Archive for the ‘TEFL heroes- Jeremy Harmer’ Category

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…)

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…)

So, Thierry Henry finally going to Barca, eh? And in the season when everyone had got so bored of the rumours that they had almost stopped talking about it. So maybe British Council Jeddah really are going to swoop for me, pay the escape clause in my contract and make me a 4 year 8-million dollar offer.

I guess there’d have to be whatever the English teaching equivalent of the medical exam is (get me to teach a lesson from inside a CAT scan machine?) before the signing on live television, and obviously I’d want to know who else they are planning on signing (I hear rumours that Pilgrims might try and cash in on Mario Rinvolucri before he can leave on a Bosman transfer next year and that Jeremy Harmer is looking for a player manager post).

Or maybe I will just continue being paid the same as every other teacher, however good or bad they may be, and just take my extra reward as the number of comments I get on my blog… It’s not like English teaching is the only profession in the world where you get no reward for extra work, and it might not even be the only one where people get paid more just for having an MA. More ranting on the world of the EFL MA coming up…

Come to think of it, I’m pretty much the same kind of teacher as I am football player. Anyone else?