Notes from the TEFL Graveyard

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...

Few of my bumbling disciples know the alphabet in English, I'll wager, but, like me, few will realise the true importance of it until they are guiding an incoming Airbus A380 onto the wrong runway at Congonhas , or, as was my case, being prematurely diagnosed with Tourette's Syndrome during an occupational medical . I'd noticed the factory nurse sniggering to herself, and thought it downright unethical, given my limited language skills and piss poor pronunciation of Portuguese. Stoic as always, I soldiered on through the eye test. "Pay (P), say (C), shiss (X)..." I dutifully reeled off as the letters diminished in size and visibility, but there it was again, the little smirk, the way she turned away from me and stifled a cackle. Seeking enlightenment, when I arrived home, I summoned Show to my antechamber and sought her advice on how to pronounce the letter "Q". "Kay," she stated flatly, "like K in English." Therein lay the rub. Vag...

Once more TEFL leaves me with a feeling of abject grief . Having spent the last 5 months of 2009 convinced that I'd hit upon a winning formula for getting my flock to speak my mother tongue without any of us breaking into too much of a sweat, I mark their end of term tests and find that my prediction that all of them would achieve at least 75% was nothing more than wildly optimistic grope in the darkness , with scores ranging from 68.5% down to a frankly degenerate 30% . My cunning recipe involving making recordings for them to listen to at home (at least once a day , no more than 7 minutes per recording ) appears to have fallen on deaf ears, as the lazy fucks obviously haven't been doing any such thing, despite cleverly lying en masse to me that they were diligently following my linguistic orientations. Where do you end up once you've gone past your wit's end , I wonder? I passed that milestone some years ago. To swing wildly away on a tangent for a moment, the rel...