Posts Tagged ‘Links’

“…great powers do not go to war against other heavily armed great powers just to settle… linguistic rivalries” (more…)

It was a quiet month (if you don’t count the sound of the cicadas), but that will just give you the chance to read all of them for once, starting with a new series of “well balanced…” articles on Usingenglish.com:

A well balanced use of L1 in class

A well balanced use of error correction

And back here in TEFL.netland

15 ways to prepare for the CELTA etc

15 ways to do needs analysis

Academic Vocabulary in Use review

And not one of mine but edited by me

Imagine That (Mental Imagery in the EFL Classroom) review by Darren Elliot

If that isn’t enough for you (and how could it be?), you could have a look at the same post for July, my newly updated list of links to my stuff, or my newly updated worksheet pages with links to stuff by category.

Finally, if you like any of my stuff, you’ll love ELTgames.com, from the ever fab Jon Marks- it is a lesson to all the rest of us about what a truly professional TEFL internet could be.

…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!

Some courses, for example, demand a non-refundable interview/ application fee for the pleasure of being asked questions about grammar. Other courses, however, just say this:

“I understand and accept that should I be offered a place on the course I have applied for, I am committing myself to completing the course, and am therefore liable for payment of the entire course fee.”

Wait a minute- you what?? Let’s move that into other areas of life and see how it sounds:

“I understand that by coming for a job interview I am agreeing to work for you, even if I don’t like any of the answers to the questions I ask you at the end or the room we have the interview in smells of pee”

“I understand that by going on this blind date I am agreeing to marry you, even if the photo turns out not to be yours, and will be liable for alimony payments if I do not”

Etc.

Luckily, it was just badly written, didn’t mean that, and they are clearing it up after having it pointed out by me, but the person writing the blog I found this quote on was seriously thinking about paying it all in advance. If you should be only 23 and so incredibly naive too, let me spell it out in big friendly letters- AVOID CELTA COURSES THAT DEMAND INTERVIEW AND OTHER NON-REFUNDABLE FEES BEFORE YOU DECIDE THAT YOU WANT TO TAKE THE COURSE. Luckily, the vast majority of courses don’t charge such fees, giving even less justification to the ones that do (see my article for EL Gazette for more details).

Here’s the original  blog entry , in case you want to give some kind uncle advice or are interested in a TEFL trainer that takes suggestions for improvements (from me!) seriously and are considering Milan.

… and it’s not because of Interactive Whiteboards- see here for details. (more…)

Or not, but boy would they like you to read that article so quickly that you don’t realise that.

i-to-i is another organisation that gets all kinds of alarm bells ringing in my head, but can’t quite work out why… Just because it all sounds too good to be true??

I’m continuing to learn from and ponder on the information in the Cambridge Grammar of English, and as before testing the matters I’ve been chewing on against your native speaker intuitions would be appreciated (sorry for the very unpleasant mental picture from that metaphor first thing on a Monday morning!)

The (modern?) name for & is “and” (not ampersand)
{ } = chain brackets (they’ve always been squiggly brackets to me!)
< > = diamond brackets
 
American English uses commas before and or but more frequently than British English
 
“Subordinate clauses can be separated by a comma from a preceding main clause, especially when the relation between them might be obscured because the clauses are long.” (pg 842), so “We can get there for around six, if there are no problems with the traffic on the motorway” is okay with or without the comma, despite being in the reverse position of the usual first conditional with a comma
 
Colons are used to indicate subtitles, and to mark a clause in which reasons are given: “We decided against it: it wasn’t lightweight enough”
 
Single quotation marks are becoming more widespread in direct speech
 
Colons may be used to introduce direct speech when it is particularly long
 
There are apostrophes (becoming optional) in “for goodness’ sake” and “for appearance’ sake”
 
In informal writing multiple dashes may be used:
 
“Just got back from Mallorca— we really loved it.”

If punctuation is your thing, or really isn’t you or your students’ thing but should be, here are some links:

Wikipedia on the ampersand

Info on Eats, Shoots and Leaves by Lynn Truss- a funny book on punctuation!

