Archive for the ‘ETS’ Category

I write my “15 ways…” articles and teaching ideas in the spirit that even if what I put in there is painfully obvious, sometimes seeing something written down can help clarify an idea that was floating round somewhere at the back of your brain. A case in point is this description of two kinds of teachers who I’ve never consciously thought about, read about, written about or written for but have probably come across while only half realising it:

“There are two kinds of teachers here in Korea that really make me wince. One is the native-speaker who has been here for six or nine months, acknowledges that he was lost for three months but now ‘has it all figured out’

No help, no study, no reading, no questions to other teachers, he just somehow found a way to get through his classes without bosses, parents or students complaining..

He no longer feels uncomfortable in class, so he no longer feels the need to grow, change, develop or learn. Maybe he’s hit on one or two good activities, but I sort of doubt it.

The other kind is the Korean teacher who has studied modern teaching ideas and techniques, who does know what exciting things she could and should be doing in class, but who doesn’t do those things because she is afraid her boss or the other teachers or the parents won’t like them…”

Phil Owen, Korea TESOL President in The Korea Times, Thursday 16 October 2008

And after all the teaching and reading about teaching and writing about teaching and studying about teaching over the last 13 years, reading something that was only half remembered or half conscious is about the best you can hope for most of the time. It’s certainly the best you can hope from Complex Systems in Applied Linguistics, a brand new title from OUP. In summary, it says something like “a complex system is a mathematical concept that is different from just a complicated system and often involves techniques like computer modelling. However, because most of you studied English Lit at uni, we are going to deal with this subject without using a single mathematical formula and instead look at complex systems as some kind of metaphor of language, SLA and teaching. This basically means that we have to stop pretending that these things are easy to predict”

Or as a very short summary “complex systems are complex, but we think they are interesting and you will too (hopefully, because we’ve spent an awful long time researching them!)”

Not sure I ever thought any of those things were easy to predict, and am totally certain that more computer modelling and less metaphor is what has made complex systems interesting and useful, but did prompt a few minutes of musing and a tiny bit of “Oh yer, hadn’t thought about that recently”. Here’s hoping that Language Learner Strategies, which arrived in the same package from OUP, turns out to actually have something new to me in it. I’m on page 25, and it’s looking more hopeful so far.

Getting more or less back on topic, here are some other TEFL related bits and pieces in the same edition of The Korea Times:

“As ETS is a non-profit organisation, we don’t care about an alternative test organizer”

Well if you really don’t mind people doing other people’s tests, ETS, might I suggest you recommend BULATS and IELTS to all your candidates and stick to doing GRE?

And a fundamental misunderstanding of action research:

“This lead to my action research… I applied my research to develop the Pronunciation Rhythm Control Method (PRCM), which has proven to dramatically improve English speaking and listening skills for both students and teachers”

The whole point of Action Research is that it is to develop and adapt methodologies for use in a practical teaching situation, and coming up with a Method with a big M demands entirely another approach- one that the so-fine-you-could-easily-miss-it distinction between ‘has proven’ and ‘has been proven’ suggests this person has not gone through. Doesn’t mean I’m not open to her ideas, though, and I will be seeking out a workshop on PRCM if I can.

*I was going to call this post “The best you can expect in TEFL”, but this message I saw on a T shirt in Seoul today seemed to say it much more poetically…

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:

…ETS is crap! I mean really, you’d only need to look at one TOEIC test, an exam that claims to test all skills but has no speaking component, or its history to see that ETS is a company that has turned educational incompetence linked to juicy undeserved government contracts into an art form.

The moral of the story is obviously that governments everywhere need to employ more people with TEFL experience to stop them making such elementary mistakes. It’s a big, bad world out there, and no one knows that better than a TEFL teacher!

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…)

According to an article today in the Korea Times, of the 10,000 people who applied for the 70 new recruit jobs available in the Korea Exchange Bank this year, “Twenty-nine applicants scored full marks in TOEIC, and 1,086 scored over 900 points.” 900 points is impressive, but a perfect score is something a native speaker would rarely achieve- although due to your attention wandering for a second during the listenings (which you get to hear once only) or a pen slipping into the wrong multiple choice box rather than to obscure grammar questions, which TOEIC doesn’t have.

Although I’ve had a poke at people comparing countries by TOEIC score before, here goes with my attempt. I can confidently predict that no job in Japan ever had 29 people with perfect TOEIC scores apply for it, and it has nothing to do with the differences in education systems (not sure what they could be anyway- not enough beatings in Japanese schools?) and all to do with motivation. In Japan, no one needs a perfect TOEIC score, and as the supply of graduates shrinks as the population shrinks and the remaining motivation of the post-post-post war generation to make their lives even more comfortable dies away, the world can globalize all it likes without affecting English language learning in Japan one little bit.

In other TOEIC News, ETS are looking for raters for the TOEIC speaking test- they pay 15 dollars an hour but you need to be resident in the US and according to this Usingenglish forum thread it leaves a nasty virus on your computer. Odd if true…

And to finish with TOEIC (I only mean to finish with it on the blog, unfortunately, although to wipe it off the face of the earth would be better), a lovely TOEIC metaphor involving trees. Not something you hear everyday, and I don’t just mean the word “lovely” used on TEFLtastic without sarcastic intent…

In other TEFL news, something else you don’t hear everyday- a school in India is specifically looking to recruit an English teacher from Cumbria. Even dating ads in Japan don’t get that specific.

“My first two years in Japan were spent teaching English… The students… studied English- or should I say, English was taught in their presence. Nothing ever seemed to sink in. Years of classes and endless tests and still they couldn’t master the intricacies of a simple ‘How are you?’ When I tried to have the most elemental of English conversations with them they looked at me with blank expressions, shrugged their shoulders, and said ‘Wakaranai’ (’Huh?’) They did this, I believe, just to annoy me. Don’t get me wrong, these teenagers were polite and studious and well-mannered, but they were still teenagers, and teenagers are pretty well insufferable anywhere you go on this planet.” (more…)

Number one: cosplay

Only joking- I mean of course that the status of English teachers is not so obviously low that when I met the love of my life and asked her to marry me she actually agreed!

You won’t hear a lot about it on the TEFL forums, but there are actually a lot of other advantages to choosing Japan to teach in: (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…)