Job Discussion Forums

[esl_prof]

A bit more recent than the 70s and 80s, but still a pioneer in many respects:

http://www.alternet.org/story/147941/i_was_a_landlord_to_a_russian_spy,_and_he_was_a_total_slob

Not to mention, one of my favorite autobiographical TEFL accounts.

[nomad soul]

[scot47]

W Stannard Allen "Living English for the Arab World" and a series of awful readers. There was also a grammar book. Was that too written by W Stannard Allen ?

[Teacher in Rome]

I started teaching in London in the late 80s. Pay was pitiful (on a good month I earned about £600 I seem to remember) and we had to pay in our cheques before the close of the bank day just to make sure the language school owner hadn't "forgotten" to sign or anything else shady like that.

You got work by looking at the ads in the Education section of the Guardian on a Tuesday, or by looking at the EFL Gazette, published once a month.

Our materials as far as I remember:

Meaning Into Words (still like some of the activities)
Streamline
Cambridge English Course
Headway (we almost fell over ourselves in excitement when the Advanced edition came out)
Focus on Proficiency
A new FCE book by Jon Naughton that our staffroom also loved (I seem to remember going to the launch and each of us getting a free copy which made us very happy)

Lots of cutting out and gluing articles from the paper, that we then photocopied for our students. (Pre-internet days...)

Many of our students were Japanese who looked permanently stunned at being in an English language classroom. Lots of European kids doing the FCE or Proficiency, and a few male teachers who took advantage of the female students...

It was quite fun, though not terribly professional, and not much of a career move. I doubt much has changed in the last three decades or so!

[scot47]

BBC World Service on Short Wave ! No TV or newspapers in English ! I used to take a supply of books with me to last until the next holiday !