Job Discussion Forums

[johntpartee]

[RPMcMurphy]

[JamesD]

[thatsforsure]

what would be wrong with being from the southern u.s. , if thats where a person was from? would it make a person less ?

[kev7161]

I've seen this "thatsforsure" poster on another website (which will go unnamed). He blogged in the exact same style just to rile people up and stir the pot a bit. I don't know if he truly doesn't know proper grammar or spelling or if he's just having a go at us. I corrected him on another thread, but now see it's not really worth the time. Let him have his fun.

[thatsforsure]

Well, i guess you must have mistook me for someone else , because i do not normaly post on forums or other sites and i keep to myself!

[johntpartee]

[Lobster]

[dakelei]

After teaching "writing" for exactly one term at a uni here I vowed I'd never do it again. Unlike quite a few of the posters here I actually taught at home in my own country, though it was high school seniors mostly. Even teaching native speakers of English to "write" half-decently is a grind if one is serious about it. My uni handed me a textbook and a schedule then sent me off to "teach." Having almost no idea of what was expected I decided to start out small. I played a song and asked my students to write a one sentence response to it. The only requirements were it needed to be at least 8 words long and have a noun, verb and ending punctuation. These were English majors, mind you. This is a rough estimate, obviously, but 80% or more of the sentences had at least one absolutely fundamental mistake. I was horrified. My first thought was, "I'm still not completely unpacked. I'm getting the hell out of here." The other FT's were either "too busy" (utter nonsense) to help me or said something like, "Do you best." What I spent a lot of time doing in class was showing students "before" and "after" essays that I projected on the screen in front of the class. I showed them a submitted student essay and asked them what was "wrong" with it. Then I showed them the "edited" essay after I'd finished with it. It was helpful to the students who were paying attention but mind-numbingly boring. A few students whined to me after class that they'd rather spend class time "talking" with me and not either writing or editing. I explained that writing is a "process" and not necessarily exciting but if they were serious about learning to write better they'd have to endure it. It was then that I discovered that painfully few ARE "serious" about learning to write better. They were interested mostly in passing "exams." I quite naively believed all that exam crap was behind them after the gaokao. Silly me. I did some rudimentary research about these exams the students were taking and discovered that the failure rate was absurdly high. I'm convinced this is done on purpose and the exams are made ridiculously difficult to either sell more exam prep books or force students to pay to take the exams again and again. (One of my former students told me last week she plans to take the TEM again for the THIRD time. She is a good student who is genuinely trying her hardest.) I made a decision then and there that I would not be a party to this madness and I've stuck with it. If that makes me "lazy", like some here imply, I plead absolutely guilty.

[dakelei]

After teaching "writing" for exactly one term at a uni here I vowed I'd never do it again. Unlike quite a few of the posters here I actually taught at home in my own country, though it was high school seniors mostly. Even teaching native speakers of English to "write" half-decently is a grind if one is serious about it. My uni handed me a textbook and a schedule then sent me off to "teach." Having almost no idea of what was expected I decided to start out small. I played a song and asked my students to write a one sentence response to it. The only requirements were it needed to be at least 8 words long and have a noun, verb and ending punctuation. These were English majors, mind you. This is a rough estimate, obviously, but 80% or more of the sentences had at least one absolutely fundamental mistake. I was horrified. My first thought was, "I'm still not completely unpacked. I'm getting the hell out of here." The other FT's were either "too busy" (utter nonsense) to help me or said something like, "Do you best." What I spent a lot of time doing in class was showing students "before" and "after" essays that I projected on the screen in front of the class. I showed them a submitted student essay and asked them what was "wrong" with it. Then I showed them the "edited" essay after I'd finished with it. It was helpful to the students who were paying attention but mind-numbingly boring. A few students whined to me after class that they'd rather spend class time "talking" with me and not either writing or editing. I explained that writing is a "process" and not necessarily exciting but if they were serious about learning to write better they'd have to endure it. It was then that I discovered that painfully few ARE "serious" about learning to write better. They were interested mostly in passing "exams." I quite naively believed all that exam crap was behind them after the gaokao. Silly me. I did some rudimentary research about these exams the students were taking and discovered that the failure rate was absurdly high. I'm convinced this is done on purpose and the exams are made ridiculously difficult to either sell more exam prep books or force students to pay to take the exams again and again. (One of my former students told me last week she plans to take the TEM again for the THIRD time. She is a good student who is genuinely trying her hardest.) I made a decision then and there that I would not be a party to this madness and I've stuck with it. If that makes me "lazy", like some here imply, I plead absolutely guilty.

[dakelei]

After teaching "writing" for exactly one term at a uni here I vowed I'd never do it again. Unlike quite a few of the posters here I actually taught at home in my own country, though it was high school seniors mostly. Even teaching native speakers of English to "write" half-decently is a grind if one is serious about it. My uni handed me a textbook and a schedule then sent me off to "teach." Having almost no idea of what was expected I decided to start out small. I played a song and asked my students to write a one sentence response to it. The only requirements were it needed to be at least 8 words long and have a noun, verb and ending punctuation. These were English majors, mind you. This is a rough estimate, obviously, but 80% or more of the sentences had at least one absolutely fundamental mistake. I was horrified. My first thought was, "I'm still not completely unpacked. I'm getting the hell out of here." The other FT's were either "too busy" (utter nonsense) to help me or said something like, "Do your best." What I spent a lot of time doing in class was showing students "before" and "after" essays that I projected on the screen in front of the class. I showed them a submitted student essay and asked them what was "wrong" with it. Then I showed them the "edited" essay after I'd finished with it. It was helpful to the students who were paying attention but mind-numbingly boring. A few students whined to me after class that they'd rather spend class time "talking" with me and not either writing or editing. I explained that writing is a "process" and not necessarily exciting but if they were serious about learning to write better they'd have to endure it. It was then that I discovered that painfully few ARE "serious" about learning to write better. They were interested mostly in passing "exams." I quite naively believed all that exam crap was behind them after the gaokao. Silly me. I did some rudimentary research about these exams the students were taking and discovered that the failure rate was absurdly high. I'm convinced this is done on purpose and the exams are made ridiculously difficult to either sell more exam prep books or force students to pay to take the exams again and again. (One of my former students told me last week she plans to take the TEM again for the THIRD time. She is a good student who is genuinely trying her hardest.) I made a decision then and there that I would not be a party to this madness and I've stuck with it. If that makes me "lazy", like some here imply, I plead absolutely guilty.