Job Discussion Forums

[TheLongWayHome]

[jaimem-g]

Excuse a first time poster from butting in on this very interesting thread. I have a friend who has been showing me the applied linguistics and some other forums on ESL Cafe and found them to be dominated by teachers from China and other Asian countries and somewhat boring. One of the most recent points made by mejms really struck a chord with me - that Mexicans experience different problems in learning English than learners from other backgrounds and this merits attention in our teaching.

I am just retiring from teaching ESL in the US for quite a few years and we engage in many of the same discussions here. I don't want to presume on telling you how to teach in Mexico, 'cause you guys are actually doing it now. The last time I actually worked in Mexico was back in the mid 1960's in Veracruz. We used an old textbook by Robert Dixon that the students bought at the local bookstore. I remember not understanding why the students kept pronouncing girI as "hell". (To me this was not just a curveball - it was a screwball!) Later as I began to decipher the pronunciation key, I discovered that it was supposed to be British pronuciation.

Was I unprepared! Later when I was back in the US taking teacher preparation classes, my professor of philosophy of education class said something very memorable, "Always be ecclectic". This and the other two related threads gave me a good ecclectic sampling of the state of teaching EFL in Mexico and it made a very favorable impression on me.

It makes me want to get involved in some real teaching in EFL very soon if someone will have me. My friend is going to be working on a short term volunteer job this summer with a group of 20 Mexican teachers who are working with children who are moving back to Mexico from the US, but I'm interested in something more long term. At any rate, I hope to join the conversation with you as I look for a new job.

[Isla Guapa]

[Phil_K]

[Isla Guapa]

I've never taken any TEFL training courses, but I do have a B.S.ed. with a Spanish major, which included training in teaching Spanish to English- speakers. When I went abroad and started teaching English to Spanish-speakers, I found that I could apply most of what I'd learned by simply "reversing the process", so to speak. And, of course, the coursework for my B.S. included a lot of comparative studies of English and Spanish phonetics, grammar and so on. Over the years (I got my B.S. in 1967), a multitude of new theories and practices about the "best way" to teach English have come into and out of vogue. Some of it I've found useful, some of it not so much the case, but out of all of these recent and "ancient" methodologies, I've developed my own eclectic TEFL style.

[mejms]