Archive for the ‘Teaching English in Western Europe’ Category

Candidate number one

Involves me, and Paul Lowe’s threats to sue me for never mentioning him on my blog (!?) or something, still can’t quite work it out. “Bizarro!” as TESall.com put it. I thought, what the hell if I’m going down might as well go down with a fight and show some people power and so started an I Am Spartacus campaign to tell everyone in TEFL what had happened. Messes the story up a bit that it was all bluster and he never did sue me, and that every blog he wrote to saying I shouldn’t be allowed to comment on there because I was guilty of a “hate campaign” (along with UsingEnglish.com, whose apparent crime was publishing my grammar game worksheets) just ignored him. So, not sure this one wins, although it did all take a break after online rumours (still unconfirmed) of a suicide attempt…

Candidate number two

-involves Bruce Veldhuisen’s TEFL International and their one time guarantee of academic standards IATQUO. Or not, as some kind of feud goes on to this day with them each accusing the other of being unprofessional and worse, which kind of makes you wonder about the judgement of the other side for choosing to ever doing business with them, doesn’t it? It’s got the usual recipe of anonymous blogs set up by people who slag others off for doing just that and bringing people’s family into it, but still not sure it quite takes the championship.

Candidate number three

This is more like it. TEFL Watch turns into an anti-TEFL International slag fest, with needless to say Brucey’s side not keeping out of it. Then, in a twist worthy of Dallas (or at least Neighbours), an ex-forum moderator becomes the accuser in chief of the management of the site because he suddenly decides that Bruce V and his crew and being treated unfairly, eventually driving the owner of TEFL Watch to give the whole thing up and start writing about healthy grilling with George Foreman. Nice and juicy, that one, and haven’t even mentioned the allegations of having to flee the country for their personal safety. Could still be the greatest TEFL soap opera of all time, but let’s see how the last candidate plays out-

Candidate number four

Can the anonymous blogger throwing accusations about Sandy MacManus uncover Sandy’s real identity and so stop him being an anonymous blogger throwing accusations about? And how does threatening to make him lose his job in the Middle East help with that? Or has Sandy already uncovered “Michael Flynn“? And what script writer is being paid for melodramatic twists like death threats? And why would Paul Lowe, the chief suspect, go from repeatedly claiming to the police that he has never commented on any blog let alone started one of his own to suddenly tell the police where that blog with the death threat and many of his bizarre comments is?

Votes for one of the four or other candidates below please:

96. “Sick of our dirty classrooms? Home lessons available for just 50% more!”
97. “And your thought only pizza delivery boys would travel all the way to your house！”
98. “Our 100th international branch right here in your town is in a newer building than our Rome branch, less expensive than our London branch, more flexible than our Frankfurt branch, cleaner than our Naples branch, and with more polite staff than our Paris branch”
99. “We make illegal copies so you don’t have to” (more…)

70. ”If you want to chatter away in your own language, what the hell- you’re paying!”
71. ”We’ve found the dead rat under classroom 7B”
72. ”We will keep your teacher’s passport until you pass the FCE”
73. ”You just never know what will happen in the next class!” (more…)

What elements of your dreams tell you about your TEFLing future:

Suddenly realising you have no clothes on - you will realise halfway through your next improvised grammar explanation that it doesn’t make any sense
 
Water - You will desperately need to go for a pee halfway through your first lesson the next day
 
Falling and falling then waking up - you will be rescued from a difficult question by the end of lesson bell
 
Doing the same thing over and over - your school will again refuse to switch to New Headway next year, even though the rest of the world is on the Third Edition
 
A cold wind - you will walk into class with your flies open

Being chased - one of your housewife students (more…)

Innateness hypothesis- The theory that studying English is inherently boring, so why bother with games. See also “Inaneness hypothesis”*

Input- The theory that the language we expose students to should be as carefully chosen as when programming a computer or doing data input, although most experts agree that the metaphor works best if we picture the teacher trying to type with a couple of sledge hammers

Input enhancement- Using a gold plated jack on the classroom tape recorder

Intercambio de Lenguas- Spanish for “exchanging tongues”, often involving conversation exchange and its more literal translation

Interface- Also known as “innerface”, the internal cringing (more…)

Recently stumbled upon a few blogs on this subject due to them linking to me (hint hint), and here they are:

The Pain in Spain (the earliest posts are the best for getting an overview of teaching in Madrid)

A Small Flaking White House in Lost Spain (doesn’t have quite enough stuff about teaching to make typing that name out more than once in full worthwhile, but what I’ve read I’ve liked, so try browsing a relevant category or two):

Teaching English in Spain

And, unusually for a readable blog, the Academia’s point of view: (more…)

ARELS- Association of Reasonably good English Language Schools
 
BAAL- The false god of Applied Linguistics
 
Direct method- A system of language learning aimed at making Japanese students say what they really mean

Ditransitive- verbs often used with the object “Lady Di”
 
EAP- English for Academic Purposes- learning English to seem intellectual
 
Facilitation- Rather than leading the language learning process, teachers aid the students by standing there doing nothing and spouting stuff like “Don’t ask me, you are empowered to control your own learning”.

Feedback- Based on the similarity with playing an electric guitar, in ELT this term is used to express the teacher’s ability to produce discord and put people on edge with the use of error correction

FFI- Form focused instruction- designing your lessons just to get good marks on the categories you know are on the student evaluation and lesson observation forms

Fillers- breakfast foods suitable for teachers who will be photocopying through their lunch break

FL- foreign language. Pronounced “fleur”, with as outrageous a French accent as you can manage
 
Focus on form- The problem of teachers writing down all the things students tell them during a level check interview and only remembering to notice the language they use during the last few seconds. Often contrasted with focus on forms*

Focus on forms- A teacher being distracted by the student’s figure during a level check interview and only remembering to notice the language they use in the last few seconds. Often contrasted with Focus on Form*

Fossilization- The immobile face and blank stare that teachers who have been in the business too long develop

Gap filling- The favourite physical threat of drunk TEFL teachers

Grammatical terminology- “all these like little name things” (definition by an English Language Teaching Assistant in Hong Kong, quoted in Teacher Language Awareness pg 157)

IH- International House, the chain of schools formerly known by the less successful name of “Nationalism House”

Immersion language learning- A way of increasing student motivation to speak. See also waterboarding*

Implicit knowledge of language- Students hiding the fact that they’ve known that grammar since primary school in order not to seem like a swot or to save the teacher embarrassment

Inductive approach (the) - Giving students who pause forever before speaking an epidural injection to force delivery

Inflections- Passed on in the spit of Spanish people trying to pronounce /h/

TEFL International is not only often quoted as one of the largest TEFL training organisations (see the stats below), it is also almost certainly the one most likely to set off a firestorm by mentioning it on the internet- hence its interest, and the need for these somewhat strict rules on comments: (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…)

“Our profession is notorious for exploiting its most valuable asset – language teachers – for financial gain. I remember a teacher recalling taking a summer job where he and his fellow teachers struggled to teach competently in a school with sub-standard facilities and scant resources. He had a vivid memory of the owner arriving in a Rolls Royce and announcing that further cost-cutting measures were necessary. I think that says it all.”

Sounds like TEFLtrade is back on the case… (more…)