Tag Archives: News

British Council to be scrapped?

Posted on 24/09/2010 by alexcase

“The BBC World Service, the British Council and the Environment Agency are among the 94 publicly funded bodies whose fate has yet to be decided.” from Quango Cuts in the Torygraph It wouldn’t seem to make sense to close all … Continue reading →

Posted in British Council, Telegraph TEFL | Tagged | 8 Comments

Eikaiwa continues to shrink

Posted on 20/09/2010 by alexcase

David English House in Hiroshima, a well respected school run by author and all round booster of professionalism in Nippon David Paul, closed for business on 1 September leaving him personally bankrupt. Sounds like they managed the process well, though, according … Continue reading →

Posted in British Council, David English House, Eikaiwa, English Teachers in Japan, Let's Japan, Teaching English in Japan, TEFL chains | Tagged | 5 Comments

Guest piece- 2000 Sri Lankan English Teachers Coming to Korea??

Posted on 11/08/2010 by alexcase

by Anontastic “No doubt,  anyone reading the EL Gazette this month may have done a double take when looking at the front page for August 2010 – I know that I did. According to the headlines, Korea plans to recruit … Continue reading →

Posted in EL Gazette, Teaching English in Korea, The Marxist TEFL Group | Tagged , | 14 Comments

Goddess English

Posted on 19/05/2010 by alexcase

‘A FORTNIGHT ago, in a poor village in Uttar Pradesh, in northern India, work began on a temple dedicated to Goddess English. Standing on a wooden desk was the idol of English — a bronze figure in robes, wearing a … Continue reading →

Posted in Teaching English in India | Tagged , | 2 Comments

‘Shane English School (NZ) faces liquidation’?

Posted on 17/04/2010 by alexcase

Don’t know if it’s true, and don’t know what it would mean if it was, but it would have a strange and worrying symmetry with the recent problems with GEOS Australia, also a mainly Japan-based chain with branches in the … Continue reading →

Posted in Eikaiwa, Geos, Let's Japan, Shane Language Schools, Teaching English in Japan, TEFL chains | Tagged | 5 Comments

More ELT publishing bad news?

Posted on 07/11/2009 by alexcase

Farewell to the Georgian Press List, taken over by CUP. Although my own copies of Georgian Press books were long ago lost in my endless moves from country to country leaving teachers’ rooms stocked with my books behind me (I will reclaim my … Continue reading →

Posted in ELT publishing, TEFL | Tagged | Leave a comment

Guardian TEFL fades away

Posted on 03/09/2009 by alexcase

Looking at the pages of Education Guardian, there are four much loved (and for some reason also much hated) letters that have recently gone missing, and those letters are T,E,F and L. The Guardian TEFL pages still exist, but I don’t … Continue reading →

Posted in Guardian TEFL, links | Tagged | 4 Comments

Saving the world's dialects through technology

Posted on 25/08/2009 by alexcase

As I can’t seem to stop eliciting (really!) I’ll tell you what you will read on it and see if you can work out the dialect being saved and the technology doing it for yourselves: “Reading your bladder of lard, please wait” … Continue reading →

Posted in TEFL | Tagged , | 1 Comment

How not to teach pronunciation

Posted on 21/07/2009 by alexcase

“Japanese college students who’d had little exposure to spoken English underwent 12 sessions listening to exaggerated “Ls” and “Rs” while watching the computerized instructor’s face pronounce English words. Brain scans — a hair dryer-looking device called MEG, for magnetoencephalography — … Continue reading →

Posted in Linguistics, applied linguistics and SLA, links, minimal pairs, Pronunciation, Teaching English in Asia, Teaching English in China, Teaching English in Japan, Teaching English in Korea, Teaching English in Thailand | Tagged , | 1 Comment

Maybe British host families aren't the worst

Posted on 20/05/2009 by alexcase

This American family borrowed 1000 dollars off their Norweigan exchange student and then he got booted out of the country! Still, I still think host families in London win the prize. One Brazilian student told a hilarious story of rushing … Continue reading →

Posted in Cultural differences/ cultural training, EF, links, TEFL, TEFL chains, TEFL in the UK | Tagged | 2 Comments