes…

Or to put it in a more TEFLy way- is there a teaching Intermediate plateau?

Hopefully it’s just Mayday bank holiday rather than my lack of effort TEFLtasticwise recently that has seen a sudden drop in my number of views, but if only to make myself feel better I thought I’d give a list of where I’ve been making much more effort elsewhere, with links:

TEFL.net Idea Thinktank

15 fun ways to switch students onto graded readers

15 fun gapfill tasks

15 fun job application practice tasks- CV writing, cover letter, interview practice, HR vocabulary etc.

TEFL.net articles

15 common misconceptions about Business English and ESP

15 cultural differences in the Japanese classroom

15 more cultural differences in the Japanese classroom

15 criteria for a good cultural training lesson

15 more criteria for good cultural training lesson

15 important cultural differences in the classroom

15 more important cultural differences in the classroom

Onestopenglish (Macmillan) articles

Motivating teachers whose Business English students miss class

UsingEnglish articles for teachers

Why your students overuse their dictionaries- with solutions

70 characteristics of a good grammar presentation- possibly the longest article on this subject ever!

Why your students don’t want to do pairwork- with solutions and some pondering about whether they might not sometimes be right

Why your students still make mistakes with grammar they know well- with solutions and a call to relax when there are no solutions

The advantages and disadvantages of peer observations- with how to exploit the advantages and avoid the disadvantages

Things to put in a Self-Access Centre or Student Library- with tips on how to do it on the cheap

Why do my students question me?- with solutions

Why your students have problems with listening comprehension- with solutions

UsingEnglish.com articles for students (teachers might also want to have a look at what I am writing about them)

Why does my teacher make me read silently?

Why doesn’t my teacher correct all my mistakes when I’m speaking?

Why does my teacher make me learn the phonemic script?

UsingEnglish photocopiable PDF worksheets

Travel English pairwork B and V

Business and technical English easily confused words

CAE Reading Part Two match the quotes

TEFLtastic worksheets (pain in the arse to print out but worth the effort)

English for job applications/ HR worksheets

Cultural training worksheets for EFL classes

Requests and offers functional language review

The Roots of Medical English LP and 4 worksheets

And that’s it for TEFL stuff. The other thing I’ve been busy with is my wedding speech for the day after tomorrow, which could well mean that May will be an even less busy month in TEFLtasticland. Anyone fancy writing a guest piece or feeding me a story to keep the 1700 viewers I get on a good day entertained until I get back into the flow? If so, try the “Contact me” link on the right…

I should perhaps start by pointing out again that although most of the stuff on this blog is trivial at best and I am not very good at sticking at something until it gets done, I am totally serious this time about helping set up something that can help change TEFL everywhere, and I’m willing to put a fair bit of cash into whatever ideas do happen. So here goes with idea number two:

The TEFL Legal Fund

If investigative journalism isn’t going to sort out dodgy TEFL courses, false advertising, borderline criminal school owners etc, then the only thing that can possibly save us is the courts. And if we are going to take them to court, we are going to need cash. The cash could come from anyone who would donate- people who wish there had been such a fund when they were in trouble, schools who do things right and so have nothing to lose, TEFL teachers who have won their cases, lottery winners… A group of volunteers, preferably connected to an existing body like IATEL, would then decide where the money would go each year. There would be a set maximum number of cases they could donate to each year, and a set total percentage of the money they could spend each year and on each case. Criteria for choosing which cases to pursue would include:

- Teachers having already started the process on their own

- The chance to give an example to the whole industry

- Tackling habitual offenders

And lots of other things which I can’t think of at the moment.

So, any thoughts? Like this better than Idea One- the prize for TEFL journalism? Any other ideas for criteria for the cases chosen? Any other proposals that are more worthwhile? Want to pledge some money to the cause already? Press the comments button and let us know:

Having found out from the book “English for Specific Purposes” by Keith Harding that ESP has spawned a whole raft of lovely acronyms such as EAP, EBP, EMP, EOP, EPP, EST, EVP* and also the disparaging one for General English of ENOP (English for No Obvious Purpose), I thought it was time to brush the dust off the Alternative ELT Jargon Dictionary and set off in defence of General English.

Although I have a fair number of ENOP students in both my Business and General English classes, lots of my non-Business students have very specific purposes indeed. Here are a few acronyms to make those purposes look a bit more important and so get them the respect they deserve:

EKTRP- English for Killing Time after Retirement Purposes

EACRP- English for Avoiding Cultural Restrictions Purposes- like Japanese women who can only debate in English because the feminine forms of their own language are so weak it is impossible to compete with men

ESAP- English for Smart Arse Purposes- such as showing off the latest useless idiom they have learnt

EEP -English for Extramarital Purposes

EGSP- English for Gaijin Stalking Purposes/English for Giri Stalking Purposes- this one works for women whose list of needs in a relationship are topped by “blond hair” in both Spain and Japan

ENP- English for Nationalistic Purposes- such as explaining to foreigners why they should never criticise your country

EBP- English for Babysitting Purposes

ETP- English for Therapeutic Purposes- because your GABA teacher is the only person who will listen to your problems

ECP- English for Chaperone Purposes- for Turkish university students who are only allowed to stay out past the curfew of their halls and meet people of the other sex by signing on for English classes

And a couple which give a more realistic idea of what Business English and ESP classes turn out to be:

EAWP- English for Avoiding Work Purposes- coming to class might be the only chance they have for a one hour lunch break

EBP- English for Budgetary Purposes- for companies where the only way to give staff training on the cheap is to choose English lessons rather than the IT training they really need (more…)

“Native-Japanese speakers taking the paper-based Test of English as a Foreign Language, or TOEFL, scored lower than students from China, India, Indonesia, Malaysia, Myanmar, Nepal, South Korea and Vietnam in 2007. Even North Koreans scored higher.”

From the famous Japan analyst William Pissant.

To which my reply is- (more…)