David’s English Teaching World

As those of you unfortunate enough to wade through my blog posts on a farily regular basis may well know, I set up a Wiki devoted to the fine profession of TEFL awhile ago. This appears to be a growing phenomenon, with none less than Jeremy Harmer, the TEFL legend, addressed the issue of Wikis in a recent edition of the ever popular HLT Magazine, when describing why publishing overlords Pearson Longman had created their TEFL Wiki. It parallels so well what I want to achieve with the ELT Wiki that I thought I’d steal his words:__________

Wouldn’t it be useful, we thought, if there was a wiki devoted to ELT terminology? That way anyone, teacher, trainer or trainee could have access to a useful glossary – and (and this is the BIG THING about Wikis) they could amend or change what they find there if they don’t think the explanation they are presented with is ‘quite right’.

Our reasoning is that with a free resource like this we could end up with an incredibly useful, democratic resource which could be really helpful for anyone who has one of those jargon ‘blackouts’ that affect us all from time to time. All they would have to do is go to the wiki and check out how other people (how the profession) had defined the piece of jargon that had confused them.

Wikis, by the way, are easy to navigate. All you need to do is go to any page, any entry, and use the edit button. If you can’t find an entry there, you go to the letter, open up the list of terms for that letter and then edit it in order to add your new term. Or whatever. Like all effective software, wikis get easier the more you use them!
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Words of wisdom from the big man. Now, I’ve checked out the Pearson Longman Wiki and it hasn’t really expanded, in fact, I feel that the ELT Wiki has already gone further in creating a useful resource for us TEFLers, for which I already have to thank those who’ve contributed. Please don’t be shy in wading in and adding your contributions. Together, we really can maket he world of TEFL a better place.

The four-week TEFL course, a starting point for so many of us in our careers as English teachers. But is it really worth it?

What do we really gain from these short, intensive courses that can’t possibly hope to adequately prepare us for a career in teaching? A great deal, it would seem, according to the poll that ran on the blog and the forum.

Firstly, and most importantly judging by how many suggested this, the initial teacher training course provides a good foundation on which to build.

I started the ball rolling, stating the following:

‘It didn’t in any way prepare me for a full-time teaching position, but I can’t imagine having had to go into a classroom for the first time without having done it.’

Emma, a forum member currently embroiled in her initial training course, perceptively notes, ‘I imagine it’s like passing your driving test. You only really learn to drive properly afterwards.’ Spiral78 adds, ‘a good course is a pretty essential starter - not that certified teachers are professionals, but that they’ve got a decent idea of how to start. The course got me started on a stronger foot than I’d have had without it.’ Denise further reiterates:

‘It alone would not have gotten me to where I am now, but it was a crucial first step. It taught me the basics and I went on from there. I can’t imagine how my first teaching job would have gone without a certificate (if they would even have hired me without one). I learned a lot about how to plan, organize, and deliver a lesson.’

Canuck is another who shares the notion, ‘that the one month courses offer a foundation to build upon, maybe provide information about what someone currently does in their class now and reinforces good techniques.’ GueroPaz and Mishmumkin further exemplify, GueroPaz noting, ‘it helped me immensely; I would have been lost without it,’ while Mishmumkin adds, ‘I had been teaching a year before doing it, but it really taught me a lot about lesson planning, what to expect, how to talk less/listen more.’ Guy Courchesne reinforces the idea that 4 week courses should be seen as a foundation and that development is required after:

‘I took it without having any serious or immediate expectations of going abroad… I eventually did, about 6 months later. I completed my course in Canada and as it was geared towards teaching in Korea, I found I had to study further and learn ‘on the fly’ when I started teaching in Mexico.’

Increased opportunity in the local job market is another advantage that was mentioned. Chimp Guevara asserts that, ‘it opened the door to better jobs for me in Japan, and gave me a good grounding in the basics so that I continue learning when I got back.’

