Job Discussion Forums

[Jetgirly]

I have accepted a job with an Inlingua school somewhere in Western Europe ... okay, this computer has no brackets or apostrophes ... I dont want to be too specific in talking about where I have accepted the job ... for obvious reasons.

I am interested in knowing a bit more about what the Inlingua method entails. I know that it is company specific with a heavy emphasis on conversation over grammar, but I want more information. Okay... no exclamation marks either on this old thing.

The reason I accepted the job was pretty much just the chance to live in a country I am interested in, and to learn a new language. I am open to working in all different environments and with all different people, and I am, for the most part, financially stable whether I work or not... at least until summer rolls around. My CELTA course tutors warned us against jobs with Inlingua because it untrains our CELTA-filled minds. The thing is, our CELTA course tutors were so obsessed with the AIMLP model .... activation, input model, language focus, production ... that it seems just as restrictive as any other way of teaching and I cant see how the Inlingua method could be that much less inflexbile.

[Boy Wonder]

Inlingua Europe....Good luck..cos you are going to need it plus a whole load of patience and tolerance.!!!
I too chose an Inlingua School in Europe..mistakenly thinking that it couldnt worse than some of the cowboy outfits in Efl.
Boy was I wrong.!

the books you will using were written and printed some time in the early to mid 1980's.
They are quite simply the worst books you will find in the EFl market.
Bar none!
Making Headway look like a work of art and Cutting edge a post modern masterpiece is quite an acheivement but Inlingua has done it!

The methodology (if you can call it that ) is outdated and based around the direct method...so favoured in places like Italy and Spain.

The grammatical points in the book are really badly and vaguely presented and some of the grammar is completely irrelevant to everyday useable English.

You will need the Teachers books....they are essential if you are to even remotely understand the aims of the book and of the exercises.
Sadly my school didnt see the point in supplying any of us with the teachers books until we protested loudly and strongly that they do so.

The Cd's that accompany the books are awful...a mixture of American and English accents talking far too quickly for most of the students comprehension.
Inlingua seems to think it can teach American and British English at the same time......well I don't do US accents..I am English so unless you are a transatlantic hybrid it's pretty much a non starter.

All in all the things you were taught on your EFl course will be kicked out of you at Inlingua...if you follow the book.
For the experienced teachers at my school the book is a complete joke and half the time we don't use it all...thereby conducting balanced communicative and clear lessons with listening tapes borrowed from other books.

as i said good luck.....you are about to enter the greedy corpulent world of corporate Efl......it stinks!!!!

[Nauczyciel]

A useful thread indeed!

[Hod]

[Boy Wonder]

Hod...we needed the teachers books not for the answers...(we may have taken jobs with a McLanguage School but we aren't totally stupid)..but because we couldnt see the point in most of the activities and grammar points.

If these books were redesigned in 2000 then I shudder to think what the hell was being taught in the nineties!!!
Some Godawful sack of sherehite that belonged in the 1950's perhaps.

The people I feel sorry for here are the teachers who try and make their lessons interesting and communicative and the students who have paid a lot of money for what essentially is a bad product!

It's a stitch up job all round....those swiss t%ats who oversee all this should be rounded up , tied to classroom chairs and force fed the crap they pass off as TEFL ubtil they choke!

Boy Wonder
27(m)
TESOL(passed)
KET(failed)
1.82m and 80 kg in y-fronts and illuminous socks.

[merlin]

bump

[Boy Wonder]

n'grind

[anonymous_alaska]

The only good thing about the Inlingua method is you really test the limits of drilling and you might pick up some ideas on choosing language. After having gone through both CELTA and DELTA, I think it's still a good learning experience, although maybe only for a couple months.

[dyak]

I haven't laughed so much in ages, muchas gracias!

[Boy Wonder]

Neither have I when I got my payslip for the month of December...
What a joke!
It's was either mess myself with laughter, weep uncontrollably into the Blue Inlingua Bibles or smash the school up in a fit of rage and furious indignation.

[Deconstructor]

[Boy Wonder]

Decon...I gave a quiet thoughtful chuckle. The kind the bad guys did in those spaghetti westerns to themselves just before they went on a completely mental rampage.
The school is intact and functions as usual but Ima plotting and aconniving and Isa gonna get even wit these ere suckers before the horses cross the mountain pass.
Hell have no fury like a disturbed TEFL teacher!!

[Deconstructor]

[Boy Wonder]

I reckon Inlingua should open one of their brances in Fallujah or Tikrit.
They are a right old mess thanks to self seeking, uncaring, greedy, dumb, conservative capitalists.
Fallujah and Tikrit aren't in the best of states either!!

[leeroy]

So - they're not that good then