Job Discussion Forums

[the_otter]

I was reading a TEFL book from the eighties and a disproportionately large number of pages seemed to be devoted to every possible use of cuisenaire rods, or at least to all the ones that can be mentioned in front of impressionable young teachers. No one at my school uses them; on my CELTA course only one person had ever heard of them.

Lego or Meccano strike me as more promising teaching aids...

What other teaching fads have come and gone or are in the process of going? TPR? Dogme? Dictaphones? (And where can I get the necessary equipment? I quite like the idea of teaching wearing a mortar board and black gown over a tie-dye shirt with a copy of An English grammar: methodical, analytical and historical in one hand and a cassette recorder in the other. It would at least make me stand out from the crowd.)

And does anyone want to defend cuisenaire rods?

[fluffyhamster]

I had a pack of cuisenaire rods once, but ate them in a blur of TEFL-induced starvation, thinking they were mega-sized licquorice comfits. Which is a great shame, because those rods would've obviously come in really handy for colour-coding boarded sentences (I mean, who wants to save time with simple handwritten part-of-speech or function labels, when they can waste time with fiddly, time-consuming appurtenances instead?). The best invention since hangman, surely!

[natsume]

(De)suggestopedia. TEFL on acid.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suggestopedia

I find TPR to be very effective with my low level students, but I use it in a very limited way as a warm-up/mid-class wake up. "Adapt, don't adopt."

[Isla Guapa]

[sharter]

Jazz chants!!!!!

[Sashadroogie]

Task-based learning. Been debunked.

[the_otter]