Another potential advantage of the four-week training course is that it will effectively indicate those who are clearly not up to it. spiral78 exemplifies, ‘I think the courses can also be useful for weeding out people who genuinely aren’t cut out for the job - for example, if a trainee can’t show up on time every day, looking reputable, he/she’s going to crash and burn early in a contract anyway.’

It would seem, therefore, that these initial teacher training courses hold a lot of value. Never the less, Jerry was one who, validly, raised issue with an inadequate learning environment as reason for a course not being worth what was paid:

‘I would say it wasn’t worth the money. I say this because the course was delivered on a shoestring in less than acceptable premises with virtually no frills (coffee, water, working computers). The (course provider’s) websites are very misleading with respect to training environment.’

So, certain courses may be lacking in areas outside the experience you’ll gain in terms of teacher training. These are definitely things to consider when choosing a course, an issue we’ll return to later. Despite this feeling of dissatisfaction, Jerry goes on to note, ‘the course content was delivered well by the trainer and was comprehensive so in that respect it was “worthwhile”.’

Another factor relating to whether or not a particular course is worth the investment is related to what you gain from being in a particular location. This particular aspect caused some disagreement, with suggestions made in support of doing the course in an exotic foreign locale or at a location in your home country. Spiral78 led the cry for taking the course in the country where you’re thinking of teaching, listing the following benefits:

• You can get your feet wet in the country/culture while you still have a support system - training centers will usually arrange for your housing during the course, pick you up at the airport, and generally offer you some kind of local orientation.
• Your practice teaching students will be representative of those you’ll be working with when you start.
• A good training centre can give you invaluable info regarding reputable employers in a region.
• You can be sure that your cert will be recognized by regional employers.

Jerry, in contrast, notes the benefits of doing the course in your home country:

• When you set up a course online in the country you will work in can you be sure of the provider?
• Is their course moderated?
• Can you have your certificate notarized in that country?
• What’s the validity of the certificate?
• What’s the local reputation of the course provider?
• What’s the training environment like?
• Will you be picked up at the airport? I wasn’t, a pre-course orientation meeting was convened and conducted by a previous student who felt it was her moral duty to make sure new students were not left out on a limb as she had been.
• Long term, is the certificate any use in another country or region?

Jerry also notes that this won’t necessarily help you in getting used to the ‘type of student you’ll be teaching, suggesting, ‘As for getting to know the type of student, the lessons are so heavily teacher orientated and regimented you don’t get near to learning about them or understanding them.’

In terms of it being worthwhile, there was more agreement when it came to the notion of finding out about your course in advance, with spiral78 suggesting the following checklist:

• How long has the course been operating - under current management?
• What qualifications do the trainers have?
• What support will the centre guarantee?
• Will the centre allow you to contact current trainees?
• I’d also send a very brief email to several employers in the area asking whether certification from course X is well-looked-upon.

Spiral78 further exemplifies the disparity between courses, noting, ‘there are a couple of 60-hour courses without teaching practice which are given as seminars using classrooms at universities - but which are NOT considered to be basic level certifications in many parts of the world.’ Indeed, deciding on whether or not a course will be worth it, finding out what the course will include seems to be vital, Canuck asserting that, ‘the only 4 week course someone should take is one that is 120 hours with a practical teaching component. The CELTA and 120 hour TEFL have this. I don’t think an online course can measure up. I also believe that the ‘every weekend’ CELTA isn’t as valuable as the one month all at once type.’

So, generally such courses are seen by the majority as being a good thing, providing as good a foundation in teaching as possible in a short space of time. The experience you gain will open doors in terms of job opportunities and will give you a pretty clear indication if you’re not up to the task.

There are also clear benefits to the location at which you take the course, depending on what your needs may be. Having said that, it’s clear that there are major disparities between the quality of such courses and doing some research before hand will pay dividends.

One final thing to consider if you’re thinking of doing such a course is the group you’re likely to end up teaching. For example, in many countries this might end up being primarily children. Leprofdanglais comments, ‘the only thing is it trains you to teach adults, but where I was working in Spain, new staff always got lumbered with kids’ classes.’ GueroPaz reiterates, ‘here in Thailand and in most places in the world, you teach lots of kids. That’s my main complaint against any adult-oriented course.’ So, even at the initial, four-week starter course stage, think about how specifically the course is going to meet your potential needs.

