FOOTBALL IS FOR GIRLS

I’m not a great aficionado of football, but my hearty congratulations go out to the Brazilian women’s team who have today reached the World Cup final, beating the USA for the first time by a score of 4-0. The standard of play from both teams was at times breathtaking, showing that even in football, women are stealing a march on us menfolk. There was little diving and rolling around as if caught in crossfire in a bank robbery, with both teams exhibiting a workwomanlike dedication, individual flair providing moments of exquisite drama.

I personally will be following the scandalously overlooked women’s game more closely in future. The men’s game has long since lost its soul to seven-figure salaries, with players apparently preferring a career in modelling, sportswear marketing or professional celebrity to actually playing the game they are fortunate enough to be richly talented at.

Football is now officially my second favourite women's sport, after beach volleyball (amateur or professional...)

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FOOLING WITH SCHOOLING

One of the commonest figures to be found within TEFL is the aspiring administrator. This is a teacher who, often drained by years of repetitive, poorly remunerated clowning around in the classroom, seeks a position managing other teachers, such as Director of Studies (aptly and attractively known as "Doss"), from which they can sit in an imaginary TEFL director’s chair smoking a cigar, bellowing, “CUT!” and enjoying not having to pull a linguistic rabbit out of a hat twelve times a day, five days a week. I include myself within this TEFL subgenre, although my past experiences of administration have left me with an odd yearning to get back into the classroom and be king of my own modest sandcastle. In 2005, whilst I was working in HR at a local factory, my Brazilian friend Bert and I decided to start our own school. I had recently managed to wriggle out of a honey trap I’d set for myself, when I offered to give a free English course to my colleagues in the factory’s Training a...

NO MORE A-CUSSIN'

In an effort to rid himself of the habit of using foul language at the slightest provocation , a Facebook chum recently asked for suggestions for harmless expressions he could use in front of his Gran and her bingo clique during moments of high stress, astonishment and/or extreme disappointment. I weighed in with, " Crikey! " and, " Great Scott! " Please feel free to add your suggestions, and help to make the world a tiny bit less like a trucker's stopover in Eindhoven .

TEFL ANTHEMS VOL. I

An interesting debate over at ELT World in answer to the question, Are your students learning anything? has got me all reflective. Many rock songs are claimed by religious maniacs to include subliminal messages when played backwards or by missing every sixth word or summat, but others are more easily deciphered. As TEFL anthems go, perhaps one of the most memorably haunting has to be Dave Gilmour/Roger Waters' bitterly ironic collaboration reflecting on TEFL one-to-one classes being taught abroad , Wish You Were Here : How I wish, how I wish you were here. We're just two lost souls Swimming in a fish bowl, Year after year, Running over the same old ground. What have we found? The same old fears. Wish you were here. As TEFL mongers we often feel like we're in a fish bowl, year after year , not least because the majority of our students exhibit the retention capacities of the goldfish. After painstakingly explaining that we use the preposition to after various verbs, the ...

Notes from the TEFL Graveyard

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