TEFL Teaching Life
Read about day to day life outside the TEFL classroom for Teachers of English as a Foreign Language
TEFL Retirement
I will be entering early blogging retirement…as of this post. The TEFL Logue itself will remain here, but I will no longer be posting.
I’m not out of ideas. I still enjoy writing and have a lot to say about TEFL, but there comes a point in many pursuits where the cons just outweigh the pros. I have written a lot here – just over 1000 posts and 7 “pages” (see above) in about 17 months. My experience and knowledge are not that extensive, but I’ve worked hard to make posts that I felt were more than just …
Date: January 24th, 2008 |
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These Are A Few (More) Of My Favorite Things
It’s that time of year again, and before I get too caught up in the nitty gritty details of it all, I’d like to wish my readers and fellow bloggers a happy holiday season. Probably feeling that I’d overdosed on cynicism, I compiled the initial report on my favorite things about teaching. For all that I didn’t cover there, here are a few of my favorite things about teaching and blogging…
Teaching:
While you will probably not be revered for being a native English speaker, if you give off a vibe that you are interested in your students as people and their country and culture, people tend to respond to that.
You get to live overseas, and generally speaking, have a chance to really muck in. For better or worse, you are mostly left to your own devices.
There are a variety of entry-level opportunities, and while you do need training, it’s not as hard as most people expect to start teaching English as a foreign language. You can decide to go for it and, within a few months, have a job.
You can talk to your students about all sorts of interesting subjects, as long as you frame it within a wider theme (life experiences) and goal (fluency practice).
Thinking about your own language analytically can give you some neat insight about something you usually take for granted, and so can looking at your own culture once you’ve been outside it for a while.
Compared to other jobs which take you overseas, or even traveling, you really get some of the best interaction with people as individuals through EFL. I know that EFL is not for everyone, and it is even not “for” some teachers already doing it, but I do believe that if more people had the experience of TEFL or another like it, the world would be a better place.
Blogging:
Date: December 17th, 2007 |
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Christmas In TEFL
The holiday season is just around the corner…or was it that corner I passed three blocks ago? I’m terrible with directions, so I’m really not sure, but wherever or whenever it is, the holiday season comes with several important questions:
Where are you going?
Lots of EFL teachers will return “home”, meaning back to their country of origin, even if it sounds funny to call it that after some time away. As usual, Bootsnall has some international air tickets to make it a little easier on your pocketbook.
If you teach in a country that doesn’t celebrate Christmas, or if your break is too short to consider going all the way home, don’t despair. You can still get away. Once again, Bootsnall is there with help, this time in the form of its logues:
Christmas in Amsterdam
Christmas in Greece
Christmas in Hawaii
Christmas in London
Christmas in Paris
Christmas in Italy
and even: Christmas in Portland
Date: December 4th, 2007 |
2 comments
Improving Your Own Language Skills While Teaching Abroad
There’s no shortage of folks who imagine EFL as a great opportunity to improve your language skills. But is it?
Compared to staying at home, I’d say yes. Compared to traveling or actually taking a language class abroad, I’m not so sure. Certainly it depends on your individual personality, motivation, and a bunch of factors unique to your situation. While you may have only 20-some contact hours, a full-time job is usually a full-time job, and combined with realizing how much effort it takes to become proficient, it’s possible that your motivation may recede.
I’m curious to hear what those who are currently teaching think about tefl as an opportunity to improve language skills. Did you aspire to improve your language skills when you started…were there opportunities to do so … and how far did you / were you able to take advantage of those opportunities?
Date: October 25th, 2007 |
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TEFL In The Limelight For A Case Of Child Abuse
Dave’ ESL Café has made the mainstream press, but not for Dave’s new collection of family photos nor the Idea Cookbook. Instead, EFL’s most popular forum is in the limelight because a man accused of abusing children in Vietnam and Cambodia – who was just arrested – is thought to have been a posting member. Futhermore it is said that his posts gave some indication of his oddness.