Read more great articles like this in the totally free Horizons journal.

Katie, the lamentably retired TEFL Logue blogger, discussed the issue of whether or not TEFL job sites contribute to the proliferation of the poor conditions that exist to such a large degree in our industry/profession. As I’m going to add my thoughts on this matter, I’ve pasted the blog entry below:

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The topic of ESL or EFL job sites as the cause of the tefl world’s woes comes up every now and again. Should job sites take responsibility for screening job ads? Should they remove them if there are complaints? And are they responsible for the proliferation of “lemon” EFL jobs if they don’t?Well, no, to the last one.These are hard questions to answer – to the first one, given the global nature of EFL work, I think it would be impossible in practical terms to screen jobs well enough to make any difference, and if it could be done, would leave us only with a small selection of schools that could provide whatever the site required.

And it wouldn’t solve the problem of bad employers anyway, as school staff – not just teachers – come and go. I think the fact that a variety of ads are available for comparison is a huge benefit to EFL teachers, and the existence of multiple sites is much better than the existence of one all-powerful one.

Should job ads be removed or refused if there are complaints? I think there is a fair enough argument for this, if the complaints are well-documented and presented, and especially if they are from different sources. One difficulty is obviously that it is hard to ensure the veracity of a complaint (i.e. that the teacher is telling the truth): in a field so based on Internet exchange of information, there are plenty of reasons which a dishonest person might manufacture a story (to get back at someone, to hurt a competitor). Another problem is that a truly “bad” school can just lie to get around whatever restriction there is…advertise with a different name (or no name) and alternate contact information. I don’t think this happens frequently, but a school bad enough to merit a serious complaint is exactly the kind of school that would lie to get around a given restriction. Claiming that jobs are screened could very well lull people into a false sense of security.

The moral of this post, I suppose, is that I don’t agree that job sites somehow play an accomplice role to schools from the dark side – keep your wits about you when searching and use more than one site. Think hard about accepting a job in any form other than in person, and check out the questions to ask at an interview while you’re at it.

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Given the recent tragic events in Korea, I felt this was a pertinent time to revisit this issue. A lot of you who read the blog also frequent the forums and are therefore are familiar with the reasons why I set up the forums. Basically, I was disgusted with the way that another forum, Dave’s ESL Cafe, conducted its business. Let me explain…

While I agree with certain points that Katie raised, namely that 1) it’s impossible to screen schools effectively if you‘re accepting paid adverts from all around the world, and 2) any complaints made by teachers are always going to be purely subjective (yes, sometimes teachers ARE in the wrong) and not entirely reliable, I believe that TEFL jobs sites could raise the bar significantly and easily and indeed become more profitable in the process.

Let me return to the dear old ESL Cafe; the main culprit in this sorry business. Dave’s ESL Cafe remains an incredibly popular resource among the TEFL community, indeed, it was suggested to me as a source for finding job openings way back when I did my CELTA. The number of job openings advertised on the site is remarkable and a huge source of income for those running the site (I’ve heard rumours that Dave Sperling no longer runs things – please confirm). What disgusted me, eventually causing me to set up ELT World, was (and continues to be) the practice of censoring any information about bad schools that were paying advertisers. Katie made a good point about bad schools merely slithering around attempts to name and shame them, but when you’re actively promoting a policy of denying people who use your website access to information that would enable them to make a better decision about whether or not to take a job, you’re effectively working in partnership with the cowboys: by condoning their practices, you are to blame for their behaviour. Are other sites as shoddy in their approach as the ESL Café? Maybe. What’s for sure is that this isn’t helping to improve our industry/profession and is, sadly as we’ve recently seen, may be putting people’s lives at risk.

I don’t know the details of Bill Kapoun’s contract, who arranged his accommodation or how he got his job, but this case highlights the fact that too many places are not treating TEFL teachers with the respect that should be accorded to any human being.

