Six years!

The stats:

1490 posts

1312 pages (mainly worksheets)

5378 comments

about 5 million page views

650,000 page views of the 438 posts and 139 pages of TEFLtastic spin off Japanexplained

7,480 views of the Japanexplained spin off Tips for Brits in Tokyo

566 worksheets and articles on Usingenglish

286 articles on TEFL.net

63 articles on EnglishClub

various bits and pieces in Modern English Teacher magazine

an extra inch or two on the waistline

21.7% less hair

1 wife

1 child

about 150 TEFL.net reviews books on my bookshelf that I never got round to sending to anyone

21 resources for teaching transport vocabulary

To go along with my fairly popular Travel English page, I’ve created a new page dedicated to the vocabulary of transport and things related to it, including this brand new article:

Teaching transport vocab to kids

The worksheets etc on my new transport vocabulary page are a mix of stuff for adults and for children, but it’s hopefully obvious which is which.

TEFL in Libya in 2013

While writing a TEFL Newsroom story on a recent English UK trip there, I did a bit of research of how much Libyan TEFL had recovered since the 2011 revolution/ civil war. None of the schools I contacted got back to me and the situation is very fluid, but from online research it seems that British Council Tripoli, IH Tripoli and even IH Benghazi are still active since their reopenings, while the Bell International and Inlingua schools I found mention of don’t seem to exist anymore.

The British Foreign and Commonwealth Office advice, updated three days ago, is:

“The FCO advise against all but essential travel to Tripoli, Zuwara, Az Zawiya, al Khums, Zlitan and Misrata, and to the coastal towns from Ras Lanuf to the Egyptian Border, with the exception of Benghazi. The FCO advise against all travel to all other parts of Libya, including Benghazi.

The small number of staff that were recently withdrawn from the British Embassy have now returned. It was a temporary measure and the Embassy remained open as usual.”

TEFL.net TEFL Newsroom story here:

Over 760 people at English UK-led event in Libya

The accusations game (TEFLtastic classics Part 14)

I’m not claiming any particular originality for the ideas I’m including in this series (hence the word “classics”), but even less so with this one. However, I have come up with some little variations, including:

- Using it for Present Continuous

- Using it for Business English and ESP

- Adding loads of vocabulary revision

- Extending the discussion into personality words via what your reaction really would be to those crazy actions, what actions might stimulate creativity at work, etc

- Using it with young learners

The rules of the game are incredibly simple. One student accuses another with “When I saw you were + verb + ing” (or “Why are you + verb + ing?” with the Present Continuous variation) and their partner must find a good reason for painting their teacher’s back, making rude faces at the Queen, etc. This is a great activity for my URA approach, because the responses don’t necessarily need the more complex grammar so they can respond to it and then think about why that language was in the questions in the next stage.

Present Continuous accusations game

Business past continuous accusations game

Business past continuous and personality accusations game

EAP and study abroad past continuous accusations game

Creativity at work past cont accusations game

Market Leader Intermediate Unit 11 past continuous accusations game

Cutting Edge Intermediate Modules 1 and 2 vocabulary revision accusations game

Landmark Advanced Past Continuous accusations game

More Past Continuous activities via the category below and on this page here.

13 more TEFLtastic classics via the tag of that name below.

Making current affairs lessons less temporary

I’d always assumed that the reason why I hate teaching current affairs lessons is pure laziness, given how quickly the lesson generally becomes impossible to use with later classes. Recently, though, I’ve started to think that maybe my lack of motivation to teach such classes has as much to do with how little useful long term learning such classes tend to lead to. Have attempted to deal with both of those problems in a new article and page of worksheets:

How to make news-based lesson less temporary

Current affairs/ News worksheets page

Further proof that CLT never had what it takes?

Macmillan have just sent me a PR announcement of their latest CLT title, but CLT doesn’t mean Communicative Language Teaching to Macmillan (any more?), it means Chinese Language Teaching. You can’t imagine the same doubling up happening to acronyms like CLIL and PPP, or even TBL*. As both were influenced by CLT, that could be seen as a positive sign of its success, but I believe it’s more a sign that CLT has never had what it really needs to take off.

