Archive for the ‘Teaching TOEIC’ Category

…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!

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…)

TOEIC is a very stupid exam, but has actually turned out to be one of the best things about being in Japan as far as my ELT writing career goes- your editor in London or almost anywhere else knows nothing about it and trusts you do, because you’re in Japan. Doesn’t quite make up for the all other writing work I’ve missed out on by not being able to pop back to the UK for a chat with the editor, but there you go.

Anyhow, have written loooooooads of TOEIC stuff for Usingenglish and Onestopenglish, and here are the links:

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…but nicely summarized. 

I take it all back about Time magazine. It may not be the Economist or L’Express, or even El Pais Sunday magazine, but they have managed the article about Nova from a publication outside Japan with least factual errors. My one quibble is using TOEIC scores as a comparison of language learning levels in different countries. (more…)

Sorry there hasn’t been a lot going on the blog page of my blog. It’s all going on elsewhere though: (more…)

Another example of foreigners who come over to Japan and can’t be bothered making an effort because it’s just Japan, as also seen with many British and American rock bands (e.g. Supergrass- in it (Japan) for the money indeed!)

Rants aside, here is the next part of my serious attempt at examining why there might be so many bad teachers in Japan. Having already examined why worse teachers might come out to Japan, now it’s time to examine:

Why do good teachers leave Japan?

Note that this is now the new, improved version of this post, organised by categories and with the proviso (as demanded by the punters on Rave’s ESL Au Lait) that it is possible that some bad teachers leave for some of the same reasons:

Personal Reasons

• Women often leave because of the lack of dating opportunities
• Those that don’t have this problem still find they lack female friends due to female friends leaving
• Lack of progress with learning the language and/ or making Japanese friends makes people want to try somewhere “easier”
• The lack of a summer break like most schools in Europe take means, strangely, that people are likely to think their time is up after a year and leave at the same time as all their friends do- usually at the end of a one year contract
• The difficulty of meeting new people, especially in big cities
• Wanting to be accepted as a local but realizing it will never happen
• Not wanting your children to go to a Japanese school or university

Career Advancement and Personal Development

• Many Japanese institutions have a visible or glass ceiling at how far non-Japanese can climb up the ladder, meaning people leave after reaching a certain level or don’t bother sticking around to get promoted because they know it can only lead so far
• Lack of opportunities to take further qualifications in Japan, e.g. even people in Tokyo who want to do a DELTA must do so by distance learning, inconceivable of in any other capital city I know, there are no CELTA courses available, and the local MA in TESOL courses often demand some level of Japanese and/ or don’t have a good reputation abroad
• A lack of people, even DoSs, with a DELTA who can help you when you take a distance course
• The lack of opportunity to become a trainer on such courses
• Workshops you can go to are often aimed at a very basic level of teaching knowledge and therefore unlikely to be of interest to experienced and qualified teachers
• The lack of a clear, obvious career path into other, better schools etc. University jobs, for example, are usually not advertised, the well respected chains like Bell and IH they people sometimes move up to elsewhere do not exist, and the British Council is shrinking its operations.
• One of the steps forward in terms of pay can be to take an Assistant Language Teacher job, but as this means teaching with another teacher it often doesn’t feel like a step forward in terms of your career
• You can earn and/ or save more elsewhere
• The lack of opportunity to teach exam classes other than TOEIC or to become an examiner (for example, the British Council in Tokyo is not accepting applications for IELTS examiners)

The other staff

• The negativity of the other teachers
• A feeling that “If all these people can do this job without complaints and/ or and get paid the same, maybe I should be doing something else”
• Managers who are younger and/ or have less experience and qualifications

 Not feeling at the centre of the “TEFL world”

• The materials used by schools are often 5 or more years behind those used in Europe
• Because Japan is not a big market for the UK and US ELT publishers, work like pre-publication testing is not often available

The students

• The fact that the students don’t seem so seriously interested in learning the language and so make limited progress- only studying half an hour a week, using company classes as a chance to relax because they are overworked, not doing homework or anything else in English outside class etc. etc.
• If students are happy just to be entertained you don’t feel like you are being pushed to improve

The materials and other resources

• The lack of teaching technology such as Interactive Whiteboards, or even sometimes OHPs and photocopiers
• The lack of quality of the locally produced textbooks etc. that you sometimes have to use
• The idea that even while your ability to teach Japanese students is improving, your ability to teach other nationalities is possibily getting worse

Not matching your training

• A lack of groups of 8 to 12 students that people are usually trained to teach on their CELTA etc.
• Very few classes with even one student who doesn’t have Japanese as a first language
• A lack of flaps
• A lack of preparation time or rest time between lessons
• A lack of a range of levels
• Having to teach a mix of ages

Miscellaneous

• The difficulties of working in a Japanese office
• Good teachers leaving becomes self perpetuating- because some good teachers leave the other good teachers don’t want to stay

Standard of living

• The chance to live in a more beautiful city elsewhere
• The chance to afford a bigger and/ or otherwise better flat outside Japan
• Being able to afford the time and money to fly home more often from other countries
• Lower tax and medical insurance in some places
• Not wanting to pay into the Japanese national pension system
• No high interest local accounts to pay your savings into
• The falling yen
• The difficulties in getting mortages (especially joint ones), credit cards etc.
• Because wages have been static at best for years, people who might have wanted to stay in teaching end up applying for management jobs to keep their wages climbing and then drop out completely due to the difficulties of being a manager and/ or not really wanting to be one in the first place
• The expense of exploring further afield in Japan and flying to elsewhere in Asia
• Although it is also experienced by most Japanese, the commuting, long hours, cramped accomodation etc. can be avoided by moving to another country
• Lack of provision for working mothers

If anyone has any suggestions on anything else I can add, please let me know. I should also point out that it isn’t as bad as the list above could make it appear- I am, after all, still here teaching in a big chain of language schools after 4 years!