Archive for the ‘Rave Spelling's ESL Au Lait’ Category

Recently stumbled upon a few blogs on this subject due to them linking to me (hint hint), and here they are:

The Pain in Spain (the earliest posts are the best for getting an overview of teaching in Madrid)

A Small Flaking White House in Lost Spain (doesn’t have quite enough stuff about teaching to make typing that name out more than once in full worthwhile, but what I’ve read I’ve liked, so try browsing a relevant category or two):

Teaching English in Spain

And, unusually for a readable blog, the Academia’s point of view: (more…)

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?

“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…)

Hope that headline got your attention, but actually I have nothing to say about the MA today at all…

Right, now to talk about the CELTA. I have decided to trust a whole lot of people I have never met and take the PGCE (standard British 1 year postgraduate teaching qualification) to be totally superior to the CELTA and a whole lotta learning more than a DELTA. The only compensation for me as someone who has done the C and the D but not the P is to imagine that the PGCE powers that be have been ripping off the CELTA as they have introduced classroom teaching earlier and earlier in the course.

Anyhows, as few more people are likely to start using 5000 pounds of someone’s money and two years of their lives to do a PGCE before popping off to Spain for a year I think the only sensible thing to do is combine the best of the two. And here it is:

The Super CELTA (although Advanced CELTA might be a better name!) will be a combination of the CELTA just as it stands now and in-service training once you start your first job, which will be set by Cambridge and admininstered and run by the employers. The employers will be able to easily justify checking up on their first year teachers and making sure they continue their training, the teachers will be able to choose a good school simply by the fact that they offer support for this extended qualification, and Cambridge will be able to use it to spread good practice in teacher observations and what have you.

So that’s decided then. You can disagree with me, but then I will just edit your comment to make it look like you’ve been blabbering on about lobsters invading the earth…. Only joking! Bring it on! And there’s also a similar thread in D’s E C you can comment in as well/ instead.

As much as I hate to say anything positive about the British Upper classes, I think we could borrow something from them to make online debate about teaching a bit more civilised. When I am TEFL President, people will only be able to start or contribute to threads in the language of an RAF pilot in a British WWII film. You’ll know when things are getting really heated when people start to write “Steady on old chap!”, “I say!” or “I really dont think that is cricket!”

I must say, I really think I am onto something here. Since I decided that one particular person’s comments here and elsewhere were about as worth reading as Reader’s Digest and decided to not even glance at them anymore, I reckon I have improved my efficiency by 1.23% and my lack of irritation index by almost exactly the same amount. It is an extreme measure that I would imagine I will never have to use with anyone else in the rest of my life, but it sure does work!

Anyone who wants to borrow this method, including those for whom* I am the one they want to ignore, should do so quickly before I patent it! It could mean the end of academic feuds within our lifetimes, of which more here:

http://www.tefl.net/alexcase/archives/241

*If I have misused “whom” here, it was not a deliberate attempt to annoy any ESL Au Lait pendants** who might be reading. That would just be a nice bonus…

**The mispelling of pedants was intentional though. Sorry…

So, my last thread (of five?) on the Rave’s ESL Au Lait Japan forum has been locked and that is that. There was lots of raging passion, some (but much less) civilised debate, a lot of chest beating and territorial pissing, and two or three people who were just there for a fight and ruined it for everyone. Although you have probably realised by now that I would hardly claim to be an academic, there seemed to be a lot of letters after names on the other side and the whole thing reminded me of a classic academic feud, of which you can see a recent example here:

http://www.iht.com/articles/2007/08/22/healthscience/21gender.php

Although the main reason people with more certificates than friends tend to get all het up about these things and keep those feelings for life are probably “they are human”, it amuses me to brainstorm some other reasons. And as this is my blog, that is what I will do! But first of all

Warning: If you have lots of letters after your name and are the kind of person to take slightly tongue in cheek generalisations personally, I would suggest reading no further. Unless all of that is true and you have also indulged in an academic feud or two, in which case this is for you:

Reasons why academic feuds happen more often and last longer than people-who-think-Aliens-was-better-than-Alien-or-visa-versa feuds:

• People with more letters after their name than in their name spend far too much time on their computers or at their desks and not enough moving around, so physical feelings of frustration and aggression build up and come out in flame mails
• They actually set too high standards for their personal behaviour in terms of things like not using offensive language  (being PC) etc. and so the pressure builds up until they burst
• As they were not jocks when they were younger, they never learnt the “have a full-on fight and then forget it” school of conflict resolution
• They got bullied at school and enjoy doing the intellectual equivalent to someone else in revenge
• Their self-image is so tied up with their ideas that any attack on their ideas cannot be seperated from a personal attack
• They spend so much time explaining their ideas in words of one syllable to the dumbed down youth in their university lectures that the last thing they want to do is more of the same in their free time, so any “can you explain that more” question is the snapping point (Stephen Krashen, this means you my son!)
• If they took all those qualifications and got a nice university job to get praise from their families, they are hardly likely to take anything but praise from anyone else
• After all that time and expense doing an MAPHDTESOLEFLSLA, they think they should get a bit of extra respect. If not, what was the point of doing that instead of watching tentacle porn?
• They do indeed usually get that extra respect, so they are about as unlikely as a North Korean leader to understand it when someone treats their opinion as equal to a man off the street
• That’s all for now

If you don’t agree, I would be glad to hear from you. However, please remember the comments policy of TEFLtastic, which consists of just four words: Try to be nice.