Fabio Capello reforms British football-and TEFL!
Fabio “my name is Italian for fabulous” Capello thinks he’s going to learn English in a month:
http://sport.independent.co.uk/football/internationals/article3263515.ece
I hope his ideas of what he can do with the English football team are a little more realistic.
I particularly loved the claim in that article that if you do 150 hours on the software you are guaranteed a level of Upper Intermediate. Seeing as how you could theoretically do that many hours in two weeks, that really would be impressive to go from “my English is not so well” to someone who can:
understand texts from a wide variety of sources
use English to make notes while someone is speaking in English
talk to people about a wide variety of topics
understand people talking in English on radio or television programmes (all from the Cambridge ESOL description of the level suitable for the FCE)
Aren’t computers amazing, hey? I’m surprised the journalist didn’t phone up someone from the making of the Matrix and ask how Neo would do it too.
The BBC has the same story, but they obviously have a policy of not hiring ex-TEFL teachers and/ or journalists who research their stories by phoning the top five hits on a google of “TEFL” for quotes, as there is a lot less teaching and whole lot more of interest:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/magazine/7149519.stm
Glen Hoddle’s fabulously British/ English-speaking take on it is that it is better not to bother learning foreign languages because you might have to speak to the locals, which might be inconvenient.