Archive for the ‘Teaching’ Category

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…)

Here are some questions I need answers to in order to make up my mind once and for all about TEFL International:

1.  A brief history of Bruce’s career

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

3.  A list of all the things that TEFL International does now

4.  TI’s charity/non-profit status and structure (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…)

Answer the simple yes/ no questions below and find out (one point for every “yes”, half a point for every “maybe” and zero points for every “no”)

1. Are you unable to read a newspaper or magazine without wondering if something in it might be suitable for class?

2. Do you sometimes know what unit or page number certain exercises are on?

3. Do you write all your texts (SMS) in full sentences with correct punctuation?

4. Do you notice every non-standard language use of your friends and family?

5. Are you unable to regain your pre-TEFL pronunciation or speaking speed in the first week back home?

6. Have you ever finished one MA and then thought about doing another?

7. Have you ever used a popular book on language or psychology like Mother Tongue or an Oliver Sacks as a bit of relaxation between books on teaching?

8. Can you recognize over 50% of the participants on any randomly picked TEFL forum thread?

9. Have you ever had to quit reading something because the careless spelling mistakes etc annoyed you too much?

10. Have you ever corrected the English in an article, or on a notice or sign in pen?

11. Have you got angry about a TEFL forum discussion more than once?

12. Have you ever got excited about collocations?

13. Are you able to recognise which book a random photocopy comes from 70% of the time?

14. Do you ever pay attention to news of movements of people in the industry that don’t affect you (”Have you heard that the head of IH has been sacked”, “Nooooooo!?”)?

15. Have you ever got excited about a new TEFL book before you’ve even seen a copy?

16. Do you laugh more than 10% of these Langwich Scool cartoons (have a click if you’ve never seen them before)?

17. Do you laugh more than ten percent of these Alternative ELT Jargon Dictionary definitions?

18. Do you ever make judgements about someone’s personality based on their spelling?

19. Have you ever tried to use correcting someone’s grammar as a way of winning an argument about something else?

20. Is more than 50% of your internet time every week TEFL related?

See below for what your scores mean: (more…)

BIELT- The British Institute of English Language Teaching, set up with the goals of establishing a framework of professional qualifications and a professional code of practice. It failed.

BULATS- EFL testing euphemism for “bollocks”

Cloze- (more…)

Dr Joseph Webbe (c. 1560-1633):

“no man can run speedily to the mark of language that is shackled and ingiv’d with grammar precepts”

(Webbe, 1622, cited in A History of English Language Teaching by A P R Howatt and Teacher Language Awareness by Stephen Andrews pg 50)

Having read that, I’ve made a promise never to ingiv’ my students with grammar precepts again. This link on Dr Joseph Webbe has a great quote suggesting that by learning grammar you can be liked by everyone, though, so maybe I am wrong… Anyhow, I’m not making on promises on shackling my students in the future.

Speaking seriously for a second (but just a second), it’s amazing to think that they have been arguing about the need or not for grammar since the 17th century.

Webbe’s book, btw, had the great title “An appeal to truth, in the controversies between art, and use; about the best, and most expedient course in languages. To be read fasting.” If only TEFL books had titles like that nowadays:

“On making Headway with the English tongue and other examples of the British superiority over our Virginian cousins” by the Most Honorable John and Liz Soars

or

“On being on the Cutting Edge of the learning of the Queen’s fair speech, by such radical ways as pretending you are buying garments. To be read yawning.” 

Acquisition facilitator- A factor such as needing a good TOEIC for a promotion that will make it easier for a language school to separate a student and his or her money

Affordances- Student decisions on whether a teacher with an MA in Sociolinguistics is worth the extra cash or not

Applied Linguistics- from the Latin for “practical use of your tongue”

Classroom pigeon- The kind of lucky classroom distractions that teachers who have started an explanation of a language point they don’t know end up hoping will come and save them

CLT- Communicative Language Teaching- The idea that by communicating with your students you can avoid having to teach them

Cognitive code learning theory- The idea that writing textbooks with everything written in code, such as converting all the letters to numbers, was the best way of stimulating students’ logical-mathematical learning style

Coherence- The part of a teacher’s classroom language that gets worse as their grading and speaking speed get better
 
Cohesion- The tendency of students to get attached to teachers and complain if the teacher changes, even when they know they are learning nothing in his or her classes

Comprehensible input- Teachers making their classroom language understandable by only using terms from the BASIC programming language

Yup, according to the EL Gazette (which everyone now has the opportunity to sign up to read for free here), some TEFL teaching jobs in the UK are now under the official British poverty line. There is some hope, though- if from the other side of the world- as teachers for Kaplan in New Zealand got a pay rise after striking for just one day.

