JALT highlights- TEFL oyaji gag* of the day

“What do you know about the Silent Way?”

“Not much,…

 …nobody really talks about it anymore.”

Laugh? I nearly did! (to use a Blackadder joke that is nearly as sad as the TEFL joke I’m trying to take the piss out of…)

To be fair, it wasn’t put in the JALT newsletter as a joke as such, but as an overheard remark at the JALT conference, as was this little gem that was much more to my liking:

“But who really owns the English language?”

“Rappers?”

“Yeah, maybe.”

It’s not all fun and games in JALT TEFL world, and one book reviewer had to cope with this:

“The first, a matching exercise, was too easy and usually answerable without listening to anything. The second task…was too hard even for me to complete successfully without looking at the teacher’s notes”  Tim Knight, in a review of Lecture Ready 2 from OUP. Actually the rest of the review was quite positive, making Mr Knight a much more charitable guy than me and exactly what the publishers are relying on to continue making money from what sounds like the usual load of tosh.

Reminded me of a recent discussion (a real life one, I sometimes exist offline too) with Jo in Japan on “Should you criticize the textbook in front of your students?” My answer was “Only if the two options are the class losing respect in the teacher or losing respect in the textbook”, to which I might add “Or if the book is produced by Marshall Cavendish Education”, responsible for the TEFL crime that is Achieve IELTS, which we were talking about at the time.

On a positive note (because I feel good because on Tuesdays I can now work in my pajamas- something that is not often possible in TEFL teaching), a little flash of insight into how the Japanese group mentality can be something that helps rather than hinders language learning:

“Speaking in front of the whole class became easy, because I was aware of my group members’ support from behind” A 17 year old girl in the High School class of Noriko Kurihara, The Language Teacher, Jan 2008

* “oyaji gyaggu” means “old man joke” in Japanese, and is a great expression for anything that makes you groan more than laugh.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, January 15th, 2008 at 1:28 pmand is filed under ELT publishing, TEFL jokes, TEFL links- JALT, Teaching English in Japan- JALT, Teaching IELTS, Textbooks-Achieve IELTS, The Silent Way. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.