TEFL blog

Kelli, blogging about her experiences teaching English in South America, wrote about the perils of teaching “regret” this week.  She quite rightly says that contexts and examples are the key.

It got me thinking about the number of times I’ve taught “regret” as one of those verbs that we use to show how meaning can change if you follow it with a gerund or an infinitive.

The other verbs usually grouped with it in this category are “stop”, “remember” and “try”.

So how can we explain the difference to our students between “I stopped smoking ” and “I stopped to smoke”, or “I regret to tell you” and “I regret telling you”?

Plenty of different examples in different contexts is definitely key.  I often use a text, usually a story (it doesn’t take long to come up with one containing a lot of examples contrasting use), and after some initial scene setting and text comprehension, start focusing on form and meaning of the different examples.

And it’s at this point that I find teachers diverge on what’s best - the question being how far to go in to the “first action”, “second action” aspect. For example:

“He stopped to smoke” - we can imagine someone walking down the street, stopping what she is doing and then lighting up. Chronologically, “stop” is clearly the first action” and “smoke” is the second.

“He stopped smoking” - well, here, we can imagine someone smoking a packet a day for 20 years, and then deciding to quit. “Smoke” is the first action chronologically, “stop” the second.

It’s the same thing with “remember” or “regret”…

“I remember buying the flowers” - first you buy them, then you remember the fact that you bought them.  “I remembered to buy the flowers” - first you remember that you have to do something, then you do it.

“I regret to tell you that you have failed the exam” - first you have a regret, then you tell the person. “I regret telling him that he failed” - first I told him, then I regretted this action.

…and so on.

The problem is that although this seems to make sense logically (and might therefore appeal to the theorists among your students, who like rules and clear, logical explanations), the contexts in which we set these examples differ quite widely - a man walking along the street and stopping to light up is difficult to contrast with the much more general and long-term context of someone quitting smoking.  Similarly, remembering to do something is about reminders; remembering doing something is about memory.

The other problem, of course, is that with “try”, the first action, second action trick doesn’t apply. “I tried to cook the lasagne” suggests that it was difficult, and might be followed by “but I couldn’t do it”, whereas “I tried cooking lasagne” suggests some kind of experiment and might be followed by “but I didn’t enjoy it”.

So, first action, second action, or not?  Tell us what you think…

Want to know if TEFL is for you?  The CareerSteer website has developed a test to see if you could teach English as a Foreign Language.  Answer six questions and you’ll be presented with an integrated report detailing exactly why you are or are not ready for a career in TEFL.

Have a go and tell us what you think with a comment below…

We’ve written a lot on the blog about ESL and immigration issues. Well, now the two have come together on film, with the February 12 DVD release of the award-winning ESL: English as a Second Language.

The synopsis on the film’s website describes it as the story of “two people from very different sides of the same culture”.  Director Youssef Delara says that his initial idea was to create an ESL classroom and follow the highs and lows of nine of its characters. Eventually, though, he decided to follow primarily two of them, an illegal immigrant in search of a better life, and a “second generation Latina forced to attend the class to work off community service hours”.

Have a look at the website for more, and if you’ve seen the film, why not tell us what you thought below…

A couple of upcoming conferences for you this week. The first is TESOL Chile’s 2007 conference, entitled “Winds of Change”, which focuses on the “innovations, changes and developments that are taking place in the teaching and learning of English in Chile and internationally”.

The keynote speakers are Diane Larsen-Freeman and Michael McCarthy, and the conference is being held at the University of La Serena from 5-7 October.

The second is KOTESOL’s International Conference, from 27-28 October at the Sookmyung Women’s University in Seoul. The title is “Challenging Ourselves, Motivating Our Students, and aims for educators to share ideas and experience in a wide range of areas such as classroom management, ESP, CALL, materials design, motivation, and teacher training and development.

Taiwan’s first English language village has opened in Taiwan, where Taiwanese children go twice a week for English immersion classes.

The Happy English Village features themed classrooms: a bank, a hotel, an airport waiting room and a coffee bar amongst others, and attracts 120 students. It was the idea of a non-profit organisation called the King Car Education Foundation.

The idea came to General Director Morgan Sun after visiting similar immersion villages in Korea. Concerned about the relatively poor ranking of Taiwanese students on the IELTS exam, compared to Japanese, South Korean and Vietnamese students, he decided it was time for an immersion village in Taiwan.

He hopes that the emphasis on speaking with the volunteer foreign teachers at the village, will shift the emphasis away from rote-learning and exams in the Taiwanese education system, towards communicative learning through real-life experiences.

CamTESOL is organising its 4th conference from February 23-24 next year. The theme is “Building Bridges to the World”.

The conference is spearheaded by IDP Education, and includes the participation of classroom teachers and future teachers, administrators, publishers and ELT organisations, as well as interested Cambodian residents.  CamTESOL states as its aim to “increase the links between the ELT community in Cambodia and the international ELT community”.