Other news of interest from this month’s edition:

- The wives of footballers to be forced to take an English test in the UK (lucky Posh and Becks went to the US then)

- Some schools in Saudi pay less than Italy

- Atlantic S.E.A.L in Cork aims to be the first school to specialize in students over 50

Just in case you came onto the site looking for something useful today (sorry, what can I say, it’s the weekend) if you click on the links you can get some non-alternative definitions too

Community Language Learning- The theory that students getting together at break time to bitch about British food and their teacher is the best way of drawing them together and increasing their motivation to learn

DoS- Director of Studies. Often confused with the similar word “dosser”

Flaps- Chairs with flaps rather than tables started as a Japanese S&M love hotel accesory, but has now become a standard part of the average language school. Influences that led to this change of purpose include: (a) Suggestopedia teachers patenting the use of comfortable chairs and, (b) Early Humanistic Language Teachers reading in a furniture catalogue that they “help you open up and show your vulnerabilities” and taking its meaning to be metaphorical

Pairwork- Getting students to work together. The expression “pairwork” is used to illustrate that double (”pair”) the effort (”work”) is needed by the teacher (to explain what he wants the students to do) and students (to understand what the hell is going on) as compared with just doing it as a whole class

Peer observations- When your DoS* tries to see what you are up to from outside your classroom without being seen by you

School Principal- In a school where the DoS* only has responsibility for academic matters, “School Principal” is often used as the title of the school’s business manager. Please note from the spelling of “principal” that the duties of this job should not be confused with “school manager with principles”, an outdated concept that died out in the early 90s

Silent Way (The)- A largely unsuccessful attempt to teach a language by spending the whole lesson standing at the front of the class with your arms crossed staring crossly at the students like your school teacher when he’d given up on yelling as a way of making the class shut up. As with its original inspiration, the only things a silent way teacher was allowed to say were “I can wait all day”, “It’s not my time you’re wasting, it’s your own” and “Whenever you’re ready, gentlemen”. Other even less successful attempts to turn school teacher disciplinary tricks into entire language learning methodologies include the Hysterical Hissy Fit Way, the Throwing the Board Eraser Way and the Throat-clearing Way.

Suggestopedia- This method of putting language learners into a hypnotic state through comfortable chairs and relaxing music was discredited in the late eighties when the teacher scripts were discovered to consist mainly of repeated phrases like “You will not get stressed about learning nothing” and “You can increase your TOEIC score by buying your teacher a drink”

See here for the full Alternative ELT Jargon Dictionary so far.

…a dash of realism, a big dollop of the painfully obvious and a side serving of hedging their bets:

“…for teachers, the distilled research finding that positive attitudes and motivation contribute to successful learning yields little useful insight into their day-to-day problems of how to motivate little Samantha in Class 2B and keep her motivated.

Fundamentally, two key principles seem crucial to the maintenance of motivation: first, motivation must emanate from the learner, rather than be externally regulated by the teacher;second, learners must see themselves as agents of the processes that shape their motivation.” 

The first sentence is a breath of the fresh air of realism in the usually bs smelling world of applied linguistics. Not sure what to do with the information in the second sentence, in fact I’m half tempted to say it “yields little useful insight into…”. 

And so the book goes on, telling us that (in my own simplistic words, based on my limited understanding):

-When they move to a foreign country kids are more likely to get a native or near native level than adults (but we don’t know if that tells us anything relevant about students studying a few hours a week in their own country) (Chapter 2- Age and Good Language Learners- Carol Griffiths)

- The students who are more likely to progress quickly, especially at lower levels, tend to be extrovert but the ones in the top classes tend to be people who are introverted but can look at the big picture and take guesses in an intuitive (i.e. not anally retentive) way. But again, we don’t know what that means for classroom practice,e.g. whether we should just use and try to reinforce students’ strengths or whether we should concentrate on developing their weaknesses (Chapter 4- Personality and Good Language Learners- Madeline Ehrman)

-Despite not being able to come up with any statistical evidence, the writer and we all know that the fact that fitting in for boys means not being seen to be studying too hard can be a problem for teachers. Boys also have different motivations and preferred ways of learning to girls (Chapter 5- Gender and Good Language Learners- Martha Nyikos)

- Students who are in higher level classes tend to use more strategies for language learning such as reading newspapers. It can be difficult to determine if they actually do some of these things because they have a high level rather than reach the level because they do these things, and even more difficult to determine if those study skills can and should be forced on students who don’t use them (Chapter 6-Strategies and Good Language Learners- Carol Griffiths again. Is she sleeping with the editor? Oh, she is the editor…)

- Etc

Etc. being a very useful word to hide the fact that I’m making comments about the book when I’ve only read a quarter of it. Oh well, surely that’s what blogs are for- half formed judgements and thinking aloud. The real review will be along in a month or so on TEFL.net reviews. Books I’ve been flicking through that I would highly recommend are:

A History of ELT

The Experience of Language Teaching

And it is quite possible I will end up recommending Lessons from Language Learners in the end as well, now I’ve got that little rant off my chest…