Job Discussion Forums

[spiral78]

[fluffyhamster]

Ah, perhaps it was Birmingham (if so, pretty good programme, at least the last time I looked).

Fine, no need to read my CELTADELTA analyses which, criticisms of style or "dense content" notwithstanding, are still correct! (Just please don't ever say or even imply that they aren't, OK?). And I know that "grammar" isn't a particular interest of yours, after all.

It wouldn't be illogical to tell somebody who was interested in conversation (no need for quotation marks, it is what it is) to not pursue certainly certs, as conversational norms are hardly a focus of them. But enough taking things as a given, what with you being so heartwarmingly generous in your reply already! See you around.

[spiral78]

[fluffyhamster]

I would've let this lie, but you had to push it, didn't you Spiral.

They absolutely are relevant, as they show what "recommended" methodology is like, and how in the process it can get things quite wrong.

Let me run a few of the guilty names from the parade of shame by you again (you can search out the detailed reasoning, I am tired of explaining it to you):

Gower et al's Teaching Practice Handbook, albeit from 1995 but very similar points are made in current/still in-print books such as Aitken's Teaching Tenses. Both have been recommended and used on certs.

Trainer X on a CTEFLA shrouded in the mists of time using again overly-rhetorical presentational methodology very similar to that which Richards criticizes in relation to Present Perfect in his The Context of Language Teaching.

More recently, that execrable dictogloss clip by Rolf Tynan on the DVD accompanying Harmer's TPOELT. (You know, the one where the key sentence had at least five meanings with most of them contradicting each other). I was called "petty" for suggesting the clip at least mention commas, even though that would've helped resolve the problems and made it much more useful as a training aid. (Personally, I'd've scrapped the entire lesson and presented something more useful and less problematic for such a DVD). BTW if you fancy disagreeing with the analysis I've provided for this or for the Gower et al, perhaps give somebody like Professor Geoffrey Pullum a bell as I'm sure he'd be very sympathetic to your alternatives. After all, he didn't give me the time of day, did he, and could see nothing wrong with the use of patently invented (and thus potentially problematic) sentences in language teaching. See also an Osnacanatab's agreement towards the bottom of the comments here https://scottthornbury.wordpress.com/2015/05/17/d-is-for-dictation/ , hmm that Fresh Sawdust guy seems familiar...shame that that nice Mr Thornbury or indeed Mr Harmer himself didn't respond to FS's questions though eh, I wonder why not?!

More recently still, Hod giving a masterclass on how to CCQ the life out of decontextualized sentences, as per his training, when simply incorporating the key language into conversation was infinitely more compelling (hell, somebody even said they unconditionally liked my approach more!).

And most recently, some Trinity trainer publishing a TESOL guide that included not only the infamous wardrobe CCQ, but also recommended using CCQs to establish the meanings of fruit vocabulary beyond doubt. Seriously?!?! Stuff like that absolutely is swine before pearls and a massive waste. of. time. If CCQs are so valuable and important, can they at least be used for more complex items? (Though as we have just seen with regard to e.g. [Hod's] conditionals, it is relatively easy, and much more compelling, to simply supply richer and more extensive contexts, and to thus work through things in a living evolving real-time process, rather than "simply" examine dead products brought in for autopsy from who knows where. Why is CLT so apparently distrustful of the power of real communication?!).

I am sure there are more examples I've looked at, but I'll stop now as I wouldn't want to be accused of actually discussing anything or giving anybody too much to read and think about, what with this being just a language teaching forum and all. And no number of examples of numbskull methodology, let alone a mere half dozen, could ever be that suggestive of anything, could it?! Nothing to see here, nothing rotten in Kislev, move along now!

[spiral78]

Fluff, I've less-than-zero interest in what was taught on your CTEFLA back in 1996 or whenever it was. And I've NEVER heard the wardrobe CCQ and I have no idea what 'fruit vocabulary' even is.

You clearly have very little idea of what modern TEFL qualifications include if this is the most relevant and supposedly ubiquitous stuff you can dredge up.