The best summary of the present learning styles situation?

“There is no scientific evidence to show teaching to learning styles is effective, but what it has done is encourage lots of teachers to teach using different modes of information and actually all learners benefit from having information in visual, audiotory and kinaethetic forms.” Paul Howard Jones, Reader in Neuroscience and Education at Bristol University.

I’ve just sent a reviewer a copy of the latest Delta Publishing book on the topic, so I’ll be interested to see if that conclusion has got through to the world of TEFL yet.

From a great episode of the great BBC downloadable podcast All in the Mind:

Education Neuromyths etc

download available indefinitely here.

A longer summary of the research on teachers’ misconceptions about the human brain on TEFLnet Newsroom (as TEFL News via TEFLnet is now called) here.

And another great debunking in one of the all time classic guest posts on TEFLtastic:

http://tefltastic.wordpress.com/2009/10/26/tefl-bullshit-detector-one/

The most half-arsed TEFL course website page ever?

There ain’t much of it, so quoted in full just as on the original page:

“TESOL Worldwide – Teach English in Palestine

Wikipedia article – First two paragraphs – no links.

Palestine (Greek: ?a?a?st???, Palaistine; Latin: Palaestina; Hebrew: ???????? Palestina; Arabic: ??????? Filas?in, Falas?in, Filis?in) is a name which has been widely used since Roman times to refer to the region between the Mediterranean Sea and the Jordan River.[1] It is derived from a name used already much earlier for a narrower geographical region, mainly along the sea shore. In its broader meaning as a geographical term, Palestine can refer to an area that includes contemporary Israel and the Palestinian territories, parts of Jordan, and parts of Lebanon and Syria.[1][2] In its narrow meaning, it refers to the area within the boundaries of the former British Mandate of Palestine (1920-1948) west of the Jordan River.

CIA world fact book on Palestine.”

From ATI (American TESOL Institute), an organisation that the new owner of Unitefl mentioned as one of the top three TEFL accredition organisations after Cambridge and TEFL International…

Any other candidates for most half-arsed TEFL course page ever?

Here’s the TEFL Newsroom story for which I was searching for TEFL in Palestine in the first place, in case you were wondering:

Linguistics prof made Palestine PM

Personality games/ worksheets page expanded

Somehow took me two and half years to add my two relevant articles, and have also put an extra three worksheets up.

As well as some fun practice (including videos), I’ve also tied it in with question formation (including those tricky “How” questions), the topic of gender, Present Perfect Simple and Continuous, Past Continuous, Business English, a version of the alibi game, IELTS, job applications, university applications, and body language.

Personality games and other photocopiables

The Experimental Language School (Random Ideas to Change TEFL Part 11)

The latest in a very occasional series of ideas to reform the world of TEFL and/ or make some cash that I lack the dynamism and entrepreneurial spirit to do myself and therefore offer for free to the first person who fancies trying it.

The Experimental Language School not only encourages continual experimentation in what its students do in the classroom, but also advertises itself as such, for example by using that actual name for the school.

Although the number of people locally who will be interested in such as school is obviously fairly limited, I’m sure there are other people who would happily travel an hour or two to go to a school which is constantly challenging its teachers and students. One large group of such students would probably be language teachers, as they could learn a language and something new about language teaching at the same time. To expand that market to all English teachers, the school would also probably want to offer classes in other languages (such as Japanese and Chinese here in Japan).

Other things which could make the school viable include:

- Teachers being willing to teach for lower rates or even free in order to have a chance to experiment

- People elsewhere paying the school to experiment for them, e.g. trying out new materials for a chain of school or publishers, or trialling something for someone’s research paper (perhaps someone working in a very non-experimental school)

- Free materials from people who want them to be tried out

The idea is all yours if you want it, and I’d happily teach a couple of hours for free if you set it up in Japan. Anyone think it could work?

Other random TEFL ideas

The TEFL legal fund

TEFL journalism prize

The Association of CELTA qualified teachers

The Advanced Teaching Certificate

English booths

English at Home, English Away

TEFLstats.com

Big Teacher

TEFL Olympics

How the future of textbooks has to be