Archive for the ‘TEFL’ Category

Look for lines like this:

“I got a real buzz working with some of the teenagers who didn’t really want to be there”

Newspapers are full of PR releases repackaged as “journalism” nowadays, and I don’t just mean rags like the Mirror (source of the article the quote comes from), and TEFL has more than its fair share. Here’s hoping that some people try Google before deciding that working as a TEFL teacher is something you should pay for the privilege of.

If you don’t believe me, before you buy one of language courses for just 100 dollars* have a free trial of one of our other “…in just three months” ® courses, for example:
- Anyone can learn to run 100 metres in 10 seconds in just three months
- Anyone can learn good taste in just three months
- Anyone can learn to speak in a squeaky or ridiculously gruff voice without being embarrassed in just three months
- Anyone can learn to accept a language that assumes different gender roles in just three months
- Anyone can gain a Meryl Streep- like ability to mimic accents in just three months
- Anyone can learn to settle down for self-study every evening rather than turning on the TV in just three months
- Anyone can train themselves to learn something just because they are told to in just three months
- Anyone can become charismatic in just three months
- Anyone can overcome memory loss in just three months
- Anyone can expand their vocabulary in their own language by 5000 words in just three months
- Anyone can learn perfect pitch in just three months
- Anyone can become interested in inane chatter at house parties in just three months
- Anyone can train themselves to prefer books and films they don’t understand in just three months
- Anyone can learn to abandon Hollywood films and news from back home in favour of knowledge of the local obscure culture in just three months
- Anyone can stop preferring a good book to pointless small talk with strangers in just three months
- Anyone can learn delayed gratification in just three months
- Anyone can lose the desire to express complex thoughts in just three months
- Anyone can overcome their natural human weaknesses in just three months
- Anyone can learn to relate to people who they have nothing in common with in just three months
- Anyone can drop all their cultural baggage in just three months
- Anyone can learn to be word perfect in reciting a 5000 word book in just three months
- Anyone can reverse their ideas of what it means to be polite and impolite in just three months
- Anyone can learn to prefer vocabulary lists to ice cream or sex in just three months
- Anyone can learn how to never give up on something once they have started it in just three months
- Anyone can learn never to doubt the usefulness of what you are being taught in just three months
- Anyone can learn to sustain an interest in something they chose on a whim in just three months
- Anyone can learn to reverse all their normal body language in just three months
- Anyone can learn to never be distracted in just three months
- Anyone can learn to resist all temptations that could get in the way of studying in just three months
- Anyone can learn to never think of excuses for procrastination in just three months
- Anyone can learn enough Physics to enter an undergraduate course in just three months
- Anyone can learn to be a saint in just three months
- Anyone can find a meaning to life in just three months
- Anyone can learn to be a perfect parent in just three months
- Anyone can drop all their annoying personal habits in just three months
- Anyone can learn to enjoy studying in just three months
- Anyone can learn to stop asking for colour, decent illustrations, lack of typos and other reasonable production standards in their self-study materials in just three months
- Anyone can learn how to spot an outrageously ambitions claim for self-study materials in just three minutes
- Anyone can learn to stop trusting a newspaper that has advertorials for this kind of crap in just three seconds

* Price of monthly payment when paying for the course in the usual 360 monthly instalments

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…)

1. Only write in phonemic script
If you have to teach everyone else the script before they can read your will, medical reports etc, all the better!
 
2. Limit everything you write to Elementary level vocabulary
i.e. make sure your diary, wedding speech, job application letter, thesis, suicide note etc only use the simplest 300 English words
 
3. Never forget your worst lessons
There is no better way of motivating you to improve your future lessons than re-experiencing the embarrassment, discomfort and humiliation of the time when 20 minutes of Silent Way miming was met with silent stares then one student asking “Can we check our homework now?” If you don’t naturally have the kind of personality that dwells on such experiences, you could try and organize a teaching confessions workshop
 
4. Become a Buddhist
Not, as you might think, to help you relax through meditation (feeling paranoid about your next class is a great motivator), (more…)

It was a quiet month (if you don’t count the sound of the cicadas), but that will just give you the chance to read all of them for once, starting with a new series of “well balanced…” articles on Usingenglish.com:

A well balanced use of L1 in class

A well balanced use of error correction

And back here in TEFL.netland

15 ways to prepare for the CELTA etc

15 ways to do needs analysis

Academic Vocabulary in Use review

And not one of mine but edited by me

Imagine That (Mental Imagery in the EFL Classroom) review by Darren Elliot

If that isn’t enough for you (and how could it be?), you could have a look at the same post for July, my newly updated list of links to my stuff, or my newly updated worksheet pages with links to stuff by category.

