David's ELT World

No, I’m not talking about the changes in soccer over the past decade or so caused by the huge influx of television money. I’m actually referring to the British Council website of the same name. I originally stumbled across Football culture seven or eight years ago and was immediately impressed. Basically, it was a language learning resource based around football (AKA soccer) linked to the BC. You could find well-graded texts on a variety of football-based issues. ‘Great idea,’ I thought at the time, ‘wherever you are in the world you’ll probably find that a lot of your students will enjoy this sport and therefore have a resource that they will enjoy using.’

I then proceeded to forget all about the site until recently. While accidentally* looking through a British Council regional website, I was overjoyed to find it again, or at least I would have been had it not turned into a made-for-pay-per-click website.

OK, I have ads on this blog, I make no apologies for this. however, there’s a difference between having ads that people can choose to click on if they are interested in what they see and a website whose whole purpose is to fool the user into thinking there’s genuine content when there’s actually only links to advertisments.

I don’t know what the BC’s involvement is in this scheme, but I wouldn’t trust the buggers as far as I could throw them.

Another good example to avoid, while we’re on the subject, is this fake TESOL Arabia site.

*I would never purposefully do this. Anyone seeking well-researched dirt-digging on the British Council should check out David Blackie’s fabulous Language Business blog.