This man will be tried in court and has of course not been proven guilty as of yet; I also haven’t searched for the posts in question and so can’t comment on whether they strike me as strange or indicative of a child predator.
Cases like these, though, regardless of whether this particular guy is the one they want or not, make my skin crawl. There are people in the world who are just predators and their actions can and do ruin lives and cause psychological trauma, not just for the victim but for their families and communities. The damage is not undone when “justice” is administered and the guilty party is punished with prison time or however.
As it relates to TEFL, it’s not surprising to me that articles written in connection with this case may not reflect the field in the most positive light. Some articles have asked whether the ease of getting a job, especially in countries which seem to have a reputation for attracting child predators, draws such people to those countries. This raises the question of “should EFL teachers, or certain categories of teachers in certain places, be held to more scrutiny?”
Date: October 24th, 2007 |
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Are Peace Corps Volunteers Too Inexperienced?
The Peace Corps is one of the best known programs which places US volunteers in developing countries for about two years. Teaching English is one of the jobs volunteers do.
Read the New York Times article yourself and have a look at some letters to the editor that followed the article. I can’t speak directly to the article, but it really did make me reflect on some of the views I’ve developed in my time teaching abroad.
I don’t have personal experience with the Peace Corps…and I’m not personally opposed to the idea that it “doesn’t work” in bringing vast change to developing country by training and placing handfuls of volunteers – even highly qualified ones. But if this is what it took to “fix” the developing world, it would already have been done. Instead of spending money to train and support younger volunteers, the US could just select experts in each field. If people have this expectation – that the volunteers are there to “produce change” in two years - of course it will fail.
Date: January 21st, 2008 |
2 comments
What To Do With All That Stuff
If you’re like me, you have accumulated a good deal memento-type stuff which you are not quite ready to part with. Aside from the practical difficulties of carting around ticket stubs, coins, and cards from students, the main problem is how to display these goodies. As appealing the idea of framing my old bus pass is – and as much as I like the picture on it, really – I also like to come up with more creative ways to present my various mementos.
For a time, I used the strategy of throwing all my small paper-based mementos in a pretty box. This method has several advantages: it keeps them out of the way and conveniently all in one place. It can also be fun to rifle through the memento box from time to time and see what you do in fact remember. Finally, it can come in handy in the case that you are a US citizen engaged to a foreigner, and need documentation of trips taken and movies seen together to get a green card (not my situation, I’m just saying)!
Scrapbooking is a big trend nowadays, and if you visit a bookstore you can page through any number of large books on scrapbooking some to get cute and creative ideas. I will concede that scrapbooking is not for everyone, including me, but if you’ve got some stuff and anticipate a month off upon your return, why not.
Other ideas:
Glue tickets, leftover bills, postcards and train schedules on poster board and have it laminated as placemats. This makes it easy to whip it out and show people, and also just to have lying around for them to ask about, but you can also slide it away neatly
Buy a decorative box or small chest of some kind and glue your mementos on (coins in the corners or along the edge of the cover?)
Date: December 7th, 2007 |
3 comments
How Tied To The Expat Ghetto Are You?
First of all you’ll have to consider whether you count as an expat or not, but even if you don’t (or you don’t care), I think it’s relevant to lots of us living abroad.
I’ve really taken to the Guardian Abroad and have been meaning to post about this article on expat ghettos for a while. The author brings up the normal points about why expats seem to seek each other out – similar language, shared understanding of the challenges and frustrations of being an expat (sure, there are joys, too, but you don’t need to commiserate about those – you can brag to family and friends at home!), and often just a similar socio-cultural background or something.
While again I will refuse to go into much detail, I think dating a guy who was not an expat for some time left me in a weird sort of limbo. It’s also possible I’m just weird.
On the one hand, I did find myself pretty happily involved in an “expat in the city” type situation last year, with a regular group of – gasp – American friends. As Americans are wont to do, we even worked out a regular weekly schedule to meet on. It was super and I expect to see at least one of the gang (two if her husband counts, which I suppose he does despite his irregular attendance) when I return to the US. But aside from conveniently falling into that situation, I don’t find myself seeking out other foreigners.
