USING ALCOHOL TO MOVE FORWARD

We've just had to change our car, something that younger men in baseball hats tend to get misty-eyed about, but a situation I find somewhat galling. Cars are simply a drain on one's meagre income in my view, nowhere more so than in Brazil, where prices are inflated to ridiculous levels by government taxes, which go towards funding wealthy lifestyles for politicians and their huge extended families.

One thing that has slightly reduced the financial abyss into which changing our vehicle has plunged us is the fact that our new motor runs on both petrol (gasoline (US)) and alcohol. At last I've found a use for the bottles of local "wine" I've received over the years.

A litre of alcohol is 45% the price of a litre of petrol, so we'll definitely economise. However, engines use more alcohol than petrol to cover the same distance, meaning that we're filling up every two days, instead of every four as before.

Normally I fill up at night after my classes, always at the same petrol station to get the best deal. I'm only hoping that my sudden appearance twice as often as before won't be misinterpreted by the monosyllabic pump attendant, in scenes reminiscent of those here:

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

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 ...

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 .

Notes from the TEFL Graveyard

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