Notes from the TEFL Graveyard

In a previous dirge , I have commented on the widespread tendency amongst Brazilian businesses to make unfulfilled promises to return phone calls. It is ironic, then, that the very school to which I was referring in that regard apparently found my number recently on a scrap of paper stuck to the bottom of somebody’s shoe and decided to call me to invite me to a “group dynamic” in São Paulo . Driven by a childish resentment, my first reaction was to berate them for taking six months to communicate with me, making clear my intolerance of such slapdash practices, and to hang up triumphantly, but my diminishing bank balance, coupled with my wife Show’s eroding peninsular of patience, persuaded me to agree to their demands. On the Sunday before Monday’s group session, I was overwhelmed by a feeling of not wanting to go. I sometimes have these strange and inexplicable intimations of misfortune, but it is hard to tell if they are genuine, or just the result of an idleness-based wishful t...

For those who worry about me, I have some good news - my jailer might have dropped my cell key, and by bending a coathanger, I may just be able to pull it under the door. I've been asked to go to São Paulo next week to do a voice test to be a narrator for a video production company. Further down the line, this could be my long-awaited passport into vaudeville. I have to choose a text, roughly a page of A4 long, to recite during said dry run. My shortlist currently comprises: Under Milk Wood by Dylan Thomas - an opportunity for a crude Richard Burton rip-off; The Rape of the Lock by Alexander Pope - in my humble opinion, the greatest, and longest, poem ever written in any language about hair; Krapp's Last Tape by Samuel Beckett - this strident monologue may better exhibit my full range; This is just an instinctive first draft - please feel free to add your suggestions.

"In order to activate your account, please reply to this message with the following information: First Name: Last Name: Username on Forum: Address: Phone Number: Info about yourself, and a detailed explanation for joining:" All I wanted to do was take a quick look at Mr D Sperling's jobs forum. We are all aware of the post-9/11 scenario, but isn't this a little excessive? And no, I am not, have never been and never intend to be a member of the TEFL Liberation Front. The second part of the last item seems a little redundant, considering it's a jobs forum, where, presumably, the principle objective is finding employment. What does he keep in there that requires such clandestine information gathering...?

Should you ever apply for a job in Brazil, or have any contact with enterprises with more than a couple of employees, learn to take with a large, high-blood-pressure-inducing pinch of salt their promises to call you. There’s no need to wait up anxiously by the phone, or rush out to buy a mobile in case they call when you’re out. When they say they’ll contact you, they’re just being nice - or trying to get rid of you. I’ve just looked in my diary. On 19 June 2007 at oh nine hundred hours I went to a language school in nearby Sorocaba that I’d applied to for a teaching job, to do a test of English grammar and comprehension. This is supposed to be the school that offers the best pay and conditions available anywhere in the region. I had to sign a paper agreeing to go through the whole recruitment rigmarole, the test, followed by an interview and finally a battery of psychometric evaluations (I bet those results make interesting reading. I imagine many a mental TEFL teacher stumbles a...