TEFL Teaching Life
Read about day to day life outside the TEFL classroom for Teachers of English as a Foreign Language
Are Skype Lessons The Latest Threat To In Person Lessons?
Are EFL teachers doomed to be replaced by online learning? I considered this topic a while back, and Sue from an ELT Notebook added an insightful comment, and had also made a few relevant posts of her own on the topic. It mostly seems that while online learning can supplement in-person classes, it is unlikely to pose a real threat to it.
However, I recently came across this: an offer of 30 minutes of lessons on Skype for $5…and the price is being lowered to $1 an hour to target South and Central America.
Granted, this is one case, and perhaps an unusual one…and we don’t really know the content of the lessons. I think it’s unlikely that the quality would be the same as that of 30 minutes of class time with a teacher who has some experience and even a basic qualification like a TEFL certificate. But this is considerably less than a student pays a school for a one to one lesson in Eastern Europe, and more or less on par with a teacher’s take home pay after the school takes its cut.
Date: September 19th, 2007 |
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Travel Tips & Tricks For Budget-Conscious TEFL-ers
As a budget-conscious TEFL-er, I’m always on the lookout for tips and tricks to help make life easier. My latest find is this: if you want a bit of special treatment, consider bringing your laptop with you on holiday, especially if you are staying at hostels.
Conventional wisdom holds that this may make you a target of theft. You could lose your laptop to any number of accidental events. Laptops, even expensive little ones, add what is usually unnecessary weight.
This is all probably true.
However, in this day and age where guidebook writers and hostel reviews are out and about…you can believe your hostel owner will be wondering why a budget traveler, one staying at hostels no less, has a laptop along for vacation. Guidebook writers or hostel reviewer don’t come out and say that, so your honest answer that you’re an English teacher on holiday won’t cancel that impression. I think there is just enough of a question in their mind to give it the benefit of the doubt.
Date: September 16th, 2007 |
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An Eastern European Hat Tip To The Daily Kimchi
Some time ago, Gdog of the Daily Kimchi ate live octopus after the TEFL Logue requested an exclusive based on his earlier vow to try that food. But how to return such a favor? Well, I’m not going to eat anything alive and kicking, but I can bring a bit of Eastern Europe to the Daily Kimchi with my Daily Cevap post.
In case anyone reading this blog does not know, I am a fan of Bosnian people, culture, food and things; a Bosnian aficionado, if you will, and if you can …
Date: September 8th, 2007 |
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Bizarro Moments In TEFL Situations
Do you ever have a moment where you just have to shake your head and wonder how you got there? Here are two of mine…
Being asked by a Franciscan brother if I had a boyfriend
I taught multi-lingual groups in Chicago for a bit, and one of them included a very charismatic European student who introduced himself as a Franciscan brother. I don’t know much about Franciscan brothers, but he sure didn’t look like I expected one to look. He didn’t wear robes, and he had long hair which he wore in dreadlocks. In fact though, …
Date: September 4th, 2007 |
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Interview With John Hall, Former Volunteer ESL Teacher For Kosovar Refugees In Canada (Part 2)
Read Part 1 here.
“There was also the matter of attempting to train volunteers who had never done TESL before. Totally inexperienced teachers working with highly-stressed true beginners: could there have been any type of situation more difficult to deal with? I don’t think so!” Stay tuned for more about communicating with beginners – including John’s insight on what skills that takes specifically.
“I also had bureaucratic chaos to deal with. I started out as a volunteer for a well-known NGO. But after I had been running the “program” for a month, the NGO’s lawyer informed us that the NGO does not teach English. Suddenly, I was entirely on my own, and not responsible to anyone. I also realized that if I went to the Canadian immigration authorities at the base and told them that, then probably my English classes would be put on hold indefinitely…So I didn’t say anything about it! People were used to seeing me come every day, and I just continued to do everything as usual.”
Date: August 28th, 2007 |
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Some Textbook Cases of Student Confidence (Or Lack Thereof)
I never fail to be surprised by students, and it’s always striking when a couple of cases can illustrate in practice something I’ve mostly just assumed to be true.
