Notes from the TEFL Graveyard

The male voice choir I participate in has reached something of a plateau I feel. For over a year now, we seem to have stagnated, unable to see any marked improvement in our performances and still victims of the vices that have become commonplace. We start songs impressively, start to wobble, and by the end have sometimes completely come apart – rather than singing as a unit with one voice, it’s more like every man for himself . And much of the cause is cultural, it seems to me. I don’t like to criticise my adopted country, but I am going to make a rare exception and opine that I am living in the land of “that’ll do” . Choir singing, for example, is the pursuit of excellence . Our choir, being one of the few male choirs in the region, is met with standing ovations at every turn , largely because we are such a novelty. This is not to say it’s undeserved; to the untrained ear (there is virtually no culture of choir singing in Brazil, apart from local church ensembles, which are all ferve...

Yesterday I was just tucking into my jugged hare when the doorbell rang. My father-in-law answered it to a lady, returning to inform me that it was me to whom she would like to address an enquiry. Unaccustomed to lady callers , I descended to the gate and held a barely audible shouted conversation with my suitor above the rabid barking of my hound. "Is it you that gives the English lessons?" she enquired. "Not any more, I'm afraid", I snapped, snorting involuntarily , "I work with translation now, and I don't have time to give lessons." She appeared to crumple physically. "I can't believe it," she whined, "a friend of mine called you a while ago and you told her you weren't giving lessons any more," she went on, this revelation begging the question as to why she thought I'd make some kind of inconsistent exception for her . "It's for my 16-year-old son. Not even conversation?" Ah yes, conversation clas...

I remember reading a Somerset Maugham short story once in which the writer moves into a house where he is told one of his neighbours is a poet. Interested to meet the bard in question, Maugham decides to pay him a visit. When the gentleman opens the door, Maugham is immediately impressed by his physical appearance , and goes on to describe his keen eyes, noble face – generally, he is exactly what he expects a poet to look like, the twist in the story being that he’s actually called at the wrong house and is describing the wrong man . I was reminded of this story after a particularly vivid dream, which I won’t recount in full out of pure compassion. I don’t know how Freud did it, listening to all those people’s dreams – to me, it’s the most boring thing anyone can do , start to recall dreams to you. It’s just a load of mumbo jumbo, “I was in this dark place, which was like my grandmother’s coal cellar, but it wasn’t, and there was this huge carrot...” blah, blah, blah. Utter nonsense. B...

Keen-eyed readers who popped by in around June may remember a garbled message I posted (and swiftly deleted) relating to some fairly major legal difficulties I was facing , which, thankfully, turned out to be utterly baseless. Without wishing to go into the morbid details, suffice it to say that our attempts to adopt a young waif led to a rumour circulating in the region that there was a German child trafficker at large - and I'm still not sure which part of that double insult riled me more. I am delighted to say I have been fully cleared of all suspicions, with my moral integrity and island heritage more or less intact . What it has provided me with is yet another demonstration of the depth of the other-planetary madness by which this country operates, where criminals (and clowns, in the literal sense of the word ) are routinely elected to public office, and people hoping to adopt an abandoned child are criminalised. And people wonder why Brazil's attempts to secure a perman...

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 .

Last week was a strange old week on several fronts. Firstly, I managed to bugger up a translation test for a potential client, the second time this has happened recently. As soon as I see the word “test”, my brain seems to freeze and I lose all discernment. I commence mentally hemming and hawing about what to change and what to leave in, often ending up with a text full of awkward phrases that look like one of my English students wrote them. Actually, that is a gross exaggeration , but there’s a sniff of truth to it. It’s significant that my two main clients never asked me to do a test - they just started sending me projects straight off the bat, and I’ve never looked back. Place the word “test” in the mix and I become a gibbering bell end . I’d therefore ask anybody who wants me to translate anything never to mention the “t” word, lest my fevered brain goes all Chernobyl on me again . In other developments, after six years of largely peaceful coexistence with th...

Whilst they are thankfully rare, there are times when students manage to genuinely put the fear of God into us. Principally out of desperation, I recently implemented a new strategy to try to keep my pupils' wandering attention away from Biggy Brother Brasil 10 and/or Carnival-themed pornography and firmly fixed on the task at hand, which, if they haven't already forgotten, is learning Engleeesh. It involves me sending them a text message three times a week with a simple question in English, normally with a model reply of my own. They then respond, presuming they have enough credit, which seems to be becoming an issue for at least 50% of the class . In reply to my enquiry, " What did you have for lunch today? ", I received the following: " I HAVE WHO MEET A BEUTIFUL CAT " (uppercase letters his own) Unable to see an obvious connection, and considering correcting him practically impossible, I lamely replied, " Good for you! ", imagining th...