How to teach English

[mesomorph]

...

It seems to me a very responsible task to ask oneself, as an inexperienced teacher, the questions offered, however I think I would have looked for more sources than just one book with a title that promises to help the inexperienced overcome the hurdles that a new job offers. Only experience does such. And the various and sundry replies that make up the "Dave's" part of the "project" are things we experienced teachers already know about and are sometimes tired of sharing with the inexperienced. Nothing I could offer would be useful as it has often been rightly pointed out that what works for me is because it is I who is using those techniques or methods. That is the true work of the teacher who is accumulating experience. This "project" should have been better researched and notated and kept to the OP's self in the notebooks where such things hide for years until we get around to finally throwing them out one fine Spring Cleaning.

My concluding remark might just be "get thee to the library and read all of those books on teaching, teaching ESL, teaching in a foreign land, etc, that are in the stacks. Get the job and convince the students and bosses that you know what you are doing even if you don't." Posting on Dave's is not the same as publishing in "Applied Linguistics Today" (does that scientific journal exist? Were we doctors I might have said "Lancet" or "JAMA", you get my meaning.) Keep notes but keep them to yourself until someone hires you to lead a teacher-training workshop.

Uuff! Am I in a spicy mood today!? Sorry about that, no offense meant and hopefully not taken.

peace,
revel.

Your post very well points to the state of many (not all - I have met some real gems) 'experienced' teachers' mentality, behaviour and attitude, as follows:

- A general awareness of the problems that face inexperienced teachers
- An unrelenting highlighting of the inexperience which the inexperienced is aware of and is making efforts to address
- Constantly vague and contradictory barrages of destructive criticism regarding everything and anything the inexperienced does (relevant and very often not) to become experienced whilst simultaneously beating him/her round the head for not trying hard enough to become more experienced
- This takes place all the while the administrator is aware of it or not, often taking place in a patroninising, insulting, rude, smug and gloating manner
- An inability to empathise or care about much if any of the aboves effect on the individual while all the time boasting about one's own experience and supreme ability which is never really evidenced or shared apart from in the boasting

[mesomorph]

When I become a more experienced teacher I will resolutely remember my often difficult experience of being inexperienced.

I will make all the effort I can to help my younger counterparts in everyway I can, knowing that goodness is its own reward.

I will do this while respecting the younger learners as individuals with particular learning styles, which they themselves will clearly be more intimate with than me.

I will respect these younger people as professionals and human beings who have enough of the good stuff to have achieved as much as I had by that age, without worrying about my own insecurities and personal agendas.

Never will I insult, patronise, mock, or destroy any efforts to achieve.

[fluffyhamster]

Meso, Meso, Meso (said with progressively falling, despairing, dare I say patronizing intonation).

Teaching English is on the one hand considered an easy job (for native speakers at least), "not rocket science", something that pays the bills etc. It is entirely possible to satisfy students if not bosses without breaking too much of a sweat; you can read this sort of viewpoint all the time on the International forums (and sometimes on the Teacher ones too), and pretty much everyone who has attempted to answer your questions has more or less been forced to boil things down to that degree (see Glenski's reply for the most recent example. I imagine that TEFL will require a bit more thought than native ELT in Scottish schools, but that the paperwork will be considerably less). And FWIW, I think I did attempt to give you some reasonable advice (before I made the mistake of thinking you were up for a bit of a discussion); and FYI, I have attempted to genuinely answer many, many questions from the students, trainees and even experienced teachers who visit Dave's (as well as posting a fair number of questions, or simply points for discussion, including a fair share of lead balloons, myself).

This does not mean however that the envelope should not be pushed, and what better time to start pushing yourself than when a "newbie" (which you aren't quite, what with your study of English and PGDE, teaching experience etc) - even before I'd finished the CTEFLA, I was looking beyond Harmer to the likes of Lewis and the sort of books he wrote or published through LTP, and I have been buying and reading books pretty much continuously throughout my so-called career. But if you really would honestly prefer to be treated as somebody without a brain, without an opinion, who takes no interest, who in a word is that proverbial "sponge", then by all means carry on screaming and shouting next time anyone dares to try and pick your brains (on the assumption that you would like to be engaged in an interesting and possibly even challenging discussion from which you at least might stand to gain something - I know that I for one often learn something, or at least refine my own views further, by contributing here. Ask yourself if you have really contributed that much so far, or even "played your part").

