Archive for the ‘Teaching English in India’ Category

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You can’t do much reading about TEFL on the Net without coming across stories of dodgy geezers and their nasty little business schemes, and then you can’t read much more without coming across the nasty little TEFL teachers with their dodgy feuds- and then all kinds of mental confusion breaks out. Who can you believe in the TEFL world? The answer is simple- me!

Joking aside, I’ve been trawling through hundreds of posts about TEFL ripoffs and DoSs with personality problems over the last 12 months and although I remain sceptical about most of the claims made on such forums, there are three people/ organisations that I get a particularly bad vibe about. As what I’m doing is trying to judge someone’s personality through the internet, it is obviously subjective- and if you don’t trust my opinion on most things, then of course please ignore me here too. Still, here is my opinion for what it is worth. If it was me, I would avoid these three:

Paul Lowe’s Windsor TEFL/ Windsor Schools

Mark Smith’s Smith Schools of English Japan

Bruce Veldhuisen’s TEFL International

My criteria for inclusion is simple and beyond reproach, I think you will find. The evidence I have on their business dealings is limited but they strike me as three examples of the less pleasant kinds of people that TEFL occassionally attracts. I’ve met a few unpleasant characters, and the usual pattern is that if you catch them on a good day and they need something from you, you might be charmed. If you have no dealings with them and a good person who has got trapped in their web is the person you deal with you might have a good experience. Get on the wrong side of them, though, and you will find yourself a victim of every vindicitve and manipulative tactic known to man, with the idea that there is a line they shouldn’t step over in order to get their way not popping into their heads. Paul has shown on this site that he is exactly like that. People who have had direct communications with Mark Smith that I trust have told me that he is even worse. I don’t know how involved Bruce is in the day to day running of TEFL International, but someone’s ambition is making them step over the line of what I would call gentlemanly business practices.

Which leads me onto my philosophy of TEFL life. The system to have a good time in TEFL and not give more influence to the bad guys is simple- find nice people, avoid nasty ones. It’s worked for me- made me choose Spain, Italy, and Japan rather than Austria and Switzerland (though my nicest students ever were from Columbia, where I haven’t been yet), made me get out of DoSing and teacher training and back into the classroom, etc etc. So far, it’s worked- or not worked, depending on whether not being bitter is turning into a TEFL blogger handicap or not…

As I said, take several large salt mines when reading about any TEFL dodgy dealings, especially as many people have been known to place false information (both good and, for some strange reason, bad) about themselves on such sites, but here are some links anyway:

The TEFLtradesman on TEFL International

The TEFL Blacklist on Smith’s School of English

Usingenglish on Smith’s School of English

TEFLtastic on Paul Lowe

According to an article today in the Korea Times, of the 10,000 people who applied for the 70 new recruit jobs available in the Korea Exchange Bank this year, “Twenty-nine applicants scored full marks in TOEIC, and 1,086 scored over 900 points.” 900 points is impressive, but a perfect score is something a native speaker would rarely achieve- although due to your attention wandering for a second during the listenings (which you get to hear once only) or a pen slipping into the wrong multiple choice box rather than to obscure grammar questions, which TOEIC doesn’t have.

Although I’ve had a poke at people comparing countries by TOEIC score before, here goes with my attempt. I can confidently predict that no job in Japan ever had 29 people with perfect TOEIC scores apply for it, and it has nothing to do with the differences in education systems (not sure what they could be anyway- not enough beatings in Japanese schools?) and all to do with motivation. In Japan, no one needs a perfect TOEIC score, and as the supply of graduates shrinks as the population shrinks and the remaining motivation of the post-post-post war generation to make their lives even more comfortable dies away, the world can globalize all it likes without affecting English language learning in Japan one little bit.

In other TOEIC News, ETS are looking for raters for the TOEIC speaking test- they pay 15 dollars an hour but you need to be resident in the US and according to this Usingenglish forum thread it leaves a nasty virus on your computer. Odd if true…

And to finish with TOEIC (I only mean to finish with it on the blog, unfortunately, although to wipe it off the face of the earth would be better), a lovely TOEIC metaphor involving trees. Not something you hear everyday, and I don’t just mean the word “lovely” used on TEFLtastic without sarcastic intent…

In other TEFL news, something else you don’t hear everyday- a school in India is specifically looking to recruit an English teacher from Cumbria. Even dating ads in Japan don’t get that specific.