Hi all, thanks for dropping by. To make things easier, I've decided to merge some of my blogs, which, including this one, can now be found at ELT World. I've been getting off my backsides and writing recently, so come over to the new URL and leave lots of lovely comments.
Wednesday, October 14, 2009
Tuesday, June 17, 2008
The Continuing Importance of German on the World Stage
Article supplied by Jacob Lumbroso
Learning German can be a very useful skill. Germany stands as the fourth largest economy in the world and the economic powerhouse of Europe. Germany is known for its manufacturing prowess and its exports continue to buttress the importance of German. German is spoken by more than a 100 million native speakers and by up to an additional 80 million non-native speakers.
German can open doors to employment in a variety of occupations such as in manufacturing, teaching, translation, interpreting, and the growing travel industry. In the United States it can also lead to an increase rapport with German contacts in companies abroad. Learning German greatly improves your chances of success in job market. Learning German can be a fun task, as well as an important one.
Most Germans speak English, but even if you're just a casual traveler, learning it can also be beneficial since a little German can go a long way on making a good impression on your hosts or German friends. Studying German to order food, communicate with locals and talk with taxi drivers will enhance the experience of your travels significantly, if travel is your primary goal.
Studying German is one step to joining the ranks of the business elite oriented toward the growing German market. German is one of the great languages of the world. Outside of Europe and the republics of the former Soviet Union, large German-speaking communities are found in the United States, Canada, and Brazil and in Argentina. German-speaking communities are also found in Namibia an in lesser numbers in Mexico, Dominican Republic, Paraguay, Uruguay, Chile, Peru, Venezuela, South Africa, and Australia.
German can however be a difficult language to learn for many people and there is no single method can insure that a reasonable proficiency will be achieved without an adequate investment of time. So it's important to vary your resources to insure that you maximize your language learning experience. Learning German can be a more complicated language to learn for most English speakers in contrast to say Spanish.
Choosing the right course is of course critical and that can make learning the language a relative cake walk or much more difficult. Much importance should be given to the accent and pronunciations while learning German.
Learning German does not require expensive personal tutors. So you want to be careful not to end up paying more money than is necessary. It is an ongoing and involved process. While you can't learn the language overnight, you can find resources that may give you an edge time wise and simply the amount of effort you exert.
A critical challenge to remember is that of vocabulary. Having used various books and courses to learn to read various foreign languages I found several to be of benefit. The most valuable courses were those who made sure to present new vocabulary first. Then a short story utilizing this new vocabulary in conjunction with previously learned vocabulary was presented. In terms of audio or conversational only programs, a variety of excellent courses are available.
About the Author
Jacob Lumbroso is a world traveler and an enthusiast for foreign languages, history, and foreign cultures. He writes articles on history and languages for http://www.thelanguagechronicle.com and has used Pimsleur courses to learn various languages.
Learning German can be a very useful skill. Germany stands as the fourth largest economy in the world and the economic powerhouse of Europe. Germany is known for its manufacturing prowess and its exports continue to buttress the importance of German. German is spoken by more than a 100 million native speakers and by up to an additional 80 million non-native speakers.
German can open doors to employment in a variety of occupations such as in manufacturing, teaching, translation, interpreting, and the growing travel industry. In the United States it can also lead to an increase rapport with German contacts in companies abroad. Learning German greatly improves your chances of success in job market. Learning German can be a fun task, as well as an important one.
Most Germans speak English, but even if you're just a casual traveler, learning it can also be beneficial since a little German can go a long way on making a good impression on your hosts or German friends. Studying German to order food, communicate with locals and talk with taxi drivers will enhance the experience of your travels significantly, if travel is your primary goal.
Studying German is one step to joining the ranks of the business elite oriented toward the growing German market. German is one of the great languages of the world. Outside of Europe and the republics of the former Soviet Union, large German-speaking communities are found in the United States, Canada, and Brazil and in Argentina. German-speaking communities are also found in Namibia an in lesser numbers in Mexico, Dominican Republic, Paraguay, Uruguay, Chile, Peru, Venezuela, South Africa, and Australia.