Finally, if you like any of my stuff, you’ll love ELTgames.com, from the ever fab Jon Marks- it is a lesson to all the rest of us about what a truly professional TEFL internet could be.

Sandy MacManus, who turned 72 on Friday and will be confirmed this week as the oldest first-time TEFL World President nominee in history, has shot himself in the foot while attempting to inject some youth and a feminine touch into his flagging presidential campaign by choosing some 23 year old random posh bird, a self-confessed “jolly hockey-sticks, like my Mum” with a degree in Women’s Studies from Exeter University as his running mate. A source as close to Sandy as anyone could bear to get said that in private he gave his reason as “I’ve been out of the country too long and don’t know how to deal with those scary English women anymore, so I didn’t know how to say no.”

This is a historic day, however, as for the first time it is certain that there will be a female or a carrot top in the TEFL Presidential Office (”the White Room”)* next year
TEFL World Presidents through history: 

W D Minor
Wilfrid Owen
Rex Harrison
Dick Van Dyke- for his amazing ability with accents
Sean Connery- ditto
Mario Rinvolucri’s beard (he was in a delicate time in therapy at the time, and not talking to the rest of his face)
Sandy MacManus (disputed/ retired)
*Actually, the second cubicle from the left in the 3rd floor toilets  

Obviously, I’d like the usual list of 15 or 25, but only one suggestion so far- The Defenestration of Bob T Hash III.

In other language related news, the LPGA has decided the way to improve the popularity of women’s golf is to make sure they all speak English. I think they are half right, but actually what they need to do is to make sure that all the players speak English with sexy foreign accents - preferably French or Russian, and certainly not Spanish or German.

Finally, it seems Africa is suffering from a lack of unskilled labour, and TEFL teachers with no experience or qualifications are just the kind of unskilled worker they need. We can only hope that sending the “EU TEFL teacher mountain” to Africa is as good for the continent as sending the EU food mountain was.

Positive messages to chant to yourself in front of the mirror or record on your iPod include:

1. “I will make my students love English so much that they cry when they can’t come to class”
2. “Having no money is good for my karma and the environment”
3. “I am totally psyched about teaching adverbs of frequency”
4. “The Present Perfect Continuous is all part of God’s great but mysterious plan” (more…)

1. Put a metal plate by the side of your sofa

2. Hold a spoon in your left hand

 3. Lie on your sofa with your left hand draped over the plate (more…)

- The basic meaning of klots, from where the English word klutz comes, is “wooden beam”
- “Jezebel…means ‘daughter of garbage’ [in Hebrew]; her name was probably [really]… Jebaal, daughter of Baal…” (Born to Kvetch pg 22) 

- “Beelzebub…,lord of the flies,was a takeoff of Baal Zevul, lord of heaven” (Born to Kvetch pg 22)
- “Schlong” is a yiddish word (it also has the innocent meaning of “snake”), and “schmuk” and “putz ” also means penis
- “Chutzpah” is an entirely negative word in Yiddish
- “Bubkes” as in “He isn’t worth bubkes” literally means “beans” or “goat droppings”
- “Glitch” possibly comes from the Yiddish word “glitsh”, from glitshn ’slide’, similar to the German word “glitschen”- “slither”
- “Maven” comes from the Hebrew word “mevin” “one who understands” via the the Yiddish word “meyvn”
- The London slang word “nosh” comes from the Yiddish word “nashn”, similar to the German word “naschen”
- Another Cockney classic is “schlep” from from the Yiddish “shlepn” to make a tedious journey, similar to the German word “schleppen”
- The original (Yiddish) meaning of “schmaltz” is melted chicken fat
- “Schnoz/ schnozz/ schnozzle” comes from the Yiddish word “shnoits”, snout, similar to the German word Schnauze
- “Shtick” comes from the Yiddish word for ‘piece’, similar to the German word “Stück” 
- “Spiel”/ “shpiel” comes from the Yiddish word “shpil”, play, similar to the German word “Spiel”
- “Glitch” comes from the Yiddish word “glitsh”, meaning slip,” “skate,” or “nosedive,
- “Kibbutz” is the Hebrew word for “collective”
- “Tush”, the American slang for bum, comes from the Yiddish word “tuchis”/ “tuches”/ “tokhis”
- “To keep shtoom” comes from the Yiddish word “shtum”- silent or speechless
- “Shyster” and “gazump” also come from Yiddish

Other random facts from Born to Kvetch

- Why brideGROOM? It was a completely different word that disappeared from the English language, so they just changed the pronunciation to make it the same as the closest word by pron (technically, assimilation) pg 35

- The showbiz term ‘a turkey’ means a show that “flaps its wings but never flies” pg 23

New words (for me) from Born to Kvetch
the Tetragrammaton- YHVH- the real name of God
antiphrasis- saying the opposite of what you mean, as a kind of euphemism