Archive for the ‘EFL geek’ Category

… you can’t explain anything that happened in your lesson to a non-TEFLer in less than two attempts

 … none of your teaching stories are funny to anyone outside the profession

I had a classic example of this recently when I told my new wife that one of my two students in a home lesson cried for 45 minutes because I nagged her about her homework and then was smiling and laughing by the end of the class. The slight misunderstanding was that she thought I was talking about an adult class. The mental picture gave me a laugh, but I still told her that she would have to try to be a bit more understanding with the neurotic teaching stories (just think of us as lovey actors) or I’d have to send her back under the Japanese two week purchase cooling off period.

You can see the original You Know You’ve Been in TEFL Too Long post here, EFL Geek’s take on it here and the original You Know You’ve Been in Japan Too Long When here.

My usual desperate scratch around for some TEFL-relevant news has turned this month into a desperate attempt to deal with it all. If it carries on like this, our grandmothers might even get to be proud of what we do… (more…)