So, are ESL job sites to blame for unsavory schools? No, these places wil exist as long as human greed remains. However, the blatant, greed-fueled encouragement that unscrupulous businesses receive from the likes of Dave’s ESL café definitely ain’t helping matters.

The terribly tragic case of Bill Kapoun has affected me and many others greatly. I’ll not go into great details here, as I’d prefer you to visit the website and blog for yourselves, in the hope that it will convince to help out his poor family however you can in these awful times.

His unfortunate passing leads me to ask the question, how well would you or your family be able to cope financially were such an awful situation to arise? The compassion of many in contributing to the fund to help out with hospital fees is worthy of mention, to say the least. While it’s no consolation for the passing away of their son, I’m sure this gesture means a lot to his parents, upon whom the tragedy has been compounded by a huge and desperately unwanted financial burden.

This sad event should make all of us reflect on how we are covered in terms of medical insurance. Most of us take to this profession during our twenties and this isn’t really an age when many of us, thankfully, have cause to think too much about what would happen should we require urgent medical assistance. I certainly didn’t, not until I had reason to spend some time in hospital and was fortunate enough to work for a university that included good medical insurance as part of the benefits package. I know that many of my friends don’t share this ‘luxury’ and really just hope for the best.

Think right now about these questions…

• Does your employer provide medical insurance for you?
• Do you know what you’re entitled to?
• Where will you go should a medical emergency arise?
• Was this something you even thought to ask for when you negotiated your contract?
• If you’re not legally employed, do you have rights even to go to a state funded medical facility?

You never know when a time might come that you need to know the answers to these questions in a hurry. Please bear this in mind and help out Bill’s family.

Here are highlights of what you’ll find in the new, action packed edition of Horizons:

What Would Motivate you to Take a New Job?

What do we want from our jobs? There must surely be a reason for us to move on to bigger and better things at one time or another. So, what are our motivations? What are those bigger and better things? Why do we make the decision to up and move to a new school? The poll that ran on the blog and the forum during December shed some light on to why we move from one job to the next… read on

Interview: Teacher Reflections, Global Connections

Last month on the ELT World Blog I highlighted the excellent Teaching without Borders blog: Teacher Reflections, Global Connections, explaining what a great idea I thought it was to reflect on the different teaching experiences of the different countries of the contributors. I’m delighted that Jennifer Uhler and Jeff Mattison have taken the time and considerable effort to tell Horizons about their blog… read on

Teaching Collocations

Whilst learners often focus on the acquisition of new grammatical structures as a guideline to their progress in learning English, the same cannot always be said of an English learner’s regard for the importance of progressive vocabulary acquisition. Whilst it is true that language structures form the basic skeleton of a language , vocabulary provides the flesh to these bones. Without words, what do we have?… read on

Was your Initial Training Course Worth it?

The four-week TEFL course, a starting point for so many of us in our careers as English teachers. But is it really worth it? What do we really gain from these short, intensive courses that can’t possibly hope to adequately prepare us for a career in teaching? A great deal, it would seem, according to the poll that ran on the blog and the forum… read on

The EnglishUK Teachers Conference

Anyone who’s ever attended a TEFL conference will tell you it can be something of a mixed experience in terms of what you gain from it. It’s not unlike gold mining: you have to sift through a lot of stuff to get to anything even remotely of use to you. Presenting at a conference is, on the other hand, a whole different experience. Anyone thinking of venturing into the conference circuit would be well advised to read the following article… read on

Academicus Electronicus

For this edition of the journal, I offer you, my dear friends, two websites dedicated to the development of TEFL professionals… read on

Teaching English in New Zealand

The situation regarding English language teaching in New Zealand is pretty similar to Australia and not so different from the UK in many respects. As in those countries, there is a private language school sector in addition to state provision through various ESOL programmes… read on

My Favourite Waste of Time

At a certain point, we all get fed up with certain aspects of living in another country. The little things suddenly become big problems in your life. Some of these things, however, bug everyone, and not just us poor expat teachers. Facebook, for all its sins, seems to be becoming a way in which we are able to find kindred sufferers, as M. le Prof d’Anglais explains… read on

