Posts Tagged ‘Professionalism’

“I sweated blood over my master’s degree, and now here I am lumped together with all those youngsters who don’t even know what a preposition is” (more…)

96. “Sick of our dirty classrooms? Home lessons available for just 50% more!”
97. “And your thought only pizza delivery boys would travel all the way to your house！”
98. “Our 100th international branch right here in your town is in a newer building than our Rome branch, less expensive than our London branch, more flexible than our Frankfurt branch, cleaner than our Naples branch, and with more polite staff than our Paris branch”
99. “We make illegal copies so you don’t have to” (more…)

Doesn’t last of course, especially the initial thrill of being in the chaos of a third world city or in the chaos left for you by the last person who had that DoS job, but if having some kind of career plan gets you out of the bed in the morning with more motivation than I had six months ago, wth- got to be a good thing!

Whether your next plan is/ will be how to become a teacher trainer, an ELT author, a better teacher or just someone who is making an active effort to fight the boredom, we at TEFLtastic have the article for you on our totally updated page right here.

70. ”If you want to chatter away in your own language, what the hell- you’re paying!”
71. ”We’ve found the dead rat under classroom 7B”
72. ”We will keep your teacher’s passport until you pass the FCE”
73. ”You just never know what will happen in the next class!” (more…)

45. ”Our incompetent teachers will make you feel better about yourself”
46. ”Certificate of achievement for all students who are actually still around at the end of the course”
47. ”Guaranteed students who are a much higher level in each class to explain anything the teacher can’t”
48. ”To guarantee an English-only class, we only employ teachers who have been here for years without learning a word of the language”
49. ”Guaranteed smaller class sizes by the end of term 1″ (more…)

1. “Officially the blondest teachers of any school in Japan/ China/ Taiwan etc”
2. “We’ve never changed because we are perfect”
3. “Come and see the new batch of teachers, fresh off the plane”
4. “The youth of our teachers makes up for the age of our building/ methodology/ technology/ wallpaper/ receptionists etc” (more…)

1. Only write in phonemic script
If you have to teach everyone else the script before they can read your will, medical reports etc, all the better!
 
2. Limit everything you write to Elementary level vocabulary
i.e. make sure your diary, wedding speech, job application letter, thesis, suicide note etc only use the simplest 300 English words
 
3. Never forget your worst lessons
There is no better way of motivating you to improve your future lessons than re-experiencing the embarrassment, discomfort and humiliation of the time when 20 minutes of Silent Way miming was met with silent stares then one student asking “Can we check our homework now?” If you don’t naturally have the kind of personality that dwells on such experiences, you could try and organize a teaching confessions workshop
 
4. Become a Buddhist
Not, as you might think, to help you relax through meditation (feeling paranoid about your next class is a great motivator), (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?