After reading the feedback on my last attempt to get people’s opinions on influential stuff in TEFL, have come up with this alternative method:

“I would be very grateful if you could take the time to answer some of the questions below, either by pasting your answers into an email (see the Contact Me button top right for my address) or by leaving a comment here. I have also put a version on Survey Monkey, which is slightly shorter as the free service is limited to ten questions (http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/FLZF8RW)

I am planning on using the information to help me write a couple of pieces on the history of ELT, and am also just generally really interested in reading people’s answers. The questions should be possible (and hopefully interesting) to answer whether you’ve been in TEFL for half a year or half a century. I hope the chance to indulge in nostalgia, to share things that have influenced you and you think should be remembered, to help extend the collective memory of TEFL teachers and my eternal gratitude make it nearly as motivating to take part in as it will be for me to read.

Your name won’t be shared with anyone, and you can of course reply anonymously or with a pseudonym if you like. Every effort will also be made to make sure any information that is shared cannot be traced back to any one person.

Name (optional) _____________________________________

1. In which year (approximately) did you start your first TEFL job?

2. In which year did you do your initial TEFL training? What course was it?

3. What books were you recommended to read before or during your initial TEFL course? What materials, techniques and methodologies were dominant on the course? What things had the most impact on you and the other trainees?

4. What was your first job? What books and supplementary resources were most used in that school? What were your own favourites?

5. What were the latest and most talked about articles, journals, websites, materials, techniques and methodologies during your first few years of teaching? What had the most impact on you?

6. Who were the dominant TEFL people and organisations at that time? Who were you most influenced by?

7. What people and organisations from outside TEFL had the most impact or were the most talked about during your first few years of teaching? Which things and people from outside TEFL had the most impact on your teaching?

8. What were the first online resources to have a major impact on your own thinking and teaching? What about other people you knew?

9. What technology was most talked about and used in the first couple of schools that you worked in?

10. What TEFL publications, people, events or ideas from (long?) before you started teaching have influenced you a lot (directly or indirectly)?

11. What events in TEFL have had the most impact on you and the people you know (e.g. school closures and expansions, new schools and bankruptcies’, industrial action, changes in qualifications, visa and other rule changes, mergers and takeovers, conferences, changes in job conditions, introduction of new technology)?

12. What events, materials, people and ideas which are nearly forgotten do you think should be remembered?

13. What (if anything) do you most associate with TEFL in the following periods?

a) 2000s

b) 1990s

c) 1980s

d) 1970s

e) 1960s

f) Pre-1960s

Thank you very much for your time. All and any answers are very welcome, so if you found yourself stuck or running out of time, please share it as it is – you can always send another version if you change your mind or want to add something later! Feedback on the questionnaire itself also very gratefully accepted.”