Archive for the ‘TEFL in the UK’ 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…)

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…)

“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…)

Hi, I’ve just read your DELTA experiences and wondered if you could advise me on the best course to take. I’ve been teaching for 12 years (PGCE and Degree in English) - 6 years in Comprehensives in the UK and 6 years in France at a Lycée and University. I’m now back in the UK teaching in a Comp and want to get back into TAL or TEFL……which type of course would you recommend? I’ve been told there are 4 possibilities:
 
RSA Trinity
CELTA
DELTA
MEd TESOL
 
I’m going to be in the UK for the next 5 years so I would be teaching here rather than abroad.
 
Thanks,
 
Diane

———————-

Any advice for Diane anyone?

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

Hopefully it’s okay for me to reprint this editorial in full (and in the classic self-deluding style of a habitual blogging copyright breaker I am going to take the fact that they haven’t disabled the copy function on the online version as some kind of permission), because not only can I think of no way to say what it says better, I can possibly find nothing else to say on the matter ever:

“In this issue of the Gazette we have a number of stories featuring global giants in possible trouble over employment law. We have language schools operating in the UK and owned by an American media giant (page 1). We have a UK-based company owned by a multinational founded in Sweden recruiting for schools from Russia to Indonesia (page 3).
   The English-teaching world is becoming increasingly corporatised, globalised and – to judge by the contents of the anonymous envelopes sent into the Gazette’s offices by desperate teachers – staggeringly ignorant of the basics of employment law. So here are a few handy hints for employers:
RULE ONE: You are the employer. That means it is your job to know employment law.
RULE TWO: You need to know the law in all the countries in which you operate. Here is a pointer for school franchisors. If you are recruiting for a franchisee you may well in effect be operating as an employment agency. So your contracts need to comply not only with the law in the country of employment, but also with the legislation where the office doing the recruitment is located.
RULE THREE: There are certain authorities it is advisable not to disagree with. They include the US Supreme Court, the European Court and, as the British Council have found out (see page 4), the Russian tax police. What the US Supreme Court says is law in every state in the Union. What the European Court says applies country in the European Union – which means, language-school owners please note, that rolling up holiday pay into the hourly, weekly or monthly wage is illegal everywhere from Copenhagen to Capri. If you want to do business in Russia, don’t argue with the Russian tax police, whatever the law actually says.
RULE FOUR: It is not a good idea to ignore the law just because you feel it to be impractical, unworkable or just too expensive to comply with.
RULE FIVE: It is a really bad idea to tell your staff that you know what the law is but that you are not going to comply with it because it is impractical, unworkable or just too expensive. To compound this by telling your staff in writing is completely idiotic.
RULE SIX: With the notable exception of Germany, in most countries the tax authorities don’t like the idea of teachers being freelance. This is because it is easier for a tax inspector to get hold of a school than a teacher. You can tell the teachers they’re responsible for their own tax, but this may not stop the taxman turning up at the school gate.
RULE SEVEN: If you are about to break one of the preceding rules, ask yourself, do I want what I am doing to appear on the front page of the Gazette? If the answer is no, don’t do it.
And finally, a handy hint for teachers: If you think your employer is breaking the law, don’t just send us a whingeing email (and if you do, don’t do it using your work email account). Your horror story may well be true but we need documentary evidence to prove it. If we can prove it, we can print it. ”

And an extract from the article on Kaplan to show you what they are talking about:

‘it is true that the European Court of Justice has ruled this practice to be “unlawful”… However, the practical ramifications of accruing holiday pay for hourly paid workers according to this principle [the court ruling] are complex and unworkable.’

i.e. We don’t agree with the law, so we won’t keep to it. So there.

To add a bit of culture, here is the original Blast, which our mate Mel has done a very good job of making a TEFL version of: Blast Manifesto

“even universities do not insist on any proper teaching qualifications but rather MAs and PHds.”

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