You need to update your quals if only to have something relevant to post about

[fluffyhamster]

The people you should be addressing are the trainers who dredge up and keep serving stuff like that. It is actually quite ubiquitous (so yet again I wonder just how informed you are about these certs). Are you honestly telling us that CCQs and the like aren't a feature of the CELTA? I think you are quite mistaken in at least that regard. Perhaps all you really know about certs is from your experience of completing the SIT TESOL?

Only one of the examples I've given is from my CTEFLA (yes, 1996, so that's a lot of experience and thinking since). The rest are all surely recent enough, and more importantly generally "widespread" enough, to be of interest and potential concern.

Just the other day I told somebody about that wardrobe CCQ and they LOLed as they'd experienced exactly the same thing on their cert. So that's at least 3 people that I know of, decades and continents and providers apart, who've met it. Count yourself lucky that you haven't. Fruit vocabulary, you really have no idea? Words like banana, orange, grapefruit. Yes, really that basic. That Trinity trainer was da bomb, I tell ya! Have fun thinking up CCQs for bananas versus pineapples (I know I did!). But perhaps that's what every cert needs, a ray of comedy sunlight to brighten up the general awfulness. That, or a bullet in the head.

As for updating, I suggest you update your entire conception of language. You can't keep dismissing language, and doing so just makes you look foolish, ill-informed and unprincipled. Frankly, I think trainers like you (or at least those you seem so hellbent on defending for some reason) are charlatans. Sorry. Again, I say: I would like to discuss language, even if in the process training providers are unavoidably criticized. (Of course, not every example needs to come from training, but it shouldn't be surprising that problematic examples will attract greater scrutiny. In fact, that is unfortunately not an inconsiderable part of a teacher's job - working out what may be wrong with any number of examples from students, and yes, trainers, other teachers, inauthentic materials, dodgy test items, etc etc etc - and in the process what might thus express things better).

Anyway, I look forward to further posts from you in which you continue to do heady stuff like remind Americans they can't work in Europe, give misleading advice about teaching in Asia, or keep mentioning the fact that you have a good (but in some respects apparently quite wasted) MA. Valuable and riveting stuff indeed!

[bograt]

[fluffyhamster]

It must be my imagination then that getting trainees to check comprehension isn't a real fixation of trainers (they will make you check even when it is painfully unnecessary and the equivalent of pulling healthy teeth from a bewildered patient). Trainees get warned all the time that they may fail if they aren't seen to be check check checking. None of this ringing any bells with anyone who's done the CELTA? Wow, the trainers must be getting really soft nowadays!

The infamous wardrobe CCQ goes something like this: 'So, do you keep food in it? How about clothes?' I don't know about you, but I have rewarding conversations like that, at least with myself and in my gargantuan racing turbo-driven mind, all the time. It's part of the unbridled magic of ELT. You go so far beyond even the banalities of possibly talking about having wardrobes fitted, or about (the) Wardrobe (department) in movies, that it really is quite something to behold.

Similarly, it is an immensely productive use of classroom time to teach usually not even incidentally-relevant vocabulary such as bananas and satsumas because, well, nobody ever thinks of taking or consulting a phrasebook or dictionary when they go shopping, or indeed of simply pointing at things (assuming of course that they've found at least roughly what they were looking for), do they? That's crazy talk!

[bograt]

[fluffyhamster]

Again, we're now post-internet (as are the fruit, and indeed still the wardrobe, training CCQs), not that I consult the internet unless I'm actually looking to buy a wardrobe somewhere. I do however have a story about incidentally a wardrobe but I'm afraid it's far too racy for a classroom or indeed even this forum. Shame. (And no, it wasn't Sardines! ).

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_XTvVYJPROQ

[bograt]

[fluffyhamster]

I haven't checked for s2 yet, but yeah, that one on the train was a lot more fun for sure! I also like the s1 one where it's all silent mime and they're trying to steal that piece of art from the swanky designer house. The Harrowing (final ep of s1) was also good.

[Hod]

[spiral78]

[twowheel]