I received a call from my wife late last week, who informed me that she’d got me a teaching gig and that I couldn refuse it, and it would be on my day off. To say I was a little miffed was an understatement. When I then found out it would be teaching 25 newly-apppointed school directors, and that the request for my presence there was by the local area head of the MOE made me even less inclined to do it, but apparently I had to do it, so with my 3 hours worth of lesson plans, yesterday off I went to the school hosting the seminar.

True to form all the male Directrors were hardcore Chang drinkers and Krong Tip smokers and all the female directors were prudish but apparently a fan of English males (so they said!). I was of course the youngest person there at 30, with most of the participants well over 40. Played some fairly well-worn games such as the great Toilet Roll Fiasco, then gave them a worksheet of true/false questions on the differences in Thai and Western (mostly UK) culture. I pointed included the fact that newly qualified teachers in the uk make at least 120k baht per month on startingwork. That shocked them. They were also blissfully unaware of the impoliteness that commenting on someone’s weight carries in the UK, and also surprised that us farrangs get the willies about umbrellas up indoors. We played a word association game afterwards, and then gave them some useful phrases of English in case they ever managed to persuade a foreign teacher to come and teach in what are mostly boonie schools.

What was interesting was that despite these people being heads of schools, their language abilities in English were little more than many of my Matayom 5 students, and funnily enough so was their classroom manner. Sure they got on with what I asked them to do but not with a lot of shyness, finger poniting at the next person when they didn’t want to participate and giggling. A pretty surreal day all in all, and not a gig I want every day, but I enjoyed I suppose as it was a break from the norm.

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If yesterday was everyone else in the staffroom’s re-test hell, today’s was my own personal one. The bulk of the 15 students made it in today to learn the 5 conversations by heart neccessary for me to sign their little green slips and award them an undeserved pass.

There’s always something that they do in my tests that annoys me and this time was no exception. I expected that some of the weakest might break up their test into maybe 2-3 units at a time, but not only did half of them insist on attmpting one at a time, they couldn’t even do it in twos and got aother guy who had already passed to come in and read the other half. Effectively this doubled the amount of times I had to hear any given coversation.

Some students took in excess of 8 times in coming to me to perform and still didn’t do enough to pass. “Come back tomorrow!” I instructed one girl who’d failed miserably all semester to pass a single one of the simple tests I’d set that semester after she was still struggling to remember a single sentence at 4pm, but this was apparently not on as she had something important to do somewhere in the boonies..I went way overtime for her, but it was apparent that she wasn’t going to be anywhere near the standard by the time it was time to go home and she was fishing for me to to just pass her whatever. Not a chance!

It always amuses me to see just how terrible some kids clearly regard me as when I don’t give them a pass even when they don’t even approach the pass level. It just goes to show you just how used they are to unacheiving and being rewarded by the Thai teachers with a pass at the end of it without the slightest effort needed to do so.

I have yet to even see one guy. He promptly disappeared after I firstly rumbled him with the conversations scrawled on his hands then, after instructing him to wash and come back, rumbling him again with the same conversations scrawled on his bare feet.

Another guy just didn’t show up…the one who scored a massive 25%.

On a lighter note my extra class seemed to enjoy my class today when I took them into the self-access centre and we watched a Teletubbies DVD. It was funny that English meant for the under-4’s is still difficult for reasonable M5 (16-17 yo) students to comprehend. I did manage to squeeze some reasonable conversation out of the 20 minutes we watched, including “What’s your favourite Teletubby and why?” to discussion about why Dipsy is black.  It was a bit daft at times but was a welcome break from the classroom, I felt.

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englishdroid.com : new Celta launched

In a revolutionary partnership, GM do Brasil and the University of Cambridgehave launched a new product: the Chevrolet Celta.

Exclaimeth English Droid, in what I thought to be the standard TEFL japing hilarity we’ve come to expect from Mr Barne’s site.

But no! Shockingly Chevrolet has in fact launched a new compact car called the CELTA, which is now available in Brazil.

Truly THE car for TEFLers….though I think the Cambridge logo (or partnership) might not come as standard, and I gather that much of the English teaching features are a figment of Simon’s very fertile imagination, but still it brings new meaning to owning a CELTA

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The Shittiest Week of my Life (tefltrade.blog-city.com)

Well, at least us TEFLers in Thailand ply our trade out of necessity, scarcity, the lack of any other profession to the non-degreed and a love of being outside the UK, so what is the strange breed that is the UK TEFLers’ excuse?

It clearly isn’t much better paid than in Thailand, I mean some of the wages I saw quoed on this blog are almost good/average for Thailand, but London??

I think it’s a fairly safe bet that I won’t be looking for a vanilla TEFL job on my return to the UK.

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Edhelper.com’s Crossword Creator

I love little sites like this. Just stick in whatever vocab you want and add clues, and the site makes them up into a crossword.

Print, photocopy and voila one instant class filler ideal for classes landed on you when colleagues are absent.

Discovery’s Puzzlemaker site is also very good for things like this wordsearch creator, or more obscure puzzles like Fallen Phrases

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Idiomsite.com - Idioms and Sayings

Another nice idioms site…always handy for the staffroom, where I am constantly asked about the meanings and origins of phrases I just use without thinking.

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World Wide Words

Very interesting site which seems to focus chiefly on how idioms came to be.

It’s written from a British perspective, but takes on words and phrases from all over the world.

I have now learned tonightthat “the dreaded lurgi” - a common British term used to denote an unspecified disease started out on 1950’s radio in the Goon Show as a sketch and was probably written by Spike Milligan. It subsequently became a popular playground taunt and a generation or two later it’s still being used.

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Englishdroid.com is the latest incarnation of the legendary (amongst English Teachers anyway) Simon Barnes, he of the late I Hate Teaching English site which mysteriously vanished without a trace last year. Presumably because his employers read it.

This great site had many a TEFLer nodding their head, calling out a-men, and halleujah, at the wise home truths this man spoke.

English Droid is so far a more sanitised version of IHTE, but still features Simon’s inimitable style, and is laugh out loud funny. A litttle bereft of content so far, but if Simon’s past efforts are anything to go by this site should be one to watch.

This is so highly recommended, that I’m almost wetting my pants.

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WORDCOUNT - Tracking the Way We Use Language

Nice Flash App, which sorts the most frequently used 86,800 words into order.

Via Ben Hammersley

Whilst we’re on words (and why not it’s supposed to be an English teachers blog despite the silly links), have a look at a lesson plan for teaching commonly mispronounced words in the English language for non-native speakers.

From ESL Teachers Board

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The Reckless Taxi Driver Game comes via the life saving Dave Sperling’s ESL Cafe.
Submitted by Simon Mumford who has an excellent speaking activities site apparently based in Turkey.

I tried this game out with M6 this week. The game is basically as follows, a passenger arrives at an airport and gets into a taxi, whose driver has a very bad habit of driving too fast and turning round to ask the passenger questions.

The students role play the two characters, by sitting as if they are in a taxi, with the driver asking simple questions such as, “Where do you want to go?” or “What languages can you speak?”
The passenger should firstly admonish the driver for not looking where he’s going, eg “Look Out!” or “Oh my God, that was close!”, and then answer the question.

The students really got into their roles as these two photos will testify, and was a short but hillarious activity quite do-able in 40-50 minutes. The serious point to the exercise is just to practise various question forms from the basic “Wh-” questions to “Have you ever…” questions, and responding to suggestions eg “You should go to” or “Why don’t you…” There is also good practice of the Imperitive “Look Out!” etc.

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