TEFL About TEFL
Find out what TEFL is all about and what all these terms like TESOL, TESL and TEFL mean.
British Or American English: Does It Matter?
And don’t think I’m saying these are the only two: what about Canadian, Australia, New Zealand (does everyone agree on Kiwi?), South African, Irish and other Englishes?
I have to laugh a little when teachers maintain that one variant is favored over another when selecting candidates for the average job, or give any real credence to the idea that you “teach” one or the other.
It of course depends on your classes, but I’d generalize that maybe 90% of the time, the version you speak makes next to no difference. You need to be understandable and you need to figure out what students need to know and ensure you work on that…but the ability to do these is hardly tied to the variant of English you speak.
A student or two may think or say they prefer one “kind of” speaker over another, but while they may perceive some advantage to sounding ___, in my experience the needs of most students tend to be more basic and immediate than dialect perfection. My impression is also that even after some time with a teacher or chain of teachers from a certain country, students still tend not to really sound “like that”. And I don’t think students can always tell where a teacher comes from either.
Date: June 7th, 2007 |
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Ways In Which EFL Is Like “Lost”
I admitted my latest addiction here and it’s to Lost. I’m just finishing up the first season, but it has already struck me that teaching EFL has a few things in common with Lost. (Note that you an also bring Lost to your higher level classes with EFL Geek’s ready-to-go lesson on the Lost pilot.)
You’re in a new – possibly strange, scary and hard to understand – place, without access to many of the comforts you enjoy at home. Fortunately, however, polar bears are unlikely.
You may end up with quite a mishmash of personalities and even English levels in your classes. In one group, you may have some who don’t speak at English at all, and others who at first don’t reveal their English skills. You may have a doctor, a former soldier, a lottery winner, a former rock star/heroin addict and a single mother – though she will hopefully not bring her baby to class.
Date: May 31st, 2007 |
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What Should I Tell Students About My Training?
It can be an awkward moment when students want to know how you’ve been trained to teach them. Native speaker EFL teachers are hired to do work that is substantially different from that of university professors or, say, elementary school reading teachers, and as such, I don’t think a four-week intensive training course such as the CELTA is a poor choice of qualification at all. However, I wouldn’t want to respond with “Oh, I have a month of training.” Even though the qualification can be good, it may not sound like “enough.”
Date: April 29th, 2007 |
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Another TEFL Change: Possibilities
Aside from my TEFL accent, one of the main changes I’ve noticed in myself – or in my outlook – is in the range of things I now see as within the realm of possibility.
There are so many things that are more or less ingrained in us that we “just can’t” do – and by “us” I mean people in general. From getting a job overseas on your own, to navigating a trip through a country where you can’t even read the script, to successfully managing a group of thirty children under the age of twelve…if you teach EFL abroad, you are likely to get into situations where you find you can do all of these things (or at least some of them!).
Date: April 20th, 2007 |
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How To Fight Stereotypes In EFL
I recently got a substantial comment from a teacher who came up against some serious stereotypes in Vietnam – which was in fact the country he was born in. I’d encourage you to read the comment in full; I don’t want to put my own spin on it by paraphrasing or quoting.
I’m mostly at a loss for what to say. I think most of us can agree that stereotypes or discrimination or however you want to categorize experiences like the ones Mike T. describes are not good. What makes it even more difficult for me to speak about is that I realize that teachers who do fit the expected mold – including me - often benefit from these stereotypes, even if we don’t agree with them.
My teaching has been done in Europe and briefly in the US, and I don’t necessarily look any different from a local teacher or how students expect a native speaker to look – but there is a good chance that - in some places at least - I’ve been paid more or received different benefits or simply had different or easier expectations put on me for this essentially arbitrary difference. I suspect in many countries local teachers make less than native speaker when they do essentially the same work, or even more work, possibly with comparable qualifications.
Date: April 12th, 2007 |
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Mistaken Assumptions
Yes, I’m still a virtual tag along on Jeff’s journey through China and/or Tibet via Pigs In the Toilet.
In Part 28, Jeff discovers that Tibet was not quite what he had expected:
Contrary to the tourist slogans, the signature landscape of Tibet is not snow…Tibet is barren. Most of it is brown. It is essentially a desert, which just happens to be situated between 3,000 and 8,000 meters above sea level.
The most apt metaphor to describe Tibet’s landscape is the boardroom table: Most of it is a single broad stretch of dry, brown nothingness, where human subsistence is a miracle that recurs on a daily basis. Surrounding this table is a ring of white-topped behemoths. They’re the board of directors, if you will – the Himalayas. Mount Everest, I suppose, is the CEO.