The problem is that you are wanting to be hailed as some sort of expert when your contributions to discussions show you are anything but (at the moment - things could well change, so please do not think that anyone is writing you off just yet). Let me state that again: these are DISCUSSION forums, not venues for piffling research which "shoots stuff back out as guacamole" (thanks for that, revel, saved me a few seconds coming up with yet more).

Most people in your position simply ask questions and then go away again (perhaps none the wiser, a lot depends on the questions); if and when they do come back, they generally have new or at least somewhat differing questions to ask - they "take a different tack". I cannot recall anyone as communicatively stunted or as "academically" plodding as you, at least not on Dave's (and that is saying something!).

[lolwhites]

I didn't come this far to bandy crooked words with a twisted worm

Thanks for that, meso, you've made me laugh harder than I have in ages on this forum. Good thing I wasn't drinking coffee while reading your post or it'd have ended up all over my keyboard.

[fluffyhamster]

I didn't come this far to bandy crooked words with a twisted worm

Thanks for that, meso, you've made me laugh harder than I have in ages on this forum. Good thing I wasn't drinking coffee while reading your post or it'd have ended up all over my keyboard.

I'm just glad that finally, someone's genuinely gotten something out of this thread!

Maybe it's time I put in that bit more "too": Who does Mesomorph most resemble - (the) Monkey, or Al (Johnny Vegas), in the PG Tips "seahorses in his tea" advert? Discuss.

[revel]

Hey all.

Again, I ask forgiveness for my tone in my last post, the response was to be expected though as I pointed out, I did not mean to offend. I was simply in a pretty sh*tty mood and it was reflected in my comments.

As to being on my high horse without offering a hand (this thread begins to reek with metaphores), I refer metamor to the thread called "Interpretative ESL", here at Applied Linguistics, in which I went to great trouble and into great detail of discussing certain activities that make up the ESL class in my classroom. There was some interesting discussion as well as my longish explanations. Some of those posts I removed in a huff when suffering a spat with another poster recently, but I think there is enough left in that thread to demonstrate that I, like many many others, do not mind sharing my experience when asked the right questions about something outside of the boundaries of "here's how to teach ESL".

I repeat that the work done on the research "project" was laudable, though lacked resourses (the bibliography, for example, seemed to me thin) and that the information offered was either "text book" that, as I said, we mostly already know or practice, and our own opinions, which we had read when browsing the original thread. I do not consider "inexperienced" to be a lesser category; indeed, it can be a more elevated category, as the "inexperienced" are often much more vibrant, excited, interested and investigative than the old f*rts who have found their favorite book of exercises and have been using the same "box of games" for the past 20+ years. Had the "project" offered something new I, for one, would certainly have tried it out. The thing is, I only skimmed over it, for lack of time, and for recognizing that it seemed same old same old, at least to me. This does not mean that it wasn't new and exciting for the person who wrote it, or for others in a like situation.

Finally, I, like others, have asked the same questions and done the same "investigation" but have kept it to myself, maybe because some of it was embarrassingly simplistic, maybe obvious, maybe something that as teachers we ought to have known all along, whatever, I lost those notebooks long ago when I left the States to live in Spain and really don't miss them (though I would get a good laugh out of some of those notes if I reviewed them now a days).

I hope I've made some peace with these words, and if not, well I'm still in a bit of a bad mood, don't like Christmas much and it's cold where I am and that would certainly influence my writing.

peace,
revel.

[fluffyhamster]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7LufWA-KvRE
http://www.pgtips.co.uk/freemonkey/

[mesomorph]

Glad you liked it Mr Whites, I take it you have met SmellyRAT also?

http://st.forocoches.com/foro/customava ... 290_11.gif


I got the job BTW.

[fluffyhamster]

Congratulations (cue deafening round of applause). I guess that means that you managed to restrain yourself from whipping out your research paper and forcing the interviewer to read every last word of it. Perhaps you'll now get busy with some honest work and spare us the updates.