German can however be a difficult language to learn for many people and there is no single method can insure that a reasonable proficiency will be achieved without an adequate investment of time. So it's important to vary your resources to insure that you maximize your language learning experience. Learning German can be a more complicated language to learn for most English speakers in contrast to say Spanish.
Choosing the right course is of course critical and that can make learning the language a relative cake walk or much more difficult. Much importance should be given to the accent and pronunciations while learning German.
Learning German does not require expensive personal tutors. So you want to be careful not to end up paying more money than is necessary. It is an ongoing and involved process. While you can't learn the language overnight, you can find resources that may give you an edge time wise and simply the amount of effort you exert.
A critical challenge to remember is that of vocabulary. Having used various books and courses to learn to read various foreign languages I found several to be of benefit. The most valuable courses were those who made sure to present new vocabulary first. Then a short story utilizing this new vocabulary in conjunction with previously learned vocabulary was presented. In terms of audio or conversational only programs, a variety of excellent courses are available.
About the Author
Jacob Lumbroso is a world traveler and an enthusiast for foreign languages, history, and foreign cultures. He writes articles on history and languages for http://www.thelanguagechronicle.com and has used Pimsleur courses to learn various languages.
Tuesday, March 25, 2008
Euro TEFL News Headlines
Just in case you're short of something to do today, take a look at this lot. Is it really possible that all these people around the world are having to deal with our language? It just doesn't seem right, does it?
United Kingdom: The Struggle to Cope When Children Do Not Speak Any English
Surprising as it may seem, schools are struggling to cope with an influx of students from abroad, with many teachers facing classes in which a third of pupils do not speak English as their first language, teachers’ representatives told the Times Online. The number of pupils who did not have English as their mother tongue had risen by 66,000 in a year, the conference of the Association of Teachers and Lecturers was told.
Read the full story…
Switzerland: English seen as "most useful" foreign language
Not just British tourists, also a majority of, er, Swiss reckon that English is the most useful foreign language in the country, although it is not Switzerland's "lingua franca" as commonly believed.
Read the full story…
United Kingdom: Not Enough Cash to Teach English
Whoooaaaa… you misread, the headline doesn’t in fact read not enough cash to teachers of English. Headteachers have said the £2-million spent on teaching English to immigrant children in North Lincolnshire is inadequate, according to the ever influential This is Scunthorpe website. Schools say they have less to spend, even though the number of students whose first language is not English has risen.
Read the full story…
Estonia fears English too dominant in its schools
Education authorities in Estonia Thursday warned that the hands-down dominance of English in its schools is depriving the Baltic state of the language specialists it will need in the future.
Read the full story…
Turkey: English Time Celebrates Its 10th Year
Scourge of English teachers throughout Istanbul, the English Time language school celebrated its 10th anniversary recently with a reception held at Istanbul's Divan Kuruçesme. Speaking at the reception English Time founder Fethi Şimşek stated that when they established English Time 10 years ago their concern was to raise the quality level of English education in Turkey (no, really, that’s what he said). He said they have been achieving this aim without making any concessions since 1998.
Read the full story…
United Kingdom: £10m Bill to Teach Migrants English
Town halls in Greater Manchester are spending more than £10m a year teaching immigrants to speak English, the Manchester Evening News declares. The Department for Schools says a growing amount of taxpayers' money is being spent on teaching English as a second language. Your point?
Read the full story …
Scotland: International Rescue for City School Pupils
Language specialists (and not the Thunderbirds) are helping non-native speakers improve English as different cultures get along: excited chatter fills the room as the pupils work on their science project. What isn't immediately obvious is how many youngsters discussing a recent visit to a butterfly farm are not fluent in English. They are all reading the same books, but alongside some sits a specialist teacher – armed with flashcards picturing insects and their name in English – ready to prompt when necessary.
Read the full story …
United Kingdom: The Primary School Where Every Child Learns to Speak 40 Languages
Welcome to Newbury Park Primary School in Redbridge, north-east London, where its 850 pupils will have learnt phrases in 40 languages by the time they transfer to secondary school, notes the Independent. The school has adopted a policy of teaching each language spoken by the 40 ethnic groups among its pupils.
