Woke up this morning, stepped into my patio, noticed a slight chill in the air and realized that it was September 1st. People all around the country are waking up with a different chill in their bones as they realize it's Monday and their holidays are over. Cities around the country are beginning to refill and villages empty, as Spaniards make their yearly migration back to urban areas. The newspapers will be filled with tragic news items regarding the absurd amount of people who lost their lives on the roads this weekend and yearly articles about post-vacation syndrome will be trotted out, slightly edited to match the times. Lamp posts and public phone booths will be covered with ads asking for roommates and back-to-school ads dominate.

Language schools with evocative names like Oxford-this and Cambridge-that around the country are also warming up, putting millions of flyers under windshield wipers, each one promising that their school makes learning English just that much easier. Would you like to learn English quickly, efficiently, without effort and with perfect pronunciation? Each academy promising that with their exclusive method, you'll be waxing eloquently in the Queen's English in no time at all...12 months...9 months...even 3!

Worried about your child's English? No problem, we take children as young as 18 months so that they will "coger oido", get an ear for it early! Drop off your toddler with us for two one-hour sessions a week and watch with amazement as they enjoy the Disney Channel in English! All for under a 100 euros a month!

Not to be outdone, print and TV media shower people with equally absurd claims. Learn English while showering, 600 words is all you need, put our book under your pillow and in the morning....viola! Dr. Kravinsky's fool-proof method of watching porno with English subtitles is just the one for you!

With all of these fool proof methods around, can you believe a teacher actually telling learners that learning a language is hardwork, a long and winding road that might last years? Telling them that unfortunately there is no magic pill and that yes, revision and homework are necessary to consolidate vocabulary learnt.

Maybe that's why I'm broke and the snake oil salesmen's classes are bursting at the seams?

Originally taken from www.troyshouse.blogspot.com

This is going to seem almost like a troll post, but really it's not. I have recently been asked to write an article regarding Teaching English abroad for a travel magazine. I have taught on a few continents, but obviously it's impossible to have been everywhere. I was wondering if the community out there wouldn't mind posting a few ideas regarding questions teachers should ask empolyers before accepting that wonderful sounding job abroad. I have already thought of a few:

-How much you are going to be paid, in which currency and when

-If accommodation is offered, what exactly is being offered

-How many contact hours you are going to be expected to teach

-Will you have any duties other than teaching

-Who your learners will be (age, background etc)

Any more ideas would be very welcome indeed.

Thanks in advance

Might be an idea if everyone posted their fave sites that they use when looking for material?

I recently came across Just The Word, a site for finding collocations for given words:

http://193.133.140.102/JustTheWord/index.html

 

 

 

 

We'd like to put up some material on Developing Teachers.com to help teachers with lower levels.

What kind of things do you think might be useful?

Hello guys,

 

Time is flying by!

Next week we're starting May/08 and I find it hard to believe. Over here in Brazil it's mid semester and winter is coming only in June. The days are beautiful and students are dedicated at the moment.

I wonder if this dedication changes around the globe according to local holidays, seasons or celebrations. Next week, for instance, we'll have a big holiday on May 1st which will become a 4 day weekend. Guess what happens? All students start the "I'm on holidays" feeling even before, starting Monday (tomorrow). So I have, as a teacher, to swim against the mainstream and pump them up, trying to motivate us (them and myself) to focus and study - at least - until the holiday itself.

Does this happen with everybody else? I'd love to hear from you...

 Have a great week,

Ivy

James sent me some Tommy Cooper jokes:

Two Aerials meet on a roof - fall in love - get married

The ceremony was rubbish but the Reception was Brilliant.

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Man goes to the docs, with a strawberry growing out of his head.

Doc says, "I'll give you some cream to put on it."

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"Doc, I can't stop singing the green green grass of home."

"That sounds like Tom Jones syndrome."

"Is it common?"

"It's not unusual."

