Archive for the ‘HLT magazine’ Category

I must be the least likely blogger of all time, being neither technically savvy nor generally interested in online content- I’d never read a blog before I started this one, and I still reckon most of the best stuff is still in books. Anything from Zoltan available on the web? I thought not.

Once in a while though, I do stumble upon some good stuff. As that gives me even more stuff I want to read, I usually don’t find time to even mention it here, so here goes while I still feel a little recharged from my summer hols:

The Linguist Blogger

Some very thought provoking stuff, and perhaps a lesson to me that blogging less frequently produces greater quality… Two recent ones that particularly took my fancy:

Building Nations with the Cunning Use of Foreign Languages

Language Learning and Weight Lifting

Back in the world of TEFL, the other Dave is going through some highlights from his articles and he has chosen well, particularly:

In Search of a Word: Can Ambition Survive in TEFL?

When is it too late to get out of TEFL?

If like me you were stimulated by the ELT World articles but irritated by having to have a Google ID to comment, feel free to leave your comments here instead:

While I’m on the subject and have to make the most of Favourites on this PC (it’s staying in Japan when I go to Korea), here is a list of TEFL, linguistics and Japan related sites I most often end up at, in approximate order:

1. Dave’s ESL Cafe international job forums (the pointless bitching makes it more memorable somehow, maybe it’s the Dynasty of TEFL sites)

2. The TESall.com TEFL news ticker (including links to the forum discussions that are actually worthwhile)

3. The TEFL tradesman (as foul-mouthed and crusading as we’d all like to be)

4. The TEFL Blacklist (does exactly what it says in the title)

5. EL Gazette digital (a real TEFL newspaper. Click on the link on the main page to subscribe for free)

6. An Englishman in Osaka (just very funny, and so beats all the much more informative Japan blogs, of which there are many, in competing for my online time…)

7. Guardian TEFL (some real journalism would be nice- see EL Gazette for that- but a good way of keeping up with TEFL press releases anyway)

8. The Life of Mike (some odd changes of direction, but some thought provoking and entertaining posts)

9. Notes from the TEFL graveyard (hits the funny yet practical, cynical yet enjoying the life balance that I struggle with on my blog)

10. Teacher in Development (would probably be around number 2 if there were more posts)

11. Metatesol (pithy, to the point and almost inactive- this one would also be higher if this little bit of prompting results in more posts)

If I was a better person the list would probably be different, and Rave’s ESL Au Lait wouldn’t even be in the list let alone at the top and Insights into TEFL , Humanising Language Teaching  and Developing Teachers would be in there, but like my irrational desire to eat cheap gyudon, that is where I really end up. End of confession- how many Hail Mario’s for absolution?

I’ve been ruminating on for several years of how Continuing Professional Development like observations, workshops and being given responsibility for a supplementary file or two often start off seeming like an opportunity and then gradually come to seem like just unpaid work that benefits the school more than you. While I’ve been thinking, someone else has been writing- and has summarized the situation in a simple and very direct letter in this month’s Humanizing Language Teaching Letters Page:

“Dear Ms Kryszewska

I wrote to you sometime ago - after I had been enthused by Mario Rinvolucri - and told you I’d be submitting to HLT. You very kindly sent me back the guidelines. I apologise for not getting back to you sooner.

I’ve since received your hand-out: “13 Reasons Why You Might Want To Write For HLT” which you circulated via e-mail to all the readers of HLT.

Unfortunately, as always in this exploitative industry of ours, there is no question of payment for this extra work. This is not your fault. I’m sure, as always, there is no budget for this in my school.

However, I have already produced many worksheets for my school and taken several teacher-training sessions without payment, and, to be frank, am sick and tired of not being remunerated for my time and effort. I can’t feed my family by “raising my profile in the company”.

As it happens, I already share creative ideas and infect my colleagues with enthusiasm on a day-to-day basis out of an feeling of basic human solidarity, which the people with their hands on the purse strings in our industry would do well to emulate. Perhaps I am harking back to a golden age of the 1970’s when teachers originally set up schools as co-operatives which have since been taken over by mercenary, corporate EFL barons who place cost effectiveness over pedagogy every time.

I object to a premiership elite of pop star EFL methodologists being handsomely rewarded, while the rest of have to slum it in the lower leagues on casual contracts and insulting rates of pay, wondering whether we’ll be timetabled out next week or not. With the greatest of respect to Mario Rinvolucri, whose work I admire immensely, I think it shows insensitivity and disrespect to expect others to produce for gratis what he does for love and money.

Instead of a school asking teachers to contribute for free, one sure way of avoiding the kind of de-motivation and stuck-in-a-rut-ness, would be to stop undervaluing our contribution every day of the working week by paying us a decent wage in the first place.

Yours ”

(End of quote. Name not published, but I would put money on this person working for International House, as this almost exactly echoes what people who worked for them in Madrid who did my DELTA with me used to say)

My twoyenworth on this matter,  slightly changed since I’ve been in Japan, is:

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