[mesomorph]

Update - TEFL is the biggest scam in the known universe.

[JuanTwoThree]

Don't exaggerate, it's only one of the biggest scams in the known universe.

If I'm right about what has brought about your comment then you're treading a well-trodden path, if that's any comfort. I don't see how to avoid a bit of patronising "I told you so" but I wonder if any of these quotes from my earlier post now ring any bells:

"The reality of your situation may be that you get the job, are told which are your groups, told which page they're on in the coursebooks they've been using since September and that you have to do a unit a week without fail"

"no say in anything at all and a rigid schedule to stick to."

"If you are starting a third of the way through a course then I'd be extremely curious about what happened to bring this situation about if I were you."

"...... syllabus, choice of material, material preparation, level testing, group formation, needs analysis and so on. All priorities of course but tell that to your bosses"

"Here's your group, this is your material and you must finish this much of it by such and such a time. The group may not be all of the same level depending on how scrupulous the school is, the material wildly inappropriate. Those "modules" may be scruffy photocopies and the CD's less than a dozen."

"half the class doesn't understand your first words, let alone your carefully prepared home-made material, if you're even allowed to use any."

"EFL isn't academia or even primary or secondary education really. It's business."

" .....in each class you'll have to sell a little chunk of progress in one or more of the four skills in return for the money that each student has paid"

Of course I may be wrong but is it a case of four months later, in a foreign country, with crappy pay, not always paid on time, being jerked around with the timetable, made to use crappy materials, ghastly students and unsympathetic bosses?

It is worth perservering if you enjoy the actual teaching part, when the group is ok and you feel you're actually getting somewhere. All the other things can be dealt with by changing jobs, finding out on the grapevine where is a good place to work and so on.

[fluffyhamster]

Yup, bog-standard vanilla-flavor ELT can be a right scam. I've been saying for years how I would be very very wary of paying for lessons in a foreign langauge myself, and when I first saw the following poster on Englishdroid, I thought it summed things up pretty well:
http://sites.google.com/site/englishdro ... s/pictures ('Learn English by a Revolutionary New Method')

There are a few things to bear in mind "if you don't like it", however:

1) You could make notes where things could be improved in materials and approaches, and endeavour to gradually up the quality to BS ratio in your classes (who knows, you might eventually end up having written a more thorough syllabus or course of your own - private students ahoy!)

2) Students will usuallys want to test at least their spoken skills out at some point.

(Edited to update to Englishdroid v.2)

[mesomorph]

Juan - "EFL isn't academia or even primary or secondary education really. It's business."

TEFL is a business scam and not much else.

I'm sure there are some nice individuals around and some good teachers.

However

The organisation I was involved with were basically middlemen with no knowledge of teaching or morality. I suspect anywhere where there is supply and demand there will always be sneaky people looking to link the two together with no concern for the supplier or the demander, only for them selfish selves.

They didn't even speak English never mind know how to teach it.

They connected 'teachers' with 'clients' and reaped the monetary rewards.

They broke copyright laws and sold what was not theirs.

TEFL is a goldmine to be plundered.

In this country there is so much business opportunity in TEFL, so much demand, that a monkey and his dog could accidently stumble upon it and walk out rich.

I left the job because they offered me 15 euro per hour, and I realised I didn't need them. I don't need them to connect me with 'clients' I can connect my honest well qualified self.

With enough capital I could easily set up my own TEFL business and get rich quick. However I'm not sure rich means 'Truly Wealthy'.

[mesomorph]

I've never wanted to be DIRTY rich.

I would only want to set up an institution if I knew it stood on a foundation of good teaching practice and offered the learners the best learning experience possible.

[mesomorph]

Fluffy -'http://www.englishdroid.com/node/231 '

Yes.

As far as the teaching the English Language is concerned - it is couldn't be more straight forward.

It is just preperation.

I am not a grammar expert.

However with the correct preperation I am for each indivdual lesson.

It is as simple as that.

Makes me feel a bit stupid for paying 1600 euro per year to learn French, but then, I am stupid, and that is why I am doing it in the first place, which is what I think I already said.