-----------------------

A man takes his Rottweiler to the vet.

"My dog's cross-eyed, is there anything you can do for him?"

"Well," says the vet, "let's have a look at him"

So he picks the dog up and examines his eyes, then checks his teeth.

Finally, he says, "I'm going to have to put him down."

"What? Because he's cross-eyed? "

"No, because he's really heavy"

-----------------------

"Doctor, I can't pronounce my F's, T's and H's."

"Well you can't say fairer than that then"

-----------------------

Two elephants walk off a cliff...... boom boom!

-----------------------

So I went to the dentist.

He said "Say Aaah."

I said "Why?"

He said "My dog's died."

-----------------------

So I got home, and the phone was ringing. I picked it up, and said
'Who's speaking please?'

And a voice said "You are."

-----------------------

So I rang up my local swimming baths.
I said 'Is that the local swimming baths?'

He said 'It depends where you're calling from..'

-----------------------

So I rang up a local building firm,
I said 'I want a skip outside my house.'

He said 'I'm not stopping you.'

-----------------------

Apparently, 1 in 5 people in the world are Chinese. And there are 5
people in my family, so it must be one of them.

It's either my mum or my dad.
Or my older brother Colin.
Or my younger brother Ho-Cha-Chu.

But I think it's Colin.

-----------------------

So I was in my car, and I was driving along, and my boss rang up, and he
said 'You've been promoted.'

And I swerved.

And then he rang up a second time and said 'You've been promoted again.'

And I swerved again.

He rang up a third time and said 'You're managing director.'

And I went into a tree.

And a policeman came up and said

'What happened to you?'
And I said 'I careered off the road.'

-----------------------

Now, most dentists' chairs go up and down, don't they?
The one I was in went back and forwards.

I thought 'This is unusual'.
And the dentist said to me
'Mr. Cooper, get out of the filing cabinet.'

-----------------------

So I was getting into my car, and this bloke says to me "Can you give
me a lift?"

I said "Sure, you look great, the world's your oyster, go for it."

-----------------------

Two cannibals eating a clown. One says to the other

"Does this taste funny to you?"

-----------------------

Police arrested two kids yesterday, one was drinking battery acid, and
the other was eating fireworks.

They charged one and let the other one off.

-----------------------

You know, somebody actually complimented me on my driving today.
They left a little note on the windscreen; it said 'Parking Fine.'

So that was nice.

-----------------------

A man walked into the doctors,
The doctor said "I haven't seen you in a long time"
The man replied, "I know I've been ill"

-----------------------

A man walked into the doctors,
he said "I've hurt my arm in several places"

The doctor said, "well don't go to those places"

-----------------------

I had a ploughman's lunch the other day.
He wasn't very happy.

-----------------------

I went to buy some camouflage trousers the other day but I
couldn't find any.

-----------------------

I bought some HP sauce the other day.
It's costing me 6p a month for the next 2 years.

-----------------------

Two blondes walk into a building..........you'd think at least one
of them would have seen it.

-----------------------

Phone answering machine message -

"...If you want to buy marijuana.............press the hash key..."

-----------------------

I went to the butchers the other day and I bet him 50 quid that he
couldn't reach the meat off the top shelf.

He said, "No, the steaks are too high."

-----------------------

My friend drowned in a bowl of muesli.

A strong currant pulled him in.

-----------------------

A man came round in hospital after a serious accident.

He shouted, "Doctor, doctor, I can't feel my legs!"

The doctor replied, "I know you can't, I've cut your arms off".

-----------------------

I went to a seafood disco last week...and pulled a mussel.

-----------------------

Two Eskimos sitting in a kayak were chilly.

They lit a fire in the craft, it sank, proving once and for all
that you can't have your kayak and heat it.

-----------------------

Our ice cream man was found lying on the floor of his van covered
with hundreds and thousands.

Police say that he topped himself.

-----------------------

Two fat blokes in a pub, one says to the other "Your round."

