Tag Archives: TEFL quotes

Welcome to England

Posted on 14/11/2010 by alexcase

“I did not fully understand the dread term ‘terminal illness’ until I saw Heathrow for myself” Dennis Potter

Posted in TEFL | Tagged | 1 Comment

Do no harm? Part Two

Posted on 16/10/2010 by alexcase

“In my second-year French class, I had to keep a journal. I could only say stupid things: ‘I got up at six. I ate breakfast. It’s cold. I’m tired.’ I was reduced to making these idiotic statements because I didn’t … Continue reading →

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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

Losing your students in the blink of an eye

Posted on 16/03/2010 by alexcase

“The psychologist Nalini Ambady once gave students three ten-second videotapes of a teacher- with the sound turned off- and found that they had no difficulty at all coming up with a rating of the teacher’s effectiveness. Then Ambady cut the … Continue reading →

Posted in TEFL | Tagged | 7 Comments

Michael J Wallace on science, theory and practice

Posted on 06/02/2010 by alexcase

All from Training Foreign Language Teachers, most of which seems to be viewable on Google Books here. “Atkins points out that craftsmen in metallurgy have been successfully making metals for hundreds of years, with apprentices learning from masters. However, the … Continue reading →

Posted in Linguistics, applied linguistics and SLA, Teacher training, Teaching methods and methodologies | Tagged | 1 Comment

From the latest book on technology in education

Posted on 02/12/2009 by alexcase

“we live in the Computer Age, and you need to get with the program. You are standing in the airport terminal of life, and the jet plane of teaching technology is about to take off. You must make a choice: … Continue reading →

Posted in Technology | Tagged , | 3 Comments

The CLT robot

Posted on 08/11/2009 by alexcase

“I suppose that in the not too distant future this sort of hopping from group to group and ‘listening in’ can be taken over by some language-surveillance computer or robot. This device would hover above the participants, the symbolic meaning … Continue reading →

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ELTJ in defence of textbooks Part One

Posted on 23/10/2009 by alexcase

There’s been a lot of online chatter on the topic of textbooks recently, all of which are neatly linked to by a recent Turklish TEFL blog post. As if to prove that the online world is just a faster and … Continue reading →

Posted in ELT publishing, TEFL, textbooks | Tagged | 4 Comments

A sense of perspective from an unexpected quarter

Posted on 30/09/2009 by alexcase

Meaning even more unexpected than a TEFL book with a sense of perspective… “You lose a few and pick up a few. That’s how it goes. If I could fulfil everyone’s desires, why would I need to touch the soil … Continue reading →

Posted in Teaching English in Korea | Tagged | Leave a comment

Two more nearly been there moments

Posted on 13/09/2009 by alexcase

“I started French at the local grammar school, where our teacher has some difficulty managing the new reel-to-reel recorder. So we spent quite a lot of time listening to French played at high speed, both forwards and backwards” “My main … Continue reading →

Posted in Teaching English in Sweden, TEFL | Tagged | 1 Comment