Why in limbo? I think blending into local life is not always as easy as we’d like to think. I’m all for having local friends and seizing whatever opportunities come your way to integrate into local life. I think having a steady (ie not a one-year contract) job somewhere, and especially being in a serious relationship with/married to a local, helps a lot. But, while the author’s choice of words (retreat) implies people have this access but actively chose to step back, I think there is very frequently still some line that few people cross.
Date: October 30th, 2007 |
3 comments
Phrasal Verb Review Game For Upper-Intermediate Or Advanced Level
I recently got a request for a game or activity to practice phrasal verbs for upper-intermediate or advanced level. My contribution is below and I’d encourage my readers to chip in with any additional ideas or suggestions as well via comments.
I have to admit that I find it more of a challenge to innovate games for higher levels. The subject matter just tends to involve finer shades of meaning or grammar points which don’t always lend themselves to the fast and interactive pace that many of us - students and teachers alike - associate with games.
First and “funnest”: charades or pictionary. You have to chose the verbs carefully though to ensure that they are both draw-able (act-able), and also that they are similar enough, or there are enough of them, that it will actually take some drawing (acting) before people can guess correctly. It is also often necessary to outlaw literal drawings or gestures, ie “look up” a pair of eyes and an arrow pointing up.
Another alternative which has a slower pace but provides more thorough review as well as genuine competition and strategy: four (or five) in a row.
You choose sixteen (or twenty-five) phrasal verbs to review – ones your students know, of course, and not new ones. You write the numbers one through sixteen (twenty-five) in a square grid, and on a separate paper that you keep for yourself, associate each number with a phrasal verb. In teams students try to win four in a row, like tic tac toe, by getting the phrasal verb behind it “right”. So – they don’t know which verb they get when they chose a number, not the first time around anyway.
Date: October 24th, 2007 |
5 comments
Interview With Larry Ferlazzo, ESL Teacher And Blogger - Former Community Organizer (Part 2)
Read Part 1 of the TEFL Logue interview with former community organizer and current ESL teacher and blogger Larry Ferlazzo first.
One of his first challenges was figuring out how to implement Krashen’s theory of free voluntary reading for these students, who not only spoke no English but also had never been to school. He started with some talking books online.
Next, with the knowledge that “in community organizing we find that often the best ideas for solving problems come from the people most affected by the problem”, Larry set off with the help of an interpreter to meet parents of his new students in their homes. One parent mentioned that having computers at home would help; lacking public transport (and driving licenses which required knowledge of English) most parents couldn’t get to the school to take advantages of the after-school program he’d developed for the students. Larry got the school to donate the computers it happened to be replacing right then directly to the families. He also succeeded in getting a grant from a foundation which he’d worked with in his organizing days to cover the cost of an Internet connection.
Eighty percent of the members of each family agreed to use the computer and Internet for English reading with the talking books for a minimum of one hour a day; often they ended up using it together. In this way, the Internet, which is often seen as weakening face to face relationships, served as a tool which families used together.
Comparison of progress with a group who did not have computers and Internet at home revealed that the “computer group” showed double the improvement. The school district was so impressed that it provided $80,000 to triple the size of the program. You can read an article about the project here.
Larry has commented that community organizing and teaching aren’t really all that different. This may not seem so obvious on the surface, but even in some short TEFL courses (the CELTA is the one I have personal experience of), you can notice the emphasis on motivating students to use what they know and figure things out for themselves. In practice of course, this can be frustrating for both the teacher an the student initially (why not just give them the answer?!) but in the long run, this strategy has positive results. And this is true not only in teaching but in other areas as well.
Given his support for the value of this - and also his extensive experience in another relevant field - I asked Larry to give an example of a typical mistake teachers (or organizers) make in this area.
Date: October 22nd, 2007 |
4 comments