The other one says "So are you, you fat slob!"

An ethical question for those teaching very young learners. As English teaching professionals, we are very quick to differentiate ourselves from the simple native teacher with no training whatsoever. Why is it that this ethical stance does not transfer to the teaching of very young learners or young learners for that matter? Would I be wrong in thinking that someone who holds even a CELTA has very little idea as to how very young learners learn and their cognitive capabilities? Why is it OK for the teacher with no training whatsoever to be placed in a classroom full of 3-4yr olds, yet not OK for them to be teaching adults, whom they certainly understand better? This is terribly common practice here in Spain and from what I hear in Japan, but do parents care so little elsewhere?

The warmer weather here in Spain has also brought with it much needed rains. The past week has been dull, gray and wet, an image far from the typical one oft promoted of Sunny Spain. In a country where the sun shines a large percentage of the time, the gloomy weather has definitely had an effect on my mood and certainly those of my students, most noticeably throwing a wet blanket on the spring fever the teens had been experiencing.

Teaching here in Spain, my classes mostly consist of adult learners, but in order to fill in the hours and flush out the academy's finances, young learner and young adult classes are taken on with alarming eagerness given I have no training in either field.

This week, while the rain slammed against the windows and ran in torrents down the hill, my objective was to engage and somehow teach English to a group of 5 boys aged 14 to 16. To put the class in context, they will have spent a whole day at school, had lunch and then are forced to come to class at 5.15, a difficult hour to say the least here in Spain. I say forced, as none come of their own volition, but under parental pressure and the adolescently-vague warning of, "It will be good for you when looking for a job."

I had planned my classes around the general theme of travel, a topic that would have sent me dreaming of far off exotic places at their age. With the underlying aims of practicing Conditionals and Scan Reading practice, they were given classified pages from an English newspaper and asked to choose the travel options that most appealed to them. They were then to form travel agencies, using the offers in the paper to convince the others that their trip was the best option. A lesson that targeted 3 of the 4 skills and was coursebook free.

Methodology aside, what I encountered was an extremely worrying disinterest. Not so much in the lesson itself but for the destinations, which spanned the entire globe. The students were happy to argue for their best option but these included none of the options in the paper which purposely included Spanish destinations. Their arguments were based only on one place, their village.

What's so wrong with a little pride in one's hometown you might ask? Indeed if it were only that, there would be nothing at all wrong with it but there is something sinister and threatening in this egocentric world view that manifests itself in disinterest in others and their traditions. Methodologists might immediately argue that this disinterest was because they lack a world vision or experience but I would argue that a 15yr old boy in the current technology age with a European educational background will have been exposed to the world over and has enough background information to complete the task. Why then the complete disinterest in the world beyond the horizon?

In a political climate that stresses regionalism above all else in order to justify its existence, perhaps a knock on effect has been a tendency to gaze inward rather than outward. A positive practice when done in moderation, but devastatingly negative when this inward look begins to exclude all else.

Originally posted at www.troyshouse.blogspot.com 

5pm in May somewhere in central Spain. The temperatures have already invaded the mid 30s and the brief rains of spring are a memory. The green plain beyond the expanding urban blight has already burnt off and the sleepy siesta streets are still quiet at this hour. But wait, what's that sound in the sea of calm?

Sure enough it is coming from an open window a few floors up, and what does it sound like? Perhaps English? English here in the middle of lost Spain? Sure enough there seems to be a few hoarse English words peppered amidst a general buzz of screaming children's voices.

See the rest of this post at  http://troyshouse.blogspot.com/2008/03/its-5pm-do-you-know-where-your-

 

I'm going to be running a 3 hour a day summer school in July & it's going to be activity-based.

Does anyone know of useful links, timetables, activities etc that would help in planning the course?

It's for a mix of primary & secondary kids.

 

Click on the title to this post & then you'll see a place to reply.