Archive for the ‘TEFL blogs’ Category

There are a suprising number of TEFL blogs that make me giggle (you can find them under “Funny TEFL blogs” on my links page), but now that Chase Me Ladies is no longer TEFLing, the TEFLtastic prize for funniest TEFL blog will probably have to go to English Teacher X.

Like all comic geniuses (or should that be genii from the Latin?) though, the writer has quite a lot of off days. For example, I found teaching Russian slappers funny for about 10 minutes, and that’s about all I can handle reading about them as well. Luckily for you, I’ve trawled through the whole site and come up with the best bits so you can snigger about them on the teachers’ room computer and then say “Nothing, just an email from my brother” when people ask you why you are giving off an evil laugh: (more…)

As is my role as the navelgazer of TEFL, having had to take a close look at the battleground that is the teflnet recently has made me wonder whether something deeper is going on. Do I hear “class war” as an explanation? I’m never one to rule that out, but my theory is that, as is often the case with these arguments that go on forever, we are actually talking two different languages.

As me and Sandy have been doing more than our fair share of trying to see the TEFL capitalists’ point of view recently, let’s see if I can’t try and explain our particular (and peculiar) culture and viewpoint to them:

 - If you are a successful businessman who heads a large company, for many people that is enough to make you the enemy. and there is nothing you can do to change their minds. For example, how many people have admitted they were wrong about Bill Gates’s evil empire just because he has turned into Mother Theresa? That’s right- none! It could be due to a philosophy of class war or other political reasons, it could be bitterness, but it’s usually a version of the tall poppy syndrome. I personally think that the tall poppy syndrome is healthy, and while it suggests an abandonment of logic it’s no worse than the ‘rich and successful = good’ culture of the rest of the world (more…)

This interview was conducted by email over the last week or so, with me submitting the main outline and then asking a few follow up questions when the main answers came back. My questions are in bold, and the follow up questions and answers are in italics.

1. A brief history of your career
This was covered in a recent interview in the BKK Post but here it is again:

I began life in a completely different field—selling industrial equipment and negotiating Joint Ventures in China.  When the company I worked for had a problem with our customer in China, I was sent to Hong Kong to resolve it. 
When the company went under, I was somewhat abandoned in Hong Kong. 

The job market back home was not that good (and my field was very specialized) so I thought I would look for a job in Hong Kong.  A friend suggested I teach English to earn some money to pay the rent.

Before long I was teaching full time and loving it!  I then started opening small schools around Hong Kong.  But after several years I was burned out.  Married by then with a small child, we decided to move to Thailand.  Soon afterwards I decided to pen up a TESOL course.  The main purpose was to find and train qualified teachers for the schools in Hong Kong!  But after some initial success I decided to expand.

2.    A brief history of TEFL International, the secret of its success and the principles behind it

Started out as a Trinity course.  After some differences of opinion with the CE of Trinity at the time, we became independent on 1 Jan 2000.  As a small, newly independent school, I decided that the only way we could credibly tell our students that our course was internationally recognized was to be truly international.  Thus, the rapid expansion.

3.    A list of some of the things that TEFL International does now
 ·         TESOL Courses
·         Volunteer Programs
·         Guaranteed Jobs programs
·         Teacher Training for local teachers (usually through the Thai Ministry of Education)
·         Teach/learn language programs
·         Teach/Intern programs
 
4. Can you give some details of TI’s charity/non-profit status and structure

First of all, we do not need to be a non-profit.  We could avoid all taxes by moving our base to some offshore tax shelter.  And it’s not like I enjoy having all of our accounts (including my salary) available to the public.  But we work with universities and universities feel better working with a non profit than a for profit.  Plus, we do a lot of things that non profits do like real volunteer work and assistance for the less fortunate. 

I do not know a lot about US tax laws (which are extremely complex).  But every year we have to hire a special accountant to do our taxes and submit them to the IRS to ensure we continue to meet US non-profit status. (more…)

With all the problems I have had with TEFL teaching dossers (especially dossing DoSes) over the years, I have to admit that their philosophical position does at least have logic going for it- if they are going to be treated like a child and paid like someone in MacDonalds, that is how they are going to do their job. Perhaps the classic example was a teacher in Spain who thought he was owed a job with us due to having been out drinking a few times, and was so incensed at the idea of being asked to write a CV, that he typed up this one line resume for us: (more…)

I’d love to believe that the collective efforts of TEFL bloggers and website owners were working towards building a tefl internet where a word or two on Google will be worth more than asking people you know for recommendations for TEFL qualifications, schools and countries to work in, and teaching techniques and materials to use. Unfortunately, I think the present and near future reality is not so ideal.

Starting with a simple and practical example, would you be better off spending 20 minutes searching on the Internet for suitable worksheets, or should you spend that time trawling through the teachers’ room bookshelves and asking other teachers? If my own experience and the people who arrive on my blogs looking for something that isn’t there are anything to go by, I’d leave that keyboard alone.

And now to the more complex question of trying to find out something about, for example, training with and/or working with TEFL International in Thailand. What are the chances that an Internet search will give you the information you need? The answer is clear… (more…)

I’ve finally sorted out my links page which I totally messed up in my initial enthusiasm in the heady days of all of a year ago when TEFLtastic started. You can find it here:

http://www.tefl.net/alexcase/links/

Unfortunately, I made such a mess up of it first off that the only way I could see to deal with it was to delete every link and start again, so it’s looking a bit sparse now and I’m sure I’ve forgotten some of the ones that were once there. If anyone would like to suggest a relevant or semi-relevant link, yours or someone else’s, please leave a comment here or link to TEFLtastic and have a click on your link.

The bits that were messing it up were the links to my stuff, which have all moved to my Publications and Writing Work Full List with Links here.

The other change is that the Japan page above is here in fact but not in spirit as the content has now completely moved to my two Japan blogs JapanExplained and QuoteJapan.

… 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.

I mean, really- how many students come to class saying “My priorities are English spelling and practising the alphabet over and over and over”?? You might be thinking that hangman is okay if it isn’t abused, but that’s what most TEFL teachers say about crack cocaine, and they aren’t right about that either. As I will be taking over as TEFL President of the World when Sandy of TEFLtrade finally finishes his long goodbye in a couple of days, my first act will be to ban Hangman in all classes under all circumstances. Any arguments will result in that teacher being sent to teach English in North Korea, as was really advertised a few months ago.

Rant “inspired” by this interview on englishteacherx.

“In many parts of the world, it’s still the case that anyone who speaks English as a native can get a job teaching the language, despite the efforts of professional organizations like TESOL and university departments of Applied Linguistics. I hope that the chapters so far will have convinced you that this is almost as daft as employing someone as a human biology teacher because they have a healthy working body.”

(more…)

“alex,

read your fantastic blog on tefl.net. brilliant stuff and i wondered if you had any advice on setting up a blog like yours..

Mike Long
S. Korea” (more…)