Archive for the ‘TOEFL’ Category

“TOEFL- Test of English with Fluency Lacking- A test of English in which you can get full marks without speaking one word. Originally developed only for people who have physical problems with their voice box, eventually having been through an East Asian education system was accepted as a disability and it soon became one of the leading tests in Japan, China and Korea”

Okay, that isn’t really the truth about TOEFL, that is just the Alternative ELT Jargon Dictionary definition. However, I have indeed found a link to real newspaper backing up everything I have been saying about the stupidity of using TOEFL scores to judge a country’s progress in English or compare it to other countries. A big round of applause for the author of this article in the Taipei Times. The fact that the article had to be written due to inane comments on the topic by the President of the country, no less, is not such an encouraging sign, but we have to take good sense on the topic of language and celebrate whenever we can! And you thought this post title just meant I was going to slag off ETS again…

Have done a bit more tedious reorganisation so that you don’t need to do so much tedious searching, and you can now find all the links to my stuff on said topics elsewhere on the internet as well as my exclusive TEFLtastic stuff here:

Teaching exam classes-articles and tips for teachers

and here:

EFL exam worksheets, lesson plans and tips for students

Comments or tips for other good sources welcome here:

SLA- Second Language Acquisition- The theory that you are guaranteed to learn a language if you just spend enough money on it

STT- Stupid Talking Time- How long you should let a student talk after you realize they’ve got completely the wrong idea of what you are trying to elicit or the topic of conversation.

TLA- In his book “Teacher Language Awareness”, Stephen Andrews controversially claims that “in order to do their jobs well, teacher must be aware that there are languages”(pg.1729), to which the famous repost on the Humanizing Language Teaching website was “Hey Stevie man, chill out! Fascist!”

TBLT- Task Based Lettuce and Tomato The “strong form of TBLT” includes English mustard, while the “weak form of TBLT” only has mayonnaise

TEI- Teacher Effectiveness Index- Not to be confused with TIE-Teacher Index Effectiveness- a number to represent a teacher’s ability to put book in the teachers’ room back in order.

TOEFL- Test of English with Fluency Lacking- A test of English in which you can get full marks without speaking one word. Originally developed only for people who have physical problems with their voice box, eventually having been through an East Asian education system was accepted as a disability and it soon became one of the leading tests in Japan, China and Korea

TTT- Teacher Talking Time. According to modern SLA* theories, the amount of TTT should be reduced, preferably at the same rate as TEFL wages are going down. This is so that the amount of effort you put in per pound remains stable.

Universal Grammar-formerly “Miss Universal Grammar”

vocatives- the functions on a karaoke machine

Vygotskyan sociocultural theory of learning- The idea that if you tell students your classes are “Vygotskyan” and manage to pronounce and spell it right, they will trust everything you do from then, even if you and they have no idea what it means

Warmer- An activity that fulfills the role of classroom heating, such as star jumps, group hugs or burning vocabulary lists they have learnt

Weak interface position- A Japanese handshake, or the idea that pointing out how much contempt it gets could result in them learning a decent grip

ZPD- Zone of Proximal Development- The short period of time during which it is acceptable to ask a student out on a date

The whole dictionary (my life’s work!) is available here, now with links to more conventional definitions, if you are unlucky enough to be doing the DELTA or MA TESOL

For those of you who haven’t been on the Worksheet pages yet (although surely no one would waste their time reading the blog when they could save planning time by using the worksheets??) and the many more of you who are going to end up here after the error messages because I’ve shortened lots of html names (because good names are good apparently), here is where the worksheets are now:

Medical and Pharmaceutical worksheets

Business English and ESP Games and Worksheets

Telephoning Games and Worksheets

Technical English and Numbers Games and Worksheets

EFL Exam games and worksheets- IELTS, TOEIC etc.

Travel English, Tourism and Study Abroad worksheets

Writing Games and Worksheets

Vocabulary Games and Worksheets

Functional and Social English Games and Worksheets

Video worksheets

Song worksheets

Cultural training worksheets for EFL classes

Grammar games and worksheets

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…)

“Native-Japanese speakers taking the paper-based Test of English as a Foreign Language, or TOEFL, scored lower than students from China, India, Indonesia, Malaysia, Myanmar, Nepal, South Korea and Vietnam in 2007. Even North Koreans scored higher.”

From the famous Japan analyst William Pissant.

To which my reply is- (more…)