Read the full story …
Iceland: Bilingualism: Why Not?
Last week it was reported that the fabulously named Bifröst University in west Iceland would become the first university in the country to offer a Bachelor’s degree in business taught exclusively in English. While there is already a range of courses offered in English at several of Iceland’s universities, Bifröst says that by offering the degree in English, it is responding to the needs of students planning to work in the international arena.
Read the full story …
Russia: Language Learning Popular as Ever
In a statement that may well bemuse anyone who’s ever taught there, the St. Petersburg Times reports that the thirst for learning English and other foreign languages continues as Russians travel more and seek international business partners.
Read the full story …
Stick poking remains a national pastime in Russia
Belgium: Language director defends EU's costly translations
A high official in the European Commission's translation branch has said that despite discussions and fears in recent years about mushrooming costs for translations and interpretations in the EU, the principle of granting each citizen the right to communicate with Brussels in their own language should not be altered, no matter the number of member states in the future. Mmmm… there be money in that there Brussels.
Read the full story …
Ukraine: All in English
When foreigners visited Kyiv some ten years ago, language was the main problem in adapting to the local environment. The situation is now somewhat different, proclaims the Kyiv Post. Although not everyone can freely chat with you in English, the majority of citizens can understand you and will try to help you in any way possible. Apparently.
Read the full story …
Thursday, March 13, 2008
The ESL Cafe and Bad TEFL Jobs
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.
Thursday, June 7, 2007
Austria: As good as they say
Vienna ticks all the right boxes as a place to base yourself as an English language teacher, says Katie Binns
Austria has something for everyone - the mountains for the sports fanatics and a wealth of art, music and history for the culture lovers. Teaching English there has many plusses and few minuses.
Similarly, the amount of literature they are exposed to is impressive. From the age of 14 they study two books per year in class together. Although not strictly imposed the pupils in the last four years of school are also encouraged to read an extra 10 books themselves over this period. I remember I had to read three works of literature for my A-level German.
The popularity of learning English means an endless supply of work for qualified Tefl teachers and native speakers alike - whether it is in a language institute or on a freelancing basis. It is not necessary to have a formal Tefl qualification to teach at some language institutions, and many offer their own in-house training.
Read the rest of the article at the Guardian Weekly.
Austria has something for everyone - the mountains for the sports fanatics and a wealth of art, music and history for the culture lovers. Teaching English there has many plusses and few minuses.
I was sent to a Vienna high school, Theodor-Kramer grammar, as a language assistant through the British Council scheme. Just as the job title suggests I am there to "assist". Pupils are generally cooperative and friendly. The initial period of settling in was confined to being the human dictionary and pronunciation guide.
However, as time has passed by I have been entrusted with tasks such as essay marking, conversation classes and literature lessons. And this is where it gets good. And bad.
Good because it involves brilliant classes such as the 50 minutes I spent with the group of 16-year-olds doing a literary analysis of Martin Luther King's entire speech. They discuss it and analyse it in English and I am reminded of my own GCSE years of finding the metaphors and similes and discussing how effective the use of the imperative is. At the same time it makes me feel bad because I am reminded that neither I nor anyone in my class at that age could do an equivalent exercise in German.However, as time has passed by I have been entrusted with tasks such as essay marking, conversation classes and literature lessons. And this is where it gets good. And bad.
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Similarly, the amount of literature they are exposed to is impressive. From the age of 14 they study two books per year in class together. Although not strictly imposed the pupils in the last four years of school are also encouraged to read an extra 10 books themselves over this period. I remember I had to read three works of literature for my A-level German.
The popularity of learning English means an endless supply of work for qualified Tefl teachers and native speakers alike - whether it is in a language institute or on a freelancing basis. It is not necessary to have a formal Tefl qualification to teach at some language institutions, and many offer their own in-house training.
Read the rest of the article at the Guardian Weekly.
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