Job Discussion Forums

[nomad soul]

To Scot47, johnslat, and you other TEFL pioneers:

If you started your TEFL career 30 or more years ago, how was it back then? What were some of the challenges? What were your students like? What was better compared to now? How did you find employment opportunities? What was the most memorable aspect of teaching during those decades?

For everyone else, how do you imagine TEFLing was back then?

[buravirgil]

[nomad soul]

[2buckets]

It was known as the "golden age" of TEFL.

Was paid more in Iran from 1972 to 1979 than most recently in UAE. A wonderful place with real culture.

Saudi in the 80s wasn't bad in Jeddah, party hardy.

UAE in 90s to mid 2000s good too. Started to deteriorate about 2005. Now it's pretty bad.

[johnslat]

"Softies, when compared to "real work" with the Peace Corps."

Well, I was never in the Peace Corps, but I was in the War Corps in the '60s - and softies didn't last long there.

Plus, my first EFL experience was in Iran in 1978. So, I got to experience the "Islamic Revolution" up close and personal.

That wasn't too soft, either.

Of course, there was the Scudding in Riyadh in 1991, and getting caught in a riot in Indonesia in '89. But those barely merit mention.

Still, being soft ain't all bad: http://www.quotessays.com/images/soft-quotes-5.jpg

Regards,
John, the Old Softy

[buravirgil]

John,

I think you're mistaking a jibing of biased distinctions with an advocacy-- of teacherly types versus the Nietzschean Supermen of American exceptionalism. A volunteer to JFK's Peace Corp once told me, "You know why they scaled it back after the first few years? We all came back as radicals!" Though I am intrigued the first two posters to this thread with 70s experience were in Iran-- Clearly Shah attaches and CIA assets. (That is a joke.)_

And though it's true throughout Central and Latin America that Catholics touted biblical literacy as meaningful literacy, what readings I was assigned in the late 80s described the origins of ESL as universities (and their trustees) developing western-styled universities abroad that served to build industry and infrastructure. Ivy league departments solicited bright young men (and very few women) to tutor the bright young men (and very few women) of capital holding families across the globe. That was the 50s; A cottage industry of the elite. That didn't go away during the 60s, but international relations certainly weren't improving and is why the Peace Corp was invented. Peace Corp volunteers actually did a lot of English teaching, but they were drawn from all over the country (state schools) and were, you know, building stuff, hammers and things.

What went down in Iran, boy o boy guys, please relate more than the pay. I've seen the photographs of a secular Iran and they are amazing. And yet what a short run. An oil crisis, hostages...all that remained were America's ties to Egypt and KSA and Britain saving the Hashemites.

By the 70s, English departments being coordinated with medicine and engineering waned. But English departments, especially from prestigious schools, still supplied what demand there was from an elite. And the 70s saw the emergence of method beyond Berlitz (developed for soldiers). It was through English departments that the contemporary practice of applied linguistics became what it is.


Salute,

buravirgil

[nomad soul]

For clarification, my interest in this thread was to get actual personal teacher accounts of what it was like to teach EFL several decades ago rather than to focus on the history of TEFL or socio-political elements that impacted the profession.

[esl_prof]

[buravirgil]

[Andre 3000]

No direct experience myself, but here's Scott Thornbury talking about his Tefl 70s:
https://scottthornbury.wordpress.com/2015/03/29/f-is-for-forty-years-on/

His Celta cost £65!

[MuscatGary]

I went to teach in Bilbao in 1977. The city was much smaller then and there were hardly any other ex-pats about. Most of my students were studying social sciences, especially psychology and the literature was virtually all from the US and UK. Funnily enough I was never referred to as a TEFL teacher just as an English teacher and I had no qualifications other than my degree. I got the job through my Basque girlfriend who had studied with me in the UK, she also used her family connections to get me work teaching in a large travel agency. After two years a Venezuelan family that I had met in Bilbao offered me a job in Caracas which was a mixture of rich and poor but I made god money teaching business English to people who wanted to trade with the US. After two years there I went home and left the world of TEFL for just over twenty years to make money and do other stuff like getting married and having children. Once I'd done all of that the wanderlust came back...

[scot47]

We bought the Times Educational Supplement on a Friday - or in my case read it in the public library. At the back there were ads for teaching posts overseas. You wrote to the advertiser and organised an interview. that is what took me in 1970 to the office of the Educational Attaché in the Embassy of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia in Regents Park in London. Then it all started..........

My years of exile began and I realised I was a grown-up. Sort of.

[nomad soul]

What types of materials did you use for teaching? How were the students? Moreover, what were you paid for your first teaching job?

[MuscatGary]

[nomad soul]

Thanks for the contributions. Hopefully, others will share a bit about their personal experiences teaching during those decades.

A couple of other interesting write-ups on the topic:

US English language programs trace roots to mid-1970s
http://www.mprnews.org/story/2012/12/13/teaching-minnesota-ellhistory

English in SK: A Look Back
http://www.gwangjunewsgic.com/online/english-in-korea-a-look-back/