FESTIVE TEFL GRAVEYARD QUIZ

FESTIVE TEFL GRAVEYARD QUIZ - THE ANSWERS

I know you can't wait any longer. Here are the answers:

Who is Student A? - Edgar Allan Poe
Who is Student B? - H L Mencken
Which poem do the closing lines, "Time held me green and dying, Though I sang in my chains like the sea" come from, and who wrote it? - Fern Hill by Dylan Thomas
Which font is "Notes From The TEFL Graveyard" written in? (For readers with Asperger's Syndrome.) - Impact

Neither of the entrants got all the questions right, but No Good Boyo takes the biscuit with a sterling 50% pass rate. Just brush up on your Windows fonts and your future is bright.

As promised, here is a picture postcard of the local railway station, the first reinforced concrete building to be constructed in Latin America, designed and built by the French arquitect Dubugras in 1906. Its art-deco style is based on an upturned table.

Congratulations, No Good Boyo, and thanks for humouring me.

Comments

No Good Boyo said…

What can I say? Thank you, thank you all! I'd like especially to thank my English teacher, Mrs Allen, for so putting me off the set O level books that I read Poe, Fitzgerald etc on my own, otherwise I'd only be able to recognise Thomas Hardy. I'd also like to thank the Welsh Joint Edjucation Committee for making it an either/or choice in the arts and sciences, thereby ensuring that I don't know how electric works or what a computer are. (cont p94)

8 December 2007 at 18:07

M C Ward said…

Bask away, you deserve all the accolades.

One good thing about teaching English is that you learn some pretty useful stuff from your students, by osmosis, like. I am able to label the parts of, and take anybody through the installation of, a Roll Grinding Mill for the aluminium industry when called upon. I can thank TEFL for that.

8 December 2007 at 19:50

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...

TEFL ANTHEMS VOL. I

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I AM OFFICIALLY A TIT

Show recently extracted the wind from my sails with typically well-intentioned down-to-earthism. Armed with several diagrams and a kitchen knife , she extolled her opinion that I should concentrate on doing what I can do and stop fannying around trying to learn how to do things I can’t , in yet another feeble-minded attempt to divorce myself from TEFL. Yet again, I believe her to be right. It all started back in May, when I went to Poland with my male voice choir and on the plane to Frankfurt found myself sitting next to Jetro, one of our second tenors. I’d never really spoken to him before, but during the trip I discovered that he ran a small yet growing Internet company , an online system through which owners of used car dealerships could manage their businesses. He explained how previously he’d been something of a factotum, working around the country in various jobs and starting various businesses, until he discovered that he could neither work for somebody nor manage others –...

Notes from the TEFL Graveyard

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