David Nunan is scheduled to be the keynote speaker, and everyone working in ELT is invited to participate.

Sound interesting? Have a look at the CamTESOL website for more information.

If you teach young learners, you may have used CDRoms and interactive games in your classes.

Well, here’s a new one for you… Dots and Diamond and the case of the Missing Mummies. Dots and Diamond are a dog and cat detective team called in to the museum late at night to help solve the mystery of the missing mummies. Your job is to guide them through the museum, finding clues to help them in their quest. Along the way they learn a lot of new vocabulary and interesting information.

Have a try, see if you can solve the case, then see how much quicker your young learners can do it!

How’s this for an approach? The YWCA’s recently finished summer camp helped students to learn English while swimming, counting pennies and liquefying ingredients in a blender.

The idea was to integrate language skills with skills for survival in the USA for the children from Ethiopia, Laos, Lebanon, Mexico, South Korea and Vietnam attending the camp.

Swimming pool lessons included things which the children and their families really need to know, like how to tell which is the deep end and which is the shallow end, and what swimming costumes are appropriate for public pools.

Read more about the camp at the Chicago Courier News.

The winner of a teaching contest in Korea, secondary school English teacher Song Jung-sun, has said that a college admissions test is to blame for inefficient English language teaching in the country.

The focus on preparing students for the tests, which “emphasise only reading skills”, means that English education is only a “yardstick for student selection”, according to Song.

She also says that many parents do not trust the school teachers, and enrol their children in private language schools where high scores in the tests are the main aim. The governement should spend its money on educating Korean teachers, rather than increasing the number of foreign teachers in the country, she argues.

One reader’s comment on the article suggests instead that the fear of making mistakes as a result of the “face” aspect of Korean culture is the biggest inhibitor to learning.

Do you teach in Korea? Is English teaching inefficient? If so, what is to blame? Post a comment below…

Carpentersville, a suburb of Chicago with 37,000 residents, voted this week to make English the only official language, despite the fact that 40% of the residents are Latino.

According to Trustee Judy Sigwalt, quoted in the Chicago Tribune, multiple languages are responsible for tearing her community – and country – apart.

Village President Bill Sarto, however, thinks that the measure will only succeed in painting Carpentersville as an unwelcoming community.

So who’s right? Should multilingual communities be encouraged or suppressed? Do they help to unite or divide? Have a look at the article and decide for yourself…

Two different views “from the field” today.

Firstly, have a look at T’s blog for her fascinating account of the highs and lows of volunteering as an English teacher and Development Instructor in Mozambique.

Secondly, a more lighthearted look at one blogger’s first teaching experience (in Switzerland) since securing a two-month TEFL certificate by correspondence.

Finally, and on a totally unrelated note, teaching English abroad has made it to the top of this list on CNN of the top five jobs that let you see the world. The others, incidentally, are Chef, Massage Therapist, Au Pair and Caterer.

That’s the view of the Simplified Spelling Society, who protested outside the National Spelling Bee in Washington D.C. This month.

The aim of the Society is to replace what they consider the nonsensical system of English spelling, which they see as being responsible for illiteracy and problems for kids at school, with a logical, phonetic system.

Steve Shives, however, disagrees with the idea, pointing to differences in pronunciation in different places. Who is to decide, he argues, the correct phonetic spelling of his home state, Maryland, which he has variously heard pronounced MARE-a-lund, MARE-lund and MARY-land. Is a British or an American pronunciation of “drawing”, or neither for that matter, the “correct” pronunciation. He also points to the embodiment of language and cultural history in the spelling of many words.

The solution, Steve suggests, is not to simplify spelling and “rob the language of its historical and cultural heritage”, despite the Simplified Spelling Society’s argument that this could free educators from spending large amounts of class time teaching spelling (and, incidentally, make competitions such as the National Spelling Bee redundant).

Steve instead sees a solution in spending more time on the essential skills of reading, writing and spelling: “Children…should be taught [these skills] …not as a chore, not as work, but as necessary and wonderful skills that will serve them the rest of their lives.”

What do you think?

First of all, our apologies to all our readers for the long absence. But the TEFL blog is back…

The phrase “you know” is the 57^th most frequently used word or phrase in English. In fact, 60% of all use of the word “know” is in this phrase. That’s according to Professor Ronald Carter of Nottingham University, speaking at a session of the 5^th Asia TEFL Conference, which took place last week in Malaysia.

Another talk to make an impact, reports the Malaysia Star Online, was “Learning English with a Mobile Phone”. Dr Timothy Collins said that “a mobile phone can support many kinds of learning… where learners can see, hear and touch as they press buttons to express their understanding”.

Do you agree with Dr Collins? Or do you see mobile phones as a menace to English language classrooms, with teenage students spending whole lessons texting their friends under the table?

If you attended the 5^th Asia TEFL Conference this year, tell us what you thought. Next year’s conference will be in August in Bali, Indonesia, with the theme “Globalising Asia: The Role of ELT”.