A whole list of punctuation books on Amazon

Punctuation worksheets on ESL Printables.com

And that is all I could find of interest. For classroom activities, one thing that works well, especially with FCE and CAE classes, is for students to take a text that is correct and add spelling and punctuation errors for another team to find.

Another good game is to put a text on the board including punctuation and get them to read out the whole text (including punctuation) over and over as you delete it one word or punctuation mark at a time until they can no longer remember it or the whole text has disappeared.

The game above works well with kids too. A more physical game for kids on the same point is to write up a sentence with one piece of punctuation missing in large letters on the board, and get them to take turns throwing a sticky ball (= sucker ball) at the place they think the punctuation mark should be.

There are a suprising number of TEFL blogs that make me giggle (you can find them under “Funny TEFL blogs” on my links page), but now that Chase Me Ladies is no longer TEFLing, the TEFLtastic prize for funniest TEFL blog will probably have to go to English Teacher X.

Like all comic geniuses (or should that be genii from the Latin?) though, the writer has quite a lot of off days. For example, I found teaching Russian slappers funny for about 10 minutes, and that’s about all I can handle reading about them as well. Luckily for you, I’ve trawled through the whole site and come up with the best bits so you can snigger about them on the teachers’ room computer and then say “Nothing, just an email from my brother” when people ask you why you are giving off an evil laugh: (more…)

I’d love to believe that the collective efforts of TEFL bloggers and website owners were working towards building a tefl internet where a word or two on Google will be worth more than asking people you know for recommendations for TEFL qualifications, schools and countries to work in, and teaching techniques and materials to use. Unfortunately, I think the present and near future reality is not so ideal.

Starting with a simple and practical example, would you be better off spending 20 minutes searching on the Internet for suitable worksheets, or should you spend that time trawling through the teachers’ room bookshelves and asking other teachers? If my own experience and the people who arrive on my blogs looking for something that isn’t there are anything to go by, I’d leave that keyboard alone.

And now to the more complex question of trying to find out something about, for example, training with and/or working with TEFL International in Thailand. What are the chances that an Internet search will give you the information you need? The answer is clear… (more…)

Answer the simple yes/ no questions below and find out (one point for every “yes”, half a point for every “maybe” and zero points for every “no”)

1. Are you unable to read a newspaper or magazine without wondering if something in it might be suitable for class?

2. Do you sometimes know what unit or page number certain exercises are on?

3. Do you write all your texts (SMS) in full sentences with correct punctuation?

4. Do you notice every non-standard language use of your friends and family?

5. Are you unable to regain your pre-TEFL pronunciation or speaking speed in the first week back home?

6. Have you ever finished one MA and then thought about doing another?

7. Have you ever used a popular book on language or psychology like Mother Tongue or an Oliver Sacks as a bit of relaxation between books on teaching?

8. Can you recognize over 50% of the participants on any randomly picked TEFL forum thread?

9. Have you ever had to quit reading something because the careless spelling mistakes etc annoyed you too much?

10. Have you ever corrected the English in an article, or on a notice or sign in pen?

11. Have you got angry about a TEFL forum discussion more than once?

12. Have you ever got excited about collocations?

13. Are you able to recognise which book a random photocopy comes from 70% of the time?

14. Do you ever pay attention to news of movements of people in the industry that don’t affect you (”Have you heard that the head of IH has been sacked”, “Nooooooo!?”)?

15. Have you ever got excited about a new TEFL book before you’ve even seen a copy?

16. Do you laugh more than 10% of these Langwich Scool cartoons (have a click if you’ve never seen them before)?

17. Do you laugh more than ten percent of these Alternative ELT Jargon Dictionary definitions?

18. Do you ever make judgements about someone’s personality based on their spelling?

19. Have you ever tried to use correcting someone’s grammar as a way of winning an argument about something else?

20. Is more than 50% of your internet time every week TEFL related?

See below for what your scores mean: (more…)