The Case of Student N: big vocabulary, low confidence
Student N started out by informing me in great detail about his lack of confidence in his English. He wasn’t that bad – in fact his vocabulary was probably better than that of 95% of the students I’ve worked with in more than three years – but he felt that he couldn’t speak. I tried to work in some practice of functional language or rehearsing the situations he said he was likely to need English in, but he didn’t really go for it. He wanted to practice spontaneously so we did several Breaking News English stories and a few crossword puzzles. After about six weeks, I don’t think his level had changed much, but it seemed his confidence had. I came to believe though that part of the issue was just his personality: I don’t know that any level of improvement would have really “made him into” the speaker he wanted to be.
The Case of Student M: excellent confidence and fluency, “medium” vocabulary
Student M was woman with a professional job who told me she knew her English was good and she wasn’t sure if we even had a level appropriate for her. [How can you not love a student who says this?] I reassured her that this would not stop me from finding challenging and useful material, even if it didn’t come pre-packaged in a book. We did a few of the same crossword puzzles, and it turned out that she genuinely didn’t know up to half of the words sometimes. It wasn’t just an issue of lack of context to remind her – these were generally new words for her.
Date: September 17th, 2007 |
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“The Secret To Looking For Work Abroad” From Brave New Traveler
“In my experience, it seems that simply standing upright and speaking several relatively coherent sentences in English is sufficient to land the job.”
Perhaps a bit of a colorful exaggeration, but the point is that EFL work is probably the easiest and most widely available kind of work for native English speakers to find overseas. But what if you don’t want to teach English?
In The Secret to Looking for Work Abroad at Brave New Traveler, author Josh Lew shares his insight on finding other kinds of work abroad.
He mentions tourism as one possibility; not doing routine jobs like waiting tables, but specifically for sports-oriented instructor positions. Competition is stiff, he acknowledges, but my intuition also tells me that aiming for this type of job is a better bet than cleaning rooms or busing tables.
Writing for or editing a newspaper also comes up. I have to say that this strikes me as work a lot of native speakers would like to have – but my instinct is that it is harder than it appears. I do recall interviewing one English teacher who found work with a paper in Japan. This kind of work may, however, have the added benefit of being work that a company can logically require a native speaker for, which will mean a work permit is possible.
Date: September 9th, 2007 |
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Breaking A Contract - Right Or Wrong?
Debating right and wrong in absolute terms is usually a recipe for disaster, perhaps nowhere more so than when it comes to TEFL. Alright, TEFL may not be the best example, but a debate got going some time ago at Dave’s ESL Café when one member raised the topic of “breaking a contract – right or wrong?”
The logical answer to me, especially in a field like the private language school industry, where students are adult clients and the teacher’s role not so different from a customer service one, is that it depends.
There are teachers who work with young people preparing for exams they need for their university entrance, and teachers who spend five or six hours a day with children who come to rely on them. Then there are teachers who see their adult students one or two hours a week, and face canceled lessons without pay more or less at the student’s whim. There are employers who pay late or otherwise shirk their part of the deal.
Date: September 5th, 2007 |
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Interview With John Hall, Former Volunteer ESL Teacher For Kosovar Refugees In Canada
If you’ve ever thought about using your English teaching skills and experience to help immigrants or refugees, EFL teacher John Hall has a story for you.
In 1999, just back in Nova Scotia from over three years in Japan, he found himself volunteering to organize an ESL program for Kosovar refugees. I came across his story at Dave’s ESL Café, and he was kind enough to do an email interview. Find out how his volunteer ESL-ing got started here.
What was it like to teach in this context?
“Imagine losing everything except the clothes on your back, being plunked down into a country that you hardly knew anything about and where you couldn’t speak the language. Imagine not knowing anything about what your future would be, and not knowing whether your friends and family members who were not with you were either alive or dead.” These were the challenges John’s students faced, and it was his job to teach them.
“Classes were pure chaos at first.
Date: August 28th, 2007 |
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What’s That Thing In Bread That Grows?
I don’t need to know what that is before I eat it. From time to time I even accept the five second rule.
Food and drink are some of the most accessible “new things to try” while living abroad. 99% of the time, it is a great experience. But it’s that other 1% that is sometimes the most memorable.
I made my memory when a local supervisor took me along to a sweet shop, on the way describing a drink she wanted me to try. Sometimes, she told me, she brought …
Date: August 27th, 2007 |
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