“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…)
As a blogger and writer of articles on the internet whose technical knowledge stops at Word, as usual I feel half chuffed at churning out so many articles, including a good one here and there, and half guilty at creating so much work for those who can name a programming language more recent than BASIC. So, with many thanks to the tech sorts who made this possible and without further ado, here are the new bits and pieces on the web that I’ve been associated with:
The TEFL.net review pages I edit now allow comments on any of the titles reviewed there, which is a fabulous idea which I wish had been mine.
On TEFL.net too, there is a new Idea Thinktank of practical teaching games etc, on which I have about 12 (!) articles including 15 Fun Things to do with a Whiteboard (yes, that’s a whiteboard rather than an interactive whiteboard- showing my age??) and the 15 Most Fun Pronunciation Games.
As if that wasn’t enough, I’ve also got some slightly more weighty ones up on the rejigged TEFL.net TEFL Articles Page, including Easy Ways to Improve Your TEFL Career.
And on Usingenglish.com in March:
Election- Second Conditionals speaking practice
101 IELTS Speaking Part Two Tasks about sports and hobbies
Why your students speak L1 in class
Why your students don’t do their homework
101 IELTS Speaking Part Two tasks about people, places, actions, things and times
Setting up workshops for teachers
Business English silent letters and syllables
The language of trends spot the difference
I also had a review of a couple of BULATS books out in MET magazine this month, should you have a copy handy and fancy a look.
To make up for all the navel gazing recently, have decided to give the public what it wants for once. And what the public wants is TEFL sex!
That first paragraph should get some nice bizarre Google searches coming my way, but actually I’ve already done that topic to death (really!), so I’ll instead be expanding on the most popular recent post, which was on writing the perfect CV and cover letter for a TEFL teacher. Now we have, for your delight and delectation:
The perfect CV and cover letter for an EFL exam class teacher
The perfect CV and cover letter for a TEFL young learners teacher
The perfect CV and cover letter for an EFL manager
The perfect CV and cover letter for a teacher trainer
And last and (possibly) least:
The perfect CV and cover letter for a Business English teacher
In answer to my own question, I’m actually quite happy being a TEFL pleb again after trying teacher training and what have you, which is perhaps why I am the only person who will give advice to others on how to get into it as I’m not competing with you for the jobs…
TOEIC is a very stupid exam, but has actually turned out to be one of the best things about being in Japan as far as my ELT writing career goes- your editor in London or almost anywhere else knows nothing about it and trusts you do, because you’re in Japan. Doesn’t quite make up for the all other writing work I’ve missed out on by not being able to pop back to the UK for a chat with the editor, but there you go.
Anyhow, have written loooooooads of TOEIC stuff for Usingenglish and Onestopenglish, and here are the links:
Fabio “my name is Italian for fabulous” Capello thinks he’s going to learn English in a month:
http://sport.independent.co.uk/football/internationals/article3263515.ece
I hope his ideas of what he can do with the English football team are a little more realistic.
I particularly loved the claim in that article that if you do 150 hours on the software you are guaranteed a level of Upper Intermediate. Seeing as how you could theoretically do that many hours in two weeks, that really would be impressive to go from “my English is not so well” to someone who can: (more…)
Man, what a week! Don’t know why it always all comes together, but last week had some of the teenagers not answering a single question from an IELTS reading by the end of the time limit, a two man Business English class with mixed levels and only the higher level student doing the preparation work I had set the lower level one to help him catch up, etc. etc. Maybe they are just holding out for Xmas same as me. So, if you came here looking for inspiration, hope to see you again next week…
Luckily, though, it’s been a good weekend for using a little time mangement tip which I picked up while studying languages and which also comes in very useful when I am writing full time (as I will be again soon I hope if I have many more weeks like this- very reasonable rates, if any publishers or TEFL website editors are reading…). The trick is: (more…)
…but nicely summarized.
I take it all back about Time magazine. It may not be the Economist or L’Express, or even El Pais Sunday magazine, but they have managed the article about Nova from a publication outside Japan with least factual errors. My one quibble is using TOEIC scores as a comparison of language learning levels in different countries. (more…)
Sorry there hasn’t been a lot going on the blog page of my blog. It’s all going on elsewhere though: (more…)
As I mentioned below, am planning on getting all the video worksheets I have written over the years up on the Worksheets part of the blog. All the first bunch I put up a few days ago use a nice little technique I either created or borrow (can’t remember which now) for pre-teaching vocab and making sure the students notice how it is being used in context and have the meaning reinforced, while at the same time practising the use of expressions like “one” and “it” for refering to things elsewhere, a skill that comes up in reading a lot and is also specifically tested in one of the Cambridge exams (CPE?? Again, slipped my mind I’m afraid). Sounds boring, but actually means teacher and students have a good excuse for watching Frasier, Edward Scissorhands, The Life of Brian and Friends in class.