While your desk at school is unlikely to be surrounded by a ring of white-topped behemoths, I don’t think misplaced expectations are strangers to TEFL at all. What were some of yours?
It’s hard to look back objectively, but while I think I had a fairly realistic idea of what TEFL had in store for me, I was surprised to find the extent to which language schools really do operate like businesses in many ways, and also that, while most students do generally want/need to know English, they are perhaps less than earnest about this pursuit. I’m certainly no stranger to the field of customer service, but mixing it with something which would otherwise be considered education was and still is strange to me.
As for the places I’ve taught in, the biggest surprise was probably in Bosnia.
Date: June 5th, 2007 |
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Sometimes Learning English Is Like Joining A Gym
It occurred to me that knowing a language – for the sake of logic I’ll use English as an example – is a little bit like losing 20 pounds. Many people want these “ends” and feel that achieving them would improve their lives - and possibly their dating ability - multifold as well. There are also many different means to reach these ends; to lose weight, you can eat less, you can eat healthier, you can incorporate exercise into your life by selling your car and walking, you can pay to join a gym; to learn English, you may be able to immerse yourself in it through books, television or people (if you know enough), you can up and move to an English speaking country, hoping for the best (that’s harder), or you can pay to take an English class.
Perhaps you can see where I’m going with this analogy. People generally pay the money to join gyms because they genuinely want to get healthier, and in theory are up for the challenge, but of course there are some obstacles. They may be tired after work; they might not like to feel fat around all the other skinny people at the gym. Turning up at they gym is not enough. With a few minor adjustments (relative weight is, I hope, less an issue in language classes than in the gym, but you never know), this is sometimes the case for a private language school. There are differences, sure; learning English is likely even more important to their job than losing 20 pounds. When you leave the gym, you are finished, but not with English! I’m giving you homework.
No, not every student has this issue, but if some do, I don’t think it’s because s/he is a slacker or doesn’t care about learning – I think this is just a part of human nature.
What can teachers do?
Date: May 10th, 2007 |
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From The Yemen Observer: Nine Myths
An article on nine myths about learning and teaching English recently jumped out at me; it’s in the Yemen Observer and by English language Professor Nafisa Bin Tayeh. The myths are direct quotes from the text and my thoughts are in parentheses after each; for the author’s full explanation, see the article itself in the above link.
Myth #1: If I can speak English well, then I can teach it well. (I agree that this is a myth.)
Myth # 2: Native speakers are the best teachers. (I also agree that this is a myth but I’d point out that native speakers aren’t necessarily the worst teachers either, and being a native speaker doesn’t automatically preclude “understanding how learning happens” – in the words of a teacher I met, not the author here – or having insight into how L1 affects a learner’s English.)
Myth # 3: Anyone can open up a language institute. (In fact in many places, I think nearly anyone can open one but that doesn’t mean they should or it will be a good one.)
Myth # 4: Faster is better. (This should be at the top of the list!)
Myth # 5: There’s an easy way to learn the language. (I think there are easier and more difficult ways, and better or, well, worse ways to learn, but concur that it’s rarely “easy”.)
Myth # 6: When I finish all of the levels, I’ve learned the language, or, Why do I have to study twenty levels? (It’s hard to put this any better; I’ve been similarly stumped when a student says he wants to write all his business correspondence correctly and without hesitation in English and then asks “How long will that take?”)
Date: April 25th, 2007 |
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These Are A Few Of My Favorite Things…About TEFL
Learning about interesting cultural tidbits, like local legends, superstitions or customs. In Bosnia, it’s not good for your health to have two opposite windows open. It’s also great to see Mr. Clean – in a number of places – billed as Mr. Proper.
Meeting fascinating people and hearing their different stories and experiences. I’ve taught a woman who was involved in university protests during the Velvet Revolution in Czechoslovakia; a guy who, while studying abroad, threw stones at a group of baboons to see what they would do (they threw back). …
Date: April 12th, 2007 |
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“How Can You Teach Someone English If You Don’t Speak Their Language?”
This is a wide question of course, and may show a lack of familiarity on the asker’s part with what’s involved in learning a language.
I’d explain it like this: learning a language is a process that happens over time. It’s not that one day you don’t know it and the next you do, or that knowing a language is just remembering words; learners speak some English and then more and then more still. It’s possible to communicate in English without speaking it to perfection. My read on it is that modern ELT methodologies take it a step further and treat language not as something that you learns by having it explained to you in your own language, but as something you master by using.
More practically, many modern textbooks are designed to use only the target language. They are set up in such a way that simpler language and practical things are presented first, so while not every learner prefers it, it is in fact more or less possible for beginners to learn English in English, say, in a multi-lingual group with a teacher who does not speak their language.
Date: April 12th, 2007 |
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