Politically Correct Revisited

Last issue’s article on political correctness was well received by many of you, who were able to relate to the ideas being explored. Luckily for Horizons, Istanbul’s Stranger has decided to follow up on the previous article, exploring further the linguistic barriers to the cross-culturalization of the notion of political correctness… read on

The Ideal English Teacher through the Eyes of ELT Trainees

Do you remember what you thought about teachers when you started out as a trainee? How much have your perceptions changed? This article explores the way that trainee teachers in Argentina perceive those already in the profession… read on

Interview: The Latin America Job list and TEFL Tips

Sharon de Hinojosa, whom members of the ELT World forums know better as Naturegirl321, has been kind enough to answer a few of my questions about her internet projects. After years of gathering information about teaching on the South American continent, she has decided to make this knowledge available to others via her excellent websites… read on

So, we think English will be the all-dominant language forever, do we? Not bloody likely, if Nicholas Ostler is to be believed in his recent article for Forbes:The status of English as an international language appears unassailable. It is simultaneously pre-eminent in science, politics, business and entertainment. And unlike any of its lingua franca predecessors, it has all this on a truly worldwide scale. There is no challenger comparable to it: Chinese has more native speakers, but every schoolchild in China now studies English. And India, set to overtake China in population by 2050, is avidly trading on its English expertise.

But English is not thereby immune to the principles of language survival. Above all, it is notable that beyond the 330 million or so native speakers, perhaps twice as many more use it as a second language. And this community of over 600 million second-language speakers, who make English pre-eminent as a world language, also make it vulnerable in the long term.

‘If you want to call me baby…just go ahead now‘

In 5,000 years of recorded language history, a few dozen languages have achieved the status of lingua franca, a language of wider communication among people whose mother tongues may be quite different. Spanish, French, Hindi, Russian and English have been lingua francas in the present age, as have been Latin, Quechua, Persian and Aramaic in the past. But this status does not come about by some utilitarian reckoning, or democratic selection. There is always a reason, be it conquest, trade, religious mission or social aspiration, which has selected a language to have this wider role, and that reason is hard to forget - and ultimately often hard to forgive.This is seldom clear - at first - to native speakers. They naturally see their mother tongue as a simple blessing for the wider world. Pliny the Elder, writing in the 1st century AD of the then widespread use of Latin, boasted that it almost made the sky brighter; French author Anatole France (1844-1924) thought the French language was such a charming mistress that no one was ever tempted to be unfaithful to her. But neither language would have spread across Western Europe if their use had not once upon a time been imposed - by forces other than lucidity and charm…

Get working on those ‘transferable skills’ and preparing for an alternative career boys and girls! Read the rest of the article here.

As ever, a video clip is worth a thousand words…

Here is another informative clip from madridteacher.com

Here are the results of the poll that ran on the blog during December. This is an early extract from the forthcoming issue of Horizons journal, in which the responses given are analysed in detail…

I received a very interesting email from Nergiz Kern recently, informing me about Project DELTA, a wiki that Nergiz has set up relating to the DELTA course.

 Here’s some background info:

Who is this Wiki for?

• For teachers like me who have just done the DELTA couresework component and are waiting for the exam results.
• For teachers who are contemplating or have already signded up for a DELTA course.
• For tutors to give them an idea what expectations and questions prospective DELTA candidates have and to get feedback from former DELTA candidates.

Why a Wiki about DELTA?

• There are many exam preperation books for our students but no prep books for the DELTA.
• I’ve searched the Internet a lot but couldn’t find many DELTA-related websites.
• No matter how much they tell you to prepare well, you come unprepared for what it really is.
• Because of the time pressure there was not much time to exchange ideas and talk about our experience and opinions. This wiki could become an extension of the course. Candidates who are doing the course or who have finished could meet up here and continue to talk and share.

This seems like it could develop into a fantastic resource and I’m sure will receive a lot of interest.