Idaho has become the 29th US state to adopt English as its official language. 13 more states have legislation pending to do the same.

But isn’t English the official language everywhere in the US, I hear you ask? Have a look at this post to find out.

In this post in January we debated whether there is a place in writing today for abbreviated English of the type found in emails, text messages and chat rooms, or whether this is just a menace to ESL students and teachers.

Well, according to the Jamaica Observer, this type of English is becoming a problem in Jamaican schools, as it creeps into students’ essay writing. One teacher, quoted in the article, blames the problem on a lack of reading: “If you ask students to read a novel, the first thing they ask is ‘how many pages, Miss? Is it long?’ Everything is about instant gratification.”

What do you think? Would students use less chat room slang at school if they read more and watched less TV? Have a look at the article and post a comment below…

Here are some more conference dates for your diary:

April 18-22, IATEFL Annual Conference and Exhibition
The IATEFL Conference attracts 1500 ELT professionals from over 70 countries, and includes a programme of over 300 talks, workshops and symposiums. This year’s conference is being held in the Scottish city of Aberdeen.

June 8-10, Asia TEFL International Conference
Billed as the “biggest and most widely participated English Language Teaching Event in Asia”, the Asia TEFL International Conference is this year being held in Malaysia.

October 27-28, Korea TESOL International Conference
The theme of the 15th Korea TESOL Conference is “Energizing ELT: Challenging Ourselves, Motivating Our Students”, and is being held at Sookmyung Women’s University in Seoul.

The teaching of core subjects such as Maths and Science in English in Vietnam’s primary schools is causing some concern for education experts and members of the public, according to this article.

The concern is the effect it will have on the Vietnamese language. One primary school teacher is quoted as saying “Currently, many young people cannot write a grammatically-correct sentence in Vietnamese… there should be careful consideration when deciding on what language to teach subjects at schools”.

Nguyen Gia Phong, an expert with the Education Science Institute is also concerned that teaching core subjects in English may spread to higher education, which could accelerate the Vietnamese language’s deterioration.

The importance of teaching foreign languages in Vietnam is not underestimated, but, as another primary school teacher points out, “the teaching of foreign languages, and using foreign languages to teach other subjects in the official curriculum, are two entirely different things.”

What do you think about this issue? Post your comments below…

Best Practices in English Language Teaching is the theme of this year’s TESOL Arabia Conference, which gets underway tomorrow in Dubai. The conference features 250 speakers and over 200 sessions, including “Students’ Attention Span- Where Has It Gone?”, “The Learner as “Customer”, What’s to Know?” and “A Bag of Tricks for Vocabulary Teaching”.

Have a look at the TESOL Arabia website for more.

Japan is the focus of today’s post. First, an article from the Japan Times discusses the pros and cons of working for large and small schools in Japan, with the article Bigger is not always better for Japan’s English teachers.

Salaries, the article points out, do not differ that much between large and small schools, but there are some other points worth considering.

According to the article, job and income security are higher in larger schools and chains such as Nova, ECC and GEOS. If a branch of a large chain closes down for financial reasons, teachers can be transferred to another branch - not so in smaller, family-run schools.

On the other hand, teachers may be more likely to face contractual problems with larger schools. According to Louis Carlet, deputy general secretary of the National Union of General Workers, quoted in the article, larger schools are “particularly adept at writing contracts which protect themselves”.

Teachers may also feel that they are working for a faceless company, rather than experiencing the family atmosphere of a smaller school. But this can have its downside too, with more pressure on teachers: “If a tiny cog in a huge machine breaks down it’s unlikely the whole thing will come to a shuddering halt. That’s not the case when the teacher is the machine.”

If you’ve had experience working for a small school or a large chain in Japan, or both, have a look at the full article and post a comment below - do you agree with the points raised?

The second article asks Why do the Japanese struggle with English?

The author, Steve Kaufmann, writes that most Japanese people he meets in business struggle with their English, compared to, say, Swedes. One of the main reasons for this, he says, is the “language or cultural ego”, the belief that Japanese language and culture is so unique that to become fluent in another language would cause a learner to lose that uniqueness. In part 2 of the article, the author points to other factors, including the differences in sentence structure, vocabulary and pronunciation, the Kana writing system and less exposure to English-speaking culture.

Do you agree with Steve? Post a comment below…

Our site review this week is Ask About English, where ESL students can ask questions about English language or British culture and see their answers posted online by Matt Ford.

Recent questions which Matt has answered include “Let me know the meanings of To kick up a row and its use” and “What’s the difference between as far as and as long as”.

The site also has extensive sections about British culture and humour, with information about everything from pubs to football, chips to the Royal Family, as well as some classic Monty Python sketches…

There are also speaking tips, phrases of the day and info about accents and dialects, including some cockney rhyming slang.

As well as providing some useful and informative ESL answers, this is a very useful resource for students